August 19th 2007

heilongjiang Travel Tips / facts

HARBIN beer is, despite what others may say, the best beer in China. It was also the first commercially-brewed beer dating back to 1900.

SUIHUA COLLEGE - If you are planning to teach in China DO NOT go here unless you want to be ripped-off! MORE HERE

WINTER in HEILONGJIANG is bitterly cold and you can expect daytime highs of minus 20+C. At night it can dip to -35C and lower.

The HARBIN ICE & SNOW FESTIVAL is well-worth seeing and if your travel insurance is up to it, have a go on the Great Wall slide but be prepared to hurt yourself. Ticket prices rise yearly and it's now over 100yuan. A bus leaves / returns (1.5yuan each way) from the pedestrian street in the city.

The HARBIN BEER FESTIVAL is nothing to write home about at the moment but it gets better every year. Next event is early August 2007.

ACCOMMODATION is relatively expensive in Ha'erbin so look around and bargain hard.

HEILONGJIANG PROVINCE - My tour of china

HEILONGJIANG SHORT FACTS:

CAPITAL: HA'ERBIN (Harbin) 哈尔滨

POPULATION: 39 million

AREA: 469,000 sq kms

PLACES VISITED: Daqing, Suihua, Harbin, Qiqiha'er, Handian

Provinces

Heilongjiang Photographs

Heilongjiang - 黑龙江 which translates into English as Black Dragon River is famous around the world for just one thing; the annual Harbin Ice and Snow festival that is magnificent. It's famous throughout China because of the Daqing (大庆) Oil Fields, its rice and its beer. Of the latter, in my experienced opinion as a man who has sampled beers from tens of countries in their country of origin, it is worthy of its name. It's much crisper than its more world-famous rival, Qingdao or Tsingtao beer.

This Chinese province rarely captures the attention of the world though it did in late 2005 when its main water source, the Songhua River was severely polluted and resulted in 3 weeks of the capital, Harbin going without water.

Heilongjiang sees an incredible variation of annual temperatures: Without facts to-hand, I'd still guess that it may have one of the worlds biggest, 70 CELCIUS! That's to say you can expect summertime highs of +35C and winter lows of -35C.