Harbin had fascinated me since I first read it, as I prepared for my trip to China, a small town in the northernmost regions of Manchuria with a history stained by various cultures occupying all precariously on the shoulder each other during the last century. Manchu is a town become a provincial capital in European style, was the center of the early Japanese interests in northern China and was instrumental in the Twentieth Century saga Communist China. It is famous for its cold climate impossible, alcoholism, grand Russian architecture, the annual ice lantern festival, beautiful women and above all, the rail line connecting the center of Siberia through Mongolia to Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan . If not for the railroad, the city would certainly never have become the enigma that is today. It is also, oddly enough given its remote location, the city where the majority of standard Mandarin is spoken, even purer than that of Beijing.

The hotels are not cheap for a foreigner, and because he could only manage a short visit, I chose to sleep on the train back and forth, leaving Sunday night after my last class, and return at dawn on Tuesday sufficient time to recover before my classes began Wednesday night. I had planned to go alone, but had the opportunity to be guided at the last moment by a friend of a friend who also had never seen the northern capital of Heilongjiang (Black Dragon River) province.