Old Harbin

First of all, in an almost comical conclusion to my lengthy explanation of buying a cellphone and all my great plans for using it, I lost it. It was very stupid; we were riding in cab and it fell out of my pocket. I noticed about a minute after we got out, ran back, but the taxi had taken off. Not exactly what I had in mind for the phone, but really, what can you do? I\'m not sure if I\'m going to get another, maybe a second hand one this time, but I think I\'ll wait to see if it\'s a pain not having one. So it goes.

The Chinese students here have been very busy these last few days as they cram for the big exam which starts right now, 10:00 am Sunday morning. Every first year has a big exam on Mao Zedong theory, second years have Deng Xiaoping and third years have a big test on Marx, which along with a month of mandatory military training, forms the core of the state\'s presence in higher education. I read the first page of their book on Deng, which was full of the words I\'ve been learning like \'system\', \'reform\', \'economic pace\' and \'possessing Chinese characteristics\', and found it rather readable. The introduction basically said \'China has made two attempts to establish a Socialist country. Mao tried once and it didn\'t quite work out. Deng\'s theory, with the help of Mao\'s theory, is succeeding in working towards a socialist system.\' I might try and read more of the book, because you have to admit, its interesting to see what the official line is on balancing Mao, Deng, opening and reform with an inflexible political (although not government) system over the 57 years of Communist power.

Anyway, yesterday we all piled into a bus and headed off to the old quarter of Harbin. It is a few streets by the river that were part of the original city here, mostly built by the Russian. The city of Harbin is actually only about 100 years old and dates back to when the Russians were asked to assist in building a rail link from China to Vladivostock port. In that respect it is a little like Shanghai, started by foreigners as a purely economic center but now fully integrated back into China. While this area of China was the industrial heartland for most of the first half of the 20th century thanks to Russian and Japanese development here (whether invited or not), it has since been eclipsed by the booming coastal cities in the south and now has fallen back a little to be the trading hub of the very rich agricultural lands of the northeast.

Our roommates took a few hours off from studying Deng theory to come along and we all got out to wander around the streets. It looked like a bustling part of the city, the buildings were mostly run down Russian styled ones, and there were a lot of Weiger (from xinjiang province/muslim chinese) people working in the outdoor markets. We walked right down to the Songhua River to skip some stones and take pictures. The river\'s a few hundred meters wide here, flowing slowly to the north, and it looks quite pretty until you get right up to it and then you see a little bit of oily streaks here, the usual old plastic bag there, and then you realize its like just about every other river in China – something to be used and considered pretty but not worth spending the money to clean up. But maybe its not worth putting money into river clean up when it\'s necessary to pay much needed teacher\'s salaries, or subsidize food so even the poorest have no problem eating, or even more necessary, building another large electronics store. And of course oily streaks don\'t stop the young men from wading out into with their fishing nets to catch a few entrees for a near by restaraunt. My final judgement: the river \'possesses Chinese characteristics\'，具有中国特色。

The riverside is several miles of parks with wide walking paths and trees which actually are quite nice if you don\'t see the bits of garbage everywhere. We wandered into one park complete with a playground, children\'s slides and a WWII tank, WWII plane and a more recent fighter jet sitting on cement blocks for the kids to climb on. (You\'re just going to have to live with that description, I can\'t explain why they were there.) We met for dinner, enjoying the amazing variety of foods here. I think there is more variety in Northeaster food here than there is all of the \'American\' restaraunts put together. I did stay well awy from the fish though.