Qiqihar

Qiqihar, one of the four main cities in Heilongjiang province, is located west of Harbin, near Inner Mongolia. I decided to visit the city because I wanted to see what Heilongjiang province was like outside of Harbin, and I wanted to see what life was like in a smaller city. The train ride out to Qiqihar passed lovely countryside and I napped for a while as we moved west. I did manage to notice the snow covered fields looked very cold. Some of the views were less lovely, including abandoned factories, power plants, and an oil field. I don’t think I’d ever seen an oil field before. The oil pumps looked like a sea of chickens pecking away at their grain. Waking up about a half hour before arrival, I played Chinese poker with some of the men on the train. Right before we reached Qiqihar, all the mothers brought over their children to take pictures with me. It was very cute.

After checking into a nice hotel not far from the train station, I ate dinner and rested. The next day, I set out to explore the city by bus and beng beng car. I visited the Bukui Mosque which is the oldest in the province and dates back to the early 1600’s. I chatted with the old men milling about in the mosque’s courtyard.

My next stop was the Longsha Park, where I walked along its snowy trails and saw old men exercising in the bone chilling negative 25 degree cold. The frozen pond was quite a sight. It was frozen so thick that plows could be driven across it, clearing the snow on top to make neat paths. Couples were out strolling on the pond. Old men and women and their grandchildren slowly weaved across the beautiful white snow. I walked past pagodas that normally would have been islands had the water not been frozen. I stopped by a small “zoo” where I saw yaks, camels, horses, deer, and moose. I hiked up a tower on a hill in the center of the park and from the top I could see the whole park and much of the city beyond.

My final stop was the Dacheng Buddhist temple, which dates to the Japanese occupation in the 1930’s. Recently renovated, the temple grounds featured exquisite white marble statues.

For the train ride back to Harbin, I caught an express. From there, I got an overnight train to Shenyang, the largest city in the Northeast.