Skiing in Haerbin is not just about skiing....

It’s been a while since I last wrote. I guess I haven’t been terribly busy but have been going out more trying to enjoy the last few weeks we have in Haerbin. Last week I went skiing for the first time in my life. Jon and Amy (two fulbrighers), one our teachers that we call FangZi (which means house) and I all took a 3 hour train ride to a small skiing mountain called Yaboli. It was the first weekend of skiing for Haerbin so the train was packed with families (really mostly men) and their ski or snowboard gear. The train was extremely festive with groups of people playing cards, eating breakfast and generally making lots of noise. My first time up on skis, before I even got up on the chair lift, I slid down a small slope and in an attempt not to hit other tourists I fell to the ground desparately grabbing at snow to slow my speed. After that I was mostly alright, I learned how to stop and even made it up to the higher slopes. The hardest part was after falling and tumbling down a particularly steep slope you got up to find your skis 20 feet above you left on the top of the slope! Then trying to put the skis back on while balancing with one foot in the air. At one point a Chinese woman spent at least 10 minutes with me helping to get my skis back on. She had lots of suggestions but I was pretty useless and I think it made her quite frustrated.

Our first night at the slopes we went to a restaurant with a group of loud and fraternity-like middle-age men. We ended up staying at the same hotel as them and they insisted that we spend some time talking and drinking with them. Every few minutes they lifted they’re small glasses of beer and cried out ‘ganbei’ the equivalent to our ‘cheers’ except that it is expected that you down your drink. This is perhaps why they use smaller 3-shot glasses to drink beer with – in order to limit the amount of beer they consume. Whether that is really the reason or not it doesn’t seem to work because they still went through a few cases of large 40oz bottles of Harbin beer. One of the negatives about being a foreigner in China is that you’re always receiving requests for ‘ganbei’ and usually those that are most drunk are most eager to talk and most difficult to understand. Despite all of the excitement and attention I retired early and ducked out on a number of ‘ganbei’ opportunities.