NOAH ING

So here I am, back in Beijing, which after travelling to Dongbei, I believe is one of the best places in all of China. I am defintely accustomed to Beijing now. When I was travelling in Dongbei, I actually missed being in Beijing so much. So now I’m way too lazy to put 300+ pictures so I’m just gonna put some pictures I really like.

So I left Beijing on January 27th, and came back on February 11th. My journey starts on a train from Beijing to Haerbin. If you’re already lost with it, seriously just google maps it. We then arrived at Haerbin and went to Qiqihaer. This is where the adventure starts, because originally I always thought I was staying in Haerbin. I was following around one of my Dongbei dancer buddies and he let me live at his house. So people always talk about Chinese new year being the worst and busiest time to travel around china, one because train tickets are scarces and two, china just has way too many people.

Yea these are what the tickets look like. Apparently also they often get faked, and if you have one, you’re in deep doo doo. They don’t even really scan them when checking them cause its so busy, so they just make a small knick or pen mark.

So going to Haerbin, we used one of the best, fastest trains. It was 8 hours long, super clean, not allowed to smoke, stuff like that. Very good first train experience. Especially because in Canada I’ve also never used a train, so this really was my first train experience

However, going from Haerbin to Qiqihaer, was a whole another story. We didn’t manage to buy a good ticket, so we had some 20 kuai ticket. This train was full of people, I am sitting on my suitcase in this picture, with like tons of people surrounding me. You can see the excitement on my face. Also tons of people tried to talk to me cause I was a foreigner, but I was super tired at that point and could barely understand their accents.

Aight just because I’m too lazy I’m not gonna do this is chronological order either. So when we arrived at Qiqihaer, I ended up staying at this dudes house. We slept in the same bed, blah blah. It was a nice clean apartment, but didn’t always have hot water and stuff like that. Don’t really feel like going into details. This is a picture of some what they call “bing deng” or “ice lights” exhibition in Qiqhaer.

Fast forward a couple days, I ended up going to Haerbin and staying at this other dudes house. Me and him ended up being really good friends. He’s super cool dude, and his family is pretty well off, so staying with him was really really nice. The dude is like 17 and a really dope bboy as well. He also happens to be a professional singer, and his sister apparently immigrated to Toronto and is attending university, but for some reason their family didn’t know which university it was.

Alright so this is a picture of Haerbin’s ice exhibition. This year was Haerbin had the world largest ice Exhibition, so the admition fee was almost triple the normal cost. BUT at this place, they had crazy stuff like a super small skiing hill, a zipline, some amusement ride, you can ride a horse, this type of stuff. Ye. We more or less ended up doing every single one of those activities, because they were all free.

Now you have an idea of really how big it was. That giant kingdom is all made of ice. Pretty neato eh bob.

They also had these awesome ice slides everywhere. We probably tried every single ice slide in the entire park. hao waner ha ha

Haerbin is also one of the coolest places in all of Dongbei, because it has a super strong Russian influence. So as you can see, this area of town doesn’t even look like its in China. Being there was really beautiful, had a lot of foreigners and was just overall super interesting.

So again fast forward a few days, and here I am, living in a nongcun (rural area). I was there for a while. It wasn’t the most interesting thing, they didn’t have hot water at all other then boiling it, no washrooms…. I don’t want to continue. Anyways.

Heres the type of bed we slept on. So basically theres a furnace under this bed, and at night they heat it using wood. Cool stuff brah.

One of my last meals in Dongbei, possibly for the rest of my life. The chuaner in Dongbei is suppose to be the best in China. It was pretty good I must say, but I am totally sick of it now.

Probably the only thing that kept me sane out there, was the dance studio. The dude I was following around had a best friend who opened up his own dance studio. I danced everyday and really improved.

This is a picture I’ll never forget. It’s funny because I did my birthday rounds in Dongbei. I battled every single bboyin this picture until they gave up. I went 40+ rounds. Thank god I’ve never smoken a ciggerate in my life, and quit drinking.

This is just some random door that happened to have the company name FAM. After taking this picture, I realized I really miss my crew, and would kill for the chance to cypher or battle with them again. I realized after leaving that dance studio having smoked every single bboy in there, I felt like I really represented canada and FAM as a bboy. Really miss you guys! Believe it or not, I remember almost every piece of advice you guys have ever given me, and it will not be taken for granted. Also big ups to MEC, and IMS.

yet another picture of a door. The quality of the doors are really strong, and the locks are even crazier. I always get super lost trying to open these doors.

This is what I did for atleast 5 days of having fun. Play with fireworks. Out here people don’t give a rats ass if you shoot fireworks 5 metres from them. They we’re also super cheap. But too much of anything is a bad thing, and I ended up getting a headache from all the loud noises and hurting my ears a lot. Even though I wore earplugs, it only helped a little.

As you can see they’re really convenient to buy.

So now you’re probably wondering why this is titled toughness +5. Well for one, I was following around a not too good chinese friend and really had no idea what was going on but managed to live ha ha. Throughout the 15 days of travel, I met all of his family pretty much, learned a lot about chinese culture and was really thrown out of my comfort zone. But for the most part I became used to all of it and I was okay with it in the end. At some points I didn’t have a shower for like a week, and had to wash my face with boiled + cold water together everyday to stay clean. It’s all good though, I think I’ve toughened up my city boy body and slowly learning to take things more maturely

So coming back to Beijing, I ended up taking a 24 hour train. On this train ride, you are given a super small bed. It was atleast clean and you we’rent allowed to smoke in it. Anyways, I bought a bunch of noodle cups, and other convinent foods. But of course, as I started to eat it I realized that all of the food expired last year, so I threw it all out. By the time I arrived back at Renmin, it was like 1 in the morning so there was also no hot water. I took a cold shower and went to bed. This is when I realized I really like Beijing. I could write a whole list of things that went badly on that trip, but I rather not waste my time lingering on the past. Overall it was an awesome trip, I learned a crap load of chinese because almost no one there could speak english and ton of others things. Everybody lives a different life style, their’s just happened to be the completely opposite of mine. Oh yeah advice for anyone who plans to travel. NEVER, EVER forget your music, and music charger.

peace, one love.

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