A weekend in Harbin: Tigers, a Wedding and a city made of ice - Part 1: Eye of the Tiger

Harbin is a city about 500 km north from Shenyang. It`s famous - or at least well-known - for mainly three things:

1. As it was found by Russians and didn`t became part of China until 1946, you can see a lot of this influence in the architecture of many older buildings, which gives the city a slightly unchinese flair of it`s own.

2. The oldest brewery of the country - Harbin beer is brewed since 1900, 3 years before the Germans installed their brewery in Qingdao - which is the most famous Chinese beer brand nowadays.

3. For being incredibly cold in winter - temperatures can go down as low as -40°C during nighttime, temperatures drop below zero already at the end of October and won`t go above that mark again before the beginning of April.

Lets Shenyang almost appear as a Tropical Paradise - we had our first snow not before the middle of November and temperatures are supposed to reach zero again already beginning of March.... and stop around - 30° during nighttime. Yay....

Well, Harbin made the best out of it and hosts one of the biggest "Ice & Snow Festivals" in the world. We always wanted to go there. Additionally, a friend of us got married in Harbin this weekend. Finally given the fact that going there by train takes less than 5 hours, the trip had to be made. And the story and pictures about this 2 day trip shall be presented to you in 3 parts.

Day 1: Siberian Tigers, Snow Village and Ice Palaces

In the morning we got picked picked up by the father and an uncle of the bride (more about Chinese hospitality in the third post) and drove to the "Harbin Siberian Tiger Reserve". On an area of around 1,5 mio. sqm, divided into 10 districts, about 500 Tigers live there, some 100 something visible for visitors.

The difference to an ordinary zoo is that within the reserve the tigers can roam freely and are not held back by cages or fences within a district - the latter separate bigger from smaller, older from younger tigers as well as different kinds of tigers to avoid fights among them.

You tour the reserve in a bus and of course are not allowed to leave it as it`s too dangerous. The bus stops every time a tiger is in sight somewhere close to the road, which happened quite often, so that the "picture hunters" could get got shots with their huge telephoto lenses. The tigers seemed used to buses crossing their territory every 5 minutes or so and seemed not to be disturbed by that (anymore), as they sat, walked or even took naps very close to the road and didn`t hide in the bushes when we came close and stopped right next to them.

As just sitting in a bus driving through a tiger reserve seems not to be already exciting enough, you are given the opportunity to walk over a tiny part of the reserve via an elevated passageway and - as THE highlight of the tour - can actually feed live animals to the tigers. You can learn the prices from the sign above.....

The spoiled beasts of course already have adapted to this attraction and preferably circulate the area around the passageway as they know that there food will be thrown out every other minute.

 As we were there, only big slices of beef or live chicken were "available". And as you can see, food for tigers isn`t treated much more "humanly" as the food we eat. In China pretty much the same, I guess.

Then comes the "fun part". Hold out the live, fluttering chicken to attract the tigers, throw it over the fence and watch the tigers fighting over it for a couple of seconds until one finally walks away with it in it`s mouth, looking for a laid-back spot to start eating it. While the chicken`s still alive for quite a while. Yeah, that`s nature.

Fun for the whole family. And if you`re not impressed by watching tigers eating chickens, have a look here for pictures where they got fed a calf. I don`t find the captions there funny, btw......

Never really know what I should think of attractions like these - a wildlife reserve is probably better than an actual zoo with tiny cages, and as siberian tigers are endangered to go extinct, question is if they would have a better life (or a life at all) in the wild.

Still, offering feeding live animals as an tourist attraction seems a bit macabre at first, especially if they`re treated like s... before. But then, as already mentioned, I´m afraid animals designated for food in China have a hard life in general. And I guess in most parts of the world.

As tigers are carnivores and hunting down animals is in their nature, I don`t know if there`s a ethical difference if you let their food roam freely before so they have to get it themselves, throw it at them to watch them fight over it or kill it already before and feed it to them in pieces.

Feel free to post your opinion.