Just Because Beijing Isn't Cold Enough....

With our schedule here, we get three weeks on and then one week off. Usually that week comes at the end of every month, but sometimes due to scheduling, it is at the start of the month. So when one break is at the end of a month, followed by a break at the beginning of the month it is a good thing and we get 2 weeks off. Such is the case with the December/January break. We have off for 14 whole days, leaving plenty of time to relax and/or travel. Our team is split up into two different mindsets. One side wants to go down to Yunnan province which has been called the Hawaii of China. Nice, consistent temperatures around 75 this time of year, tropical vegetation, vast variety of people and food...a pretty nice break from the cold and smog of Beijing. The other group wants to travel north to Harbin, the capital of the northernmost province of China, bordering Russia. It too also has consistent temperatures, around -15 to -25 degrees in the daytime. The main attraction this time of year is the Ice Festival and the Siberian Tiger Park, where for a fee you can throw live chickens out of a moving van and watch the tigers pounce, all the while hoping that they don't decide to go for the more tasty and filling treat of what's inside the van. Apparently, that's happened before. Did I mention the cold? Right now according to WeatherChannel.com, it feels like -27 degrees farenheit. Let's think about that for a second...

that's nearly sixty degrees below freezing.

As a matter of fact, the only thing that seperates it from the region known as Siberia is an imaginary line on the nap that separates China and Russia. Half of us are not only going there, but going there in January to see the Ice Festival, while the other-perhaps more sensible-half are going to tropical Yunnan.
Of course, I'm going with the Harbin group. Why? Well for one, the Ice Festival is internationally famous and two, it boils down to bragging rights. Anyone can go to a tropical city in the middle of winter, but it takes someone special to get excited to go much farther north. But you have to admit, that's a darn good tourism board right there. Somewhere back in time, somebody asked the question "How can we make a city in northern China the most popular tourist destination...in wintertime?"

Alaska, take note.