Buddha

On Sunday, Tim and I took a stroll up the hill towards the amusement park. The Carrefour is down the hill and where we usually go for shopping. We thought we would get some lunch outside the training center and just get out for a while. We stopped for Lunch at the “California Beef Noodle” place. It is apparently a chain as we have seen it in other places around town. We had a bowl of noodles with beef in it in a soup type mixture. So, I guess the name is appropriate except for the California part as it is still very cold here in Harbin.

After that, we took a stroll through a HUGE electronics shopping center. It is at least 4 stories and spans an ENTIRE block. It is filled only with small booth-like stores, all carrying electronics and computer hardware like you would find in Radio Shack, Circuit City or Best Buy. Some booths carried very new out of the box things, while others were simply a guy with a pile of circuit boards and computer components building and welding things together. It was amazing the vastness of the building and number of stores, like having 500 small Radio Shacks all in the same building.

We left the store and turned left toward a walking street and the entrance to the Amusement park. Off the walk street there is also a famous Buddhist Temple, so we took the $2.00 tour, almost literally as it was 10 Yuan to get in ($1.25).


I had not realized that the Nazi’s had taken over the Buddhist temples and was surprised to find swastikas engraved into the architecture. I met a monk while Tim was going to the bathroom and he agreed to have his picture taken. He said it was very cold!


We looked at some of the temples and worked our way to the main attraction the huge golden Buddha statute (can you find the Nazis?).


A famous Harbin photo is the picture of the Buddha from the correct angle appearing to spin the ferris wheel, so I had to get the shot. It is quite interesting…


We left the temple and headed back out on the walking street. As things get geared up for the New Year’s Holiday, all the shops begin selling fireworks and fire crackers. It is amazing the size of some of the fireworks that are for sale on the street. One man had a pile of them that were taller than I am. We decided to go into one of the small shops and browse. The lady in their was nice and impressed by the four Chinese words we tried to speak to her. I ended up with a small Buddha statue for 5 Yuan to take back to my room.

Next, we headed back down the other side of the street to see what we might have been missing over there. We found a place that said in English, “Beer Bar,” so we thought we would see what was inside. It turned out to be very high end pool hall with two girls inside who were very nice and showed us around the six story pool hall. We thought it might be a nice place to come again some Sunday afternoon, and we headed on our way.

The sun was headed down, so Tim went back to the training center and I continued on down the hill for a quick trip to the Carrefour for some snacks for the week.

Another interesting Sunday in Harbin.