Heilongjiang Games

Sorry for the delay in posting, have been busy with traveling and reports. I have also written "Year in Review" blog post for the NY Islanders Website, but on to the games…

Once every four years there are the Heilongjaing Winter Games. This season it was in Jia Mu Si. Players from our team returned to their home teams. There were three girls teams from Harbin and one from QiQiHar. Two of the Harbin teams were comprised almost entirely (except 4 players) of players from the National Team. There was one National team player on the third Harbin team and QiQiHar was all new players. The top Harbin team, comprised of our first and second line and best two goalies, won the tournament easily. Also in Jia Mu Si was the men's tournament, which comprised six teams from QiQiHar, Jia Mu Si and Harbin. We watched the Harbin top team easily defeat a lower level QiQiHar team, face-off below:


Tim and I went up for two days to watch the games and scout the players. We had a nice and fairly uneventful trip up with Mr. Zhou driving. On the way home, the “Tall Man” was going to drive. Tim made a deal with him that we would go home with him only if he kept it under 120 km/h. He agreed and we were off. He drove as he said and every once in a while slowed way down. When we asked, he told us (through gestures) that the police had video cameras to judge the speed and give you a ticket. Wouldn’t you know it, a few miles down the road, we got pulled over and he got a 200Yuan ($25) ticket for doing 110 km/h in an 80 km/h zone. We thought it was very funny! He laughed a bit too. Tim probably saved him some money.

Below, you can see the streets of JiaMuSi on our way out of town. Having had much of the snow melt since our last visit there only made the city much more dirty.


Anyway, yesterday was "Older Women’s Day" in China, similar to Mother’s Day, but also celebrating older married women who are not mothers. The day before yesterday, we were again asked to join the Pei family, for dinner out, to celebrate. It was much fun and an entire post will be forthcoming…

Good day again from Harbin!