Where to Stay in Harbin, Hēilóngjiāng

What is Harbin known for?

Harbin is known for its Russian past and its winters, the reasons behind its unofficial name of Ice City. The yearly ice and snow sculpture festival draws crowds to the capital of Heilongjiang, and orthodox churches survive from the railway years: St. Alexius Church, the Church of the Dormition, and the Joy of All Who Sorrow Church. Domes and steeples mark the skyline.

The Harbin Museum of Jewish History and Culture keeps the record of a community that once thrived here in northeast China.

What are the main landmarks in Harbin?

Harbin's landmarks carry its mixed past. The orthodox churches stand out most: St. Alexius Church, the Church of the Dormition, and the green-domed Joy of All Who Sorrow Church survive from the Russian railway years. Faith left many marks here.

The Harbin Museum of Jewish History and Culture records the old community, while the Heilongjiang Provincial Museum and the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army Museum hold the province's history, and the Harbin Institute of Technology Museum keeps its scientific record. Along the water, the Harbin Flood Control Memorial Tower and the Harbin Ferris Wheel mark the riverside, and the Harbin Ice Hockey Gym recalls the city's winter sport.

What is the history of Harbin?

Harbin is a young city by Chinese standards, founded in 1898 as a railway town. It rose where a Russian rail line reached across the plains of northeast China, and within a generation the capital of Heilongjiang had drawn engineers, traders, and a large emigre population that gave it a strongly Russian face. The domes came with them.

St. Alexius Church, the Church of the Dormition, and the Joy of All Who Sorrow Church all date from those decades, and the Harbin Museum of Jewish History and Culture records the Jewish community that settled and prospered alongside them. The city's later history turned harder. The Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army Museum keeps the record of the resistance that followed the region's occupation, a chapter that marked all of Heilongjiang.

Through it all Harbin kept the imprint of its founding. The orthodox steeples, the old railway quarter, and the collections of the Heilongjiang Provincial Museum together hold the memory of a place that grew from an 1898 rail junction into the largest city of the province and its administrative seat.

Where is Harbin?

Harbin lies on the open plains of northeast China, the flat farming country that fills much of Heilongjiang. The city spreads across level ground beside the river that shaped its riverside quarter, well inland and far from any coast, on the broad lowland that runs through the far north of the country. Winters lock the land in ice.

The flat, well-watered plain around Harbin freezes hard and long each year, and the Harbin Flood Control Memorial Tower on the waterfront marks the river that both feeds and threatens the low, open ground the capital of Heilongjiang was built on.

What is the climate of Harbin?

Harbin has one of the coldest climates of any major Chinese city, the source of its Ice City name. Its place far inland on the northern plains of Heilongjiang gives it long, deeply frozen winters and short, warm summers, with a wide swing between the seasons that few cities in the country match. The cold is the whole point.

Because the river and the low ground around Harbin freeze so hard and for so long, the city built its winter identity on ice, and the sculpture festival grew straight out of the season that grips northeast China.

How do you get to Harbin?

Harbin began as a railway town, and rail still ties it to the rest of the country. Lines cross the plains of northeast China to converge on the capital of Heilongjiang from every direction, the same corridors that first raised the city around 1898. Air and fast train carry most long-distance visitors.

From either, the run into the old Russian centre is short, leaving St. Alexius Church, the riverside quarter, and the Heilongjiang Provincial Museum within easy reach.