Sun Island, maybe this is a name that make you think of sunshine and warm day. But it was the winter time right now… The warm day is an impossible dream…
As I mentioned at the last post, the annual Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival has two main exhibition areas. Excluding the “Ice and Snow World”, the Enormous snow sculptures at sun island is another big show we should visit.
At the front gate:
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At the post “Part 2@ Cathedral & Province Museum”, we knowed that Harbin is very much influenced by its Russian past. There are many traces that talk us the story about the old time.
So visiting the old urban of Harbin would be the best experience for those who love history and building architecture. We took bus to the old urban at a quite special street. There are lots of old building here and also plenty of antique shops. 
Yep, here is not only the “old” place, but also the place of selling “old” stuff.
We went into several antique shops and found kinds of interesting things there. And we almost got lost at the “Great Russian New and Old Good Trade Market”. From old radio machines to old comic book we read when we were still children, from pieces of fossil to beautiful china vase, no matter Russian antiques or domestic ones, all kind of antiques can be found here.
Here we go, the first big hit of our Harbin Thrilling Journey, the Ice and Snow World! One of our main target of this journey is here, the greatest show of ice and snow. 
Harbin is located in Northeast China under the direct influence of the cold winter wind from Siberia. The average temperature in summer is 21.2 degrees Celsius, −16.8 degrees Celsius in winter.
The annual Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival has been held since 1985. Although the official start date is January 5 each year, in practice, many of the sculptures can be seen before. While there are ice sculptures throughout the city, there are two main exhibition areas: Enormous snow sculptures at Sun Island (a recreational area on the opposite side of the Songhua River from the city) and the separate “Ice and Snow World” that operates each night. Ice and Snow World features illuminated full size buildings made from blocks of ice. Winter activities in the festival include Yabuli Alpine Skiing, winter-swimming in Songhua River, and the ice-lantern exhibition in Zhaolin Garden. Snow carving and ice and snow recreations are world famous.
The “Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival” is one of the world’s four largest ice and snow festivals, along with Japan’s Sapporo Snow Festival, Canada’s Quebec City Winter Carnival, and Norway’s Ski Festival.
Every November, the city of Harbin sends teams of ice artisans to the United States to promote their unique art form. It takes more than 100 artisans to create ICE!, the annual display of indoor Christmas-themed ice carvings in Nashville, Tennessee; Kissimmee, Florida; and Grapevine, Texas. From wikipedia.org
Thanks to Iris, her wisdom help us to get those tickets at half price by pretending we were still college students. Maybe that was not so good, but who care~~ Let’s move out! Read more…
Now we were at one of the most famous ice cities in the world, with the extremely low temperature I never met. But the inside heating in the hotel warm us up. After having a very nice sleep and simple breakfast, our adventure began from here, the downtown of Harbin.
PS: Can you see the one stylish building on the left? That is the famous old food campany in Harbin. And its famous Harbin red sausages and candies are the best choice of souvenirs for those vistors like us. 
Look at this~ A Russian goods selling mall, but my Harbin friend said those goods were too expensive to buy, so just passed it…
If you ask me how I felt in such frozen weather, I would say it’s totally a challenge! I would never consider that one day I stand upon the ground that cover ice surrounded by freezing air. Though we were wearing thick and heavy clothes, the wing was still cutting our faces. It’s definitely “cool” experience for the guys from the south like me. You can image that how could it be if you saw your eyelash covered with ice frequently…
Before we reached the Province Museum, we came across a cathedral. Like many buildings in Harbin, this red building is also in Russian style. Read more…
As a very very “classical” southerner, I never ever saw a really snowflake nor knew what the temperature below zero °C feels like. Making a journey at a “snowing” place is always the most desirous one of my dreams. Which city would be titled as ice and snow metropolis in China? All people all give you the answer, Harbin without hesitancy. Then I am at Canton, the city lies in the very south China, and Harbin, lies in the very northeast China. How to make it? that’s the biggest problem stands in front of us. BTW, can we bear in the temperature that stand at the opposite side of the red zero bar in the thermo-graph? 
This crazy plan was reminded again by AFC members casual chatting and make a decision at October. Thanks to the AFC group members, especially Iris, you make my dream come true. (What’s AFC stands for ? Maybe we shall talk about it later 
) With the help of them, we make up a very detailed blueprint of “AFC@Harbin”. Now, we were not just dreamers, we were rolling out! After booking plane ticket and buying winter protection stuff like down coat, snowshoes, gloves on the Internet. We are ready to fly before the new year vacation.
30th Dec. 2010, our big day to fly across the whole great China. Our thrilling and exciting journey to Harbin began! It was predestined to be a “exciting” one because many unexpected things happened before we landed to the frozen land. At first, we thought we make a perfect preparation before we got to the New Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport. That was the place where our nightmare started. 
For the bad driving of the airport shuttle bus, I was a little uncomfortable when we got off the shuttle bus and didn’t noticed that we forgot to bring one luggage. Then we went straight to fetch our boarding licenses without any thinking. After we realized we did a terrible things, we were totally freaked out and the perfect scheme suddenly broke into pieces.
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It’s a great pity for those students left GDUT before the new library completed totally. Though we made many bad comments when that building’s design and equipments when it just finished construction. After two years we felt, GDUT library really changed a lot. That makes me so “envy” at the current students~
All I can say is you are so lucky and fortunate to have such a place to study. The boys of GDUT are not nerds at all, so there are many trysting places in the campus, including this library. And this place is the main target that I would show you.
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As one of the Google service users in China, the most we don’t want to see is Google leaves from China. That means its services would blocked by GFW with no doubt. At that time, we have to access them by bypassing the “Wall”. But today, we have to be proud of the decision that Google made and support it. Cause Google is so brave and carry out its responsibility regardless of all its loss.
As we said, we can set up a secure Socket 5connection via SSH tool. Then we make our App. like browsers programs go through it. But,,, not all of the browsers support the Socket 5 proxy method. For example, the new generation Google web browser Chrome doesn’t support that.
So we have to make it through. First, the Chrome browser does support the common proxy way — Http proxy. And then, if we can “translate” the socket connection into the http connection, then it works!
The solution is to set up a http proxy in our localhost and let it do the job to help those App. to talk to the remote socket proxy. Then comes to the next tool we need, the Privoxy. Yep, we always use this software to help our Tor proxy services smarter. So we can also do it in this way:
Find the configure file of Privoxy : /etc/privoxy/config (in Ubuntu)
And add this line at the end of the file:
forward-socks5 / 127.0.0.1:7070 .
(don’t miss the “.” at the end of line, that make this route complete)
Easy to see that all the date transfer through the 7070 port will “translate” into the SSH socket 5 proxy service
Save and exit.
Restart the Privoxy :
sudo /etc/init.d/privoxy restart
(in Ubuntu)
And finished…. All you have to do next is to set up your browser’s proxy as http proxy: 127.0.0.1:7070 
And BTW, the DNS pollution problem is still needed to be considered.
Happy X’mas~~~ 
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@Thailand Buddhism Temple and Huiru Park