Harbin Ice Festival is coming

The annual Harbin Ice Festival opens on 5th, January with the opening ceremony holding on 4th, January. It’s a grand festival of Harbin and one of the four famous ice festivals around the world.

With an average temperature around -15℃ in winter, people in Harbin learned

to find their pleasure with the snow and ice created by the unique climate. Since the opening day, the Harbin Ice Festival will continue till the ice begins to melt under the sunshine.

Harbin Ice Festival is a great opportunity for those ice sculpture artists to show their amazing talents. During the Harbin Ice Festival, numbers of ice sculpture artists gather here and like the ice magicians make their imagination and brilliance into fantastic ice sculptures. In the day, you can see the ice magicians take the ice away and create their works. In the night, hundreds of thousands of tourists crowd here and enjoy the splendid lights give off from the ice sculptures.

If the Harbin Ice Festival stirs your heart, now you can prepare for the coming 2014 Harbin Ice Festival.

Travel tips:

Take your down jacket, cotton shoes, scarf and gloves. Those in the scenic area are more expensive.

You can take a walk in the Central Street or pay a visit to Hagia Sophia. When about 3 pm, you can enter the Ice World with prepared food.

China Holidays Group Tour to Mt. Taishan

Standing at the top of the Mt. Taishan, I still can feel my heart beating with wild pleasure, thinking the happy moment just had. This is the magnificent memory to ascend this mountain. We can arrange our time and make this trip a leisure and pleasant one. Our group from China Holidays chose the route of Red Gate-Tight Twisting 18-South Heavenly Gate-Temple of Jade Emperor on the top, which is the ancient imperial worshiping route, also known as Imperial Path only for the great emperors.

To ascent to Mt. Taishan can be made in three to four hours, but for our big group will spend whole afternoon for conquering. However, I’d like to recommend that visitors take little drinks and snacks while climbing and they can be bought alone the way even on the top of mountain. The best choice for the path leads to the top is from the very beginning: the First Heavenly Portal, it awaits us at the bottom of the first series of steps. Just behind it, a stone archway commemorates the place where Confucius rested before climbing. On the both sides, all kinds of souvenir shops are in the hot sales. The most popular product is the Taishan red ribbons, if you would like have a good luck in your future you can have one and tie it on the tree here during your trip to Mt. Taishan. Your dreams will come true very soon. Passing the stone archway named Stairs to the Sky, the Red Gate palace named after some red stones nearby is beside the path. Then, you will see the Tower of the Ten thousand Immortals, built over the path in the Ming Dynasty.

Still further up the steps, on the right lies the Temple of the Goddess of the Big Dipper, which has a ten thousand tree. The locals always call it the God of wealth tree. It is a very lucky name, isn’t it? After the temple, the path becomes very steep and an archway indicates the point where the Horses are Turned Back. After 3 hours, we have arrived the Middle Heavenly Gate, some of us are already exhausted and go to take the cable car. At this time, nothing can change my persistence because I believe I can manage it. I feel the smell of the air and leaves and indulge myself in the nature creation. From time to time, the steps along the way change their width and just like a naughty boy make fun of me. Unknowingly, I have reached the Tight Twisting 18. When you look up, you can feel the series of steps emerge in endlessly. Just then, my guest helps me with my big bag and when I was in a surprise, he is starting to run up the mountain. I summon up my courage just follow him. In front of us is the long road but each step with my sweat is near to the top. Finally, we are all on arrival at the South Heavenly Gate. It is hard but very happy and excited. We are all by ourselves to the near top. So the next is to the Temple of Jade Emperor on the top.

We eventually have succeeded for this attraction and this is our group tour’s big day. As the growth of the age, we all have different experience. Everyone’s impression of this mountain tour is in constant change. But there is no doubt that, the identity of the Mt. Taishan is always a mystery in everyone's heart.

If you want to plan a Mount Tai tour, you can find some useful information here. http://www.chinaholidays.com/tours/discover-shandong-tour.html

I want to sell roujiamo after reading this article.....

This is an article from China Daily. After reading this, I regret for not selling roujiamo after graduation. This is the article:

A friend took me to a Shannxi restaurant for lunch where I had my first taste of a Chinese hamburger, or roujiamo, which literally means meat between bread.

It was simply delicious, a lot better than any hamburger I have ever had before, whether it was at McDonald's or a five-star restaurant in San Francisco. Of course, other than the look, roujiamo is very different from the Western hamburgers we are used to.

Only unleavened bread is used in roujiamo, and the filling is a thick stew of chopped meat, which can be lamb or beef, cooked with pepper and mixed herbs. About the size of a double-burger at McDonald's, roujiamo is a meal by itself.

Munching on my lamb roujiamo, I wondered why hasn't any entrepreneur built a fast food chain selling roujiamo in China to compete with McDonald's and KFCs. That seems such a natural thing to do.

I went back to the same Shaanxi restaurant to buy two roujiamo to go. I got my order individually packed in cute paper bags in a little more than five minutes. That's as quick as a takeout at McDonald's.

After I got home, I discovered another great advantage of roujiamo over a hamburger. Roujiamo are extremely microwave friendly. I just heated one in its paper bag in the microwave for 30 seconds and it tasted nearly as good as the one I had at the restaurant. Reheating can easily ruin a Western-style hamburger, rendering it inedible.

But of course, not all traditional Chinese snacks can be repackaged for fast food restaurants. Some years ago, a Hong Kong entrepreneur opened a fast food chain selling Cantonese dim sum. The venture failed largely because dim sum dishes are complicated to make, requiring too many ingredients and long cooking times. What's more, they are best served freshly steamed.

Another promising fast food venture in Hong Kong was launched by a Filipino entrepreneur selling hot dogs. Many of my American friends agreed that the hot dogs were the best outside Chicago. But it failed to catch on with the locals because of the high price. The owner told me that the sausages he used were imported and the relishes weren't cheap either.

In Hong Kong, wonton noodle soup is our fast food. There used to be wonton noodle soup shops everywhere in the city, where you could drop in, order a bowl with a vegetable side dish, slurp them up in 10 minutes and then be on your way, refreshed and satisfied at a most affordable price.

Not anymore. Escalating rents have driven most shops in the city center out of business. Now, Hong Kong people have to travel a long way to satisfy their craving for the fast food they love.

Roujiamo are different. First, they're portable, meaning you can buy them at a roadside stand and enjoy them in a park. That's what I have been doing in Shanghai over the past few weeks when the weather was sunny and crisp. The total meal, including a Coca-Cola, cost less than 15 yuan ($1.9).

I just wished there were as many outlets selling this Shaanxi specialty as there are McDonald's so I don't have to make the long trek from the office to get one for lunch. There is a McDonald's half a block away and there is another one further down the road. Perhaps one day, some Chinese entrepreneurs who have the marketing savvy will open restaurant chains selling roujiamo or wanton noodle soup.

End

Although we can't sell roujiamo, we can still plan a visit to Shannxi to eat authentic roujiamo.