Harbin

I love Harbin.  It didn't really ask me to love it and it definitely didn't try to impress me.  There is no U.S. city to compare it to.  If forced I would say it is a bit like Chicago, but with the reputation of Detroit and 10x bigger.

Harbin is cold, bitterly cold and the people are cold, often bitterly cold.   There is a wide river that completely freezes over in the winter, becoming gray and motionless.  Throughout the city huge, ugly billows of smoke pour out of the coal-burning buildings, turning everything dirty and ugly.  The sun begins its downward course in the early afternoon, ushering in the darkness that shrouds the city with bleakness.

The Chinese people have a way of describing themselves by saying they know how to "eat bitterness."  Harbin has indeed eaten bitterness.  There is a museum in the city that shows the blatant cruelty and disdain for human life manifested by the Japanese biowarfare testing carried out on the Chinese/Harbin people.  It stands as a bleak reminder of the cruelty heaped upon them. 

Surely people cannot live in such a place as Harbin without it changing them, hardening them.

I ask, "What good can come from such a cold, dark, and bitter place?   What beauty and joy could ever be found in a people that have literally eaten bitterness?"

 I don't know...

My heart cries out that I wants to share with you a story bursting with hope...but I don't have a dramatic story to share.  I can only write that my heart knows hope in Harbin.  I feel it...even though I can't see it. I hear it...not often in words but in the meaning behind them.  I look at the faces of my brothers and sisters here and I see the etches of struggle and hardship...but there is a glimmer in their eyes showing the knowledge that their struggles are but one thread in the tapestry of their lives.

The Harbin-rens know ice and cold and darkness.  But...they take the ice of the motionless, frozen river and form beautiful works of art with it.  They take the darkness and add color and light.  They take the cold and breath art into the air.  Beauty is not vanquished forever.  For in this seemingly forsaken land, there is hope. I say to the cold, bitterness, and darkness, "Tremble...for I believe Aslan is on the move and His eyes are on Harbin."

Frozen Beauty (taken by Kayla)