Sunday, October 14, 2007

Arriving in Harbin

I knew that Harbin would be different from Shanghai and Jinan when the first advertisement in the airport was for Harbin Polarland! The weather is very pleasant here today, like a nice Vermont fall day.

Dr. Mingruo Guo met us at the airport with a warm welcome!

Harbin is a city of about 5 million people, roughly the same size as Jinan. There is considerable Russian influence here. The service directory in my hotel room is printed in three languages: Chinese, English and Russian. Note the architecture of the buildings I can see from my hotel window.

There is a cooling tower in the distance, but I do not know its use. In the U.S. we always associate cooling towers with nuclear electric plants, but I believe they can also be used for other purposes.