Ramada Hotel Jilin Purple Garden served good breakfast! I was most excited as I got to try some items that I had never eaten before!
Laba garlic 腊八蒜 (bottom right) ... I'd always seen people eating it on social media and wondered what it tasted like. So I tried 1 piece and found it to be quite tasty as it's pickled so it's sweet, salty and sourish ... nice ... I ended up having a few more pieces of this pickled garlic
穿心莲 in a fruity dressing (right) ... I have no idea what this vege is called in English but it was crunchy and refreshing ...
We set off after breakfast. Every day, the tour guide updated us about the weather and advised us about what to wear. Today, we were told to dress in our thickest clothes as we were going to the Snow Town that day.
However, our first destination of the day was to the Jilin City Promenade by the Songhua River ... We were going to see rime. I didn't know what rime was till I looked it up! Rime ice is ice deposit that forms when cold water droplets freeze upon contact with extreme cold surfaces, and apparently the Songhua River Rime is famous for this!
The rime was beautiful, but we felt cheated as we thought we would visit the Songhua Rime Island to enjoy the breathtaking frozen scenery ... sigh ... my friends and I thought we had to come back one day in the future to enjoy more of this winter scenery properly ...
Near the promenade was the Jilin Catholic Church, a prominent landmark here in Jilin City. It
Jilin Catholic Church
After that, we set off. A lot of the expressways were closed due to the heavy snow storm ... I saw the bus turn back .... and we drove and drove and drove on an alternative route ....
I did enjoy the winter scenery as we drove to Heilongjian Province ... only that the drive was very long! We were practically travelling the whole day and wondering why we hadn't arrived at Snow Town!!
4 types of fish for lunch!
We had a late lunch ... at 3.30 pm in the afternoon .... and then we continued our drive to Snow Town ... The China Snow Town is located at the Xuexiang National Forest Park in Heilongjiang. It is known for its thick, mushroom-shaped snowdrifts on traditional houses. Driving there from Jilin took normally 3.5 hours ... but that day, we drove the entire day!! We spent practically 9 hours in the bus!
Because of the snow storm, many highways were closed ... and we had to take a 150km detour that delayed our schedule. Besides, the bus could only be driven at 80km per hour .... we only reached there at 7.30 pm at night.
We checked into our room first .... We stayed at the oldest hotel there which was ... 雪乡第一酒店 ...
We were amused to see the Dongbei Big Flower patterned bedding ... Lol ... in Northeast China, since it was so cold, people slept on warmed platforms in which they called 大抗 ... Because the bedding was thin, we found the platform bed to be a very hard. We were told to sleep with our feet facing the window. Otherwise our heads would get really cold ...
We had dinner at the same hotel. One specialty that we were served was the snow pear.
Snow pears or frozen pears 栋梁 are frozen and thawed repeatedly to soften the texture of the fruit and to intensify its sweetness ... I found the fruit to be pleasant and refreshing!
And after that, we went to walk around the Snow Town ...
The Snow Town was illuminated in colourful lights ... and there was upbeat music in the town square with lots of people dancing and enjoying themselves ....
I liked to see the demo where hot water turned into powdery snow instantly! How fun!
We walked around a bit before retiring for the night.
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