Ice Festival, Zhaolin Park
By far Harbin's biggest claim to fame are these month-long festivals. While smaller ice and snow lanterns can be found allover the city, there are three major sites with large scale lanterns being displayed:
Rather small lanterns compared to the other two main festivals. Best viewed after dusk.
For foreigners, pretty much the only employment is teaching English, where depending on your qualifications and experience, you can make anywhere from ¥2,000 to ¥10,000 a month. There are positions at both public and private schools. If you are in the city and don't already have employment, check out the bulletin board at Hamama's Kofi House.
Harbin Summer Music Festival
Held every two years in July Next will be in 2012, this festival is organized by the city and brings in famous Chinese bands for free concerts held in the city square. In 2006 for the "year of Russia" there were various Russian groups in attendance and a concert that featured over 1,000 pianists playing at once.
Harbin is the center for higher education in Northeast China, and has several leading universities, with the most famous being Harbin Institute of Technology. The universities make up a large portion of the cities economy and employ a large part of the population. Many of these schools were founded by the Russians and still retain the architectural charm of their predecessors. There are also several medical universities in the city that support the local hospitals.
Harbin International Beer Festival
The city takes a break and honors the cities most famous export "Harbin Beer" for a week. A whole public square is cordoned off and there are stages that host music concerts, dance contests. Most of the beer drunk is the local Harbin brew, but there is a tent for international beers. In the summer of 2005 a number of the foreigners in the city assembled a "drinking team" and ended up getting in a drunken brawl with some locals and got hauled away by the police.
WB International Movie Theatre
studying other subjects
If your Chinese is good enough you can enroll in most of the schools in Harbin. Many Pakistani students study Medicine at the Heilongjiang Medical University. Tuition is cheap.
Exercise and fitness
Yabuli
Yabuli is one of the largest skiing areas in China and venue for the 1996 Asian Winter Games.
Golf
Yes Harbin has a golf course in the development zone.
Yangge Traditional Chinese Dance
You will notice that during the warmer months and even sometimes in the winter there will be legions of senior citizens out on the street doing a group dance complete with drumming and costumes. This is called niu yang ge and if you are adventurous just jump in and dance along!
Swimming
Believe it or not, people actually swim in the Songhua during the winter, but after all the pollution spills, it's probably not even safe to swim during the summer. If you are looking for a clean pool to swim in, try the pool at the Shangri-La Hotel or Heilongjiang University.
Bowling
Very popular among the Chinese in Harbin. Most of the larger hotels have a bowling alley. There is also a bowling club located behind the Sino Way hotel with 2 separate floors and pool tables as well.
Studying chinese
Harbin Institute of Technology
åå°æ»¨å·¥ä¸å¤§å¦ (http://studyathit.hit.edu...) about 300 foreign mandarin chinese students a semester. good facilities, although the teaching methods employed in the non-cet courses are considered outdated by many of the foreign students and most of the professors are not actual full-time professors. large russian and korean population. home to the american cet harbin program (http://www.cetacademicpro...) with 5-30 students a semester, which is probably the best program in harbin but expensive — us$10,000 a semester — and the students can only speak chinese while they are in harbin.
Northeast Agricultural University
ä¸ååä¸å¤§å¦ (http://gjxy.neau.edu.cn/w...) dairy and food research center
Heilongjiang University
é»é¾æ±å¤§å¦ (http://www.hlju.edu.cn/in...) to be the biggest chinese learning center in the province. they speak very little english and the admissions office is very disorganized.
Also, the city offers the opportunity to study Mandarin Chinese one to one:
Harbin Mandarin School
(http://www.1to1mandarinwo...) a complete immersion in the study of mandarin, thereby imparting a unique understanding of the need for fluency and nature of a subject while building skills in listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Harbin is famous for its standard Mandarin pronunciation. It's a very good place to study Mandarin. As the saying goes, 'If you want to study Chinese language, come to China. If you want to study Mandarin, come to Beijing. If you want to study standard Mandarin, come to Harbin.' It can be a cheap alternative to Beijing for studying Mandarin, with tuition costing about half and housing one third of what it would be in Beijing or Shanghai. Most universities have lots of Korean and Russian students. There are a couple of cheap Western cafes and a small but lively foreign student social scene at the local expat hangouts on the weekends, such as Blues. Many schools in Harbin offer Chinese language programs: