Back from China
16th July 2018
What an amazing time we had in China….
The indoor slopes at the Wandamall in Harbin are massive. I’ve spent a lot of years riding and working indoors but I was still blown away by the sheer size of this place.
OK, it’s a long way to go to slide indoors and most people wouldn’t make the journey but if by any slim chance you are traveling close by or indeed are in China, it’s worth a cheap internal flight to actually go and see this place. You will be amazed.
We made a short write up on 10 things we like about China and photo montage of our time there - not just the dome but of Harbin, which has a lot of history and connections to Russia due to the location and the Trans-Siberian. Scroll down to the bottom of the post for the pics.
10 Things we like about China:
1 - The Wandamall Indoor Snow Centre (obvious this one)
Check the photo’s out and you will see that every dome in the UK is nothing like this one in terms of sheer size. Land is cheap and so is labor but the size and layout make this the biggest dome in the world. Even bigger than Dubai. Not only is there three main slopes but they are different grades. We had the steepness or reds and blacks at the top sections into blues and greens at the bottom. We also had fenced of dedicated learning areas and a full time park with a good sized kicker and selection of permanent rails, both ride on and pop on - perfect for any level.
There was also toboggan areas and ice slides away from the main slopes, more dedicated beginner areas that are flatter and even a walk through magic play area for kids.
2 - The People
I didn’t meet one dickhead in the 16 days I was there….really, not one. Whether it was who I was with or what I was doing, but everyone was so respectful, polite, willing to help and amazed that a western dude was there. I’m not just talking about the people on the course, this was people I was buying coffee from, people I’d be walking past, when I was looking for things, when I was getting lost…. I’ve heard so many things about the people being rude, but I didn’t really meet one. Even my extremely limited language skills - I met so many nice people.
3 - The Culture
Similar to the above point. The culture is very respectful if YOU are respectful of their culture. Yes they have a lot of government control but even so, people’s attitudes are overall pretty positive - you don’t see a fight on a Friday night because of being pi**ed up. We eat out a lot but hardly drank, a couple of beers and that was it. The weekend maybe a bigger night out but again with food. Yes we drank, yes we got drunk but at no point did I feel worried or was I looking over my shoulder. Again this could be down to who I was with, but I was respectful of my attitude towards being a foreigner in their country and sticking to the rules and being polite - even when I couldn’t order a beer - sign language all the way.
With regards to work ethic - the guys on both of our courses were like machines. You told them to fix something they would work until they did. They didn’t want to disappoint. They are very competitive and when I failed some for not reaching the level of the course, they were apologising for letting ME down. I’ve never had that before, sometimes WE are blamed for the person not passing.
4 - The Food
Full disclosure….I love Chinese food, so I’m onto a winner travelling to China. Now don’t get me wrong, some of it was proper random, but for the most it was like eating at the best Chinese restaurant every night. My instructions to Apollo - my translator - was I wont eat anything below the waist or above the neck. Meaning I didn’t want pig or chicken feet or fried Duck head or cow tongue. I got stiffed with cow intestine one day but I thought it was squid in peanut sauce. To be fair he said it fitted in to my instruction, which is right!
Also we were in a town/city so the choice was massive. We had food styles from a different area of China each day and mixed it up. We had Hong Kong style, North style, Shanghai style, etc.. and it was all really nice. I think when I visit the mountains this could be different. I’ll know in December ;)
5 - Red Bull is Sold as a Vitamin Drink
Seriously see the picture, Red bull Vitamin drink - I don’t think the advertising standards agency exists in China.
6 - Fashion - No goggle lense ;)
Yep again see the picture if you don’t believe me, this is not an isolated case. I saw plenty of people wearing goggles…indoors…with no lense - which defeats the purpose of wearing goggles but because they all have to wear helmets actually looks OK. I really hope this will kick off in the UK ;)
7 - The lack of Spell Check
This was just funny that a £50 million centre spells the word Instructor wrong on the School jackets….priceless
8 - Lack of the Stupid Police (Health and Safety)
Now don’t get me wrong rules are there for safety and there are plenty of rules in China that I would not want to break for fear or a Chinese Prison. But I’m talking about those rules that has us in the UK becoming more and more stupid. You can cross the road where ever in China, 8 lanes of traffic, no worries, just walk across and people will slow down and if they don’t just wait in the middle of the lane until they do. I even saw a 6 year old kid standing of the back of his dads bike - no helmet - swerving through the aforementioned 8 lands of traffic - maybe with the worlds biggest population it is just survival of the fittest and don’t worry about the idiots!
9 - You can use the slope without a lesson - even if you can’t ski/snowboard
Now I have 2 sides to this - one is my instructor head that says always get a lesson. The other side of me says why not have a go and if you like it then have a lesson and spend more money on it. This approach works in China due to what I said in point number 2 and 3 above. The people and the attitude. Even though people were doing it for the first time, they had obviously looked at how to do it and weren’t being idiots about it - it was like they were self policing themselves and doing there best to do it right.
This would not work in the UK - it would be carnage!!
10 - The Technology
China’s tech is really impressive. Firstly EVERYTHING is done over the phone, I mean everything. Ordering and paying for a taxi is done by location and GPS and an app similar to watsapp called Wechat. Paying for a coffee - scan a bar code and pay. Even in a small back street shop which was about 2 sqm - we paid for a bottle of water via phone.
Everyone carry’s a phone battery booster pack - if your battery goes dead, it’s the end of the world.
Also I got served by robots, robots answered my questions in the hotel and robots delivered water to my room…on the 6th floor - yep they used the elevators and everything.
I even ordered 2 pairs of trainers with full live tracking and got a message on the day telling me they would be at the hotel in 10 mins…in 10 minutes they were at reception!
Menu’s on Ipads at even the most basic food places, so if you don’t speak the language you can just order what you think looks good, worked for me when I wasn’t sure.
Overall View
OK so you can argue that I haven’t seen the real China and you could be right, but where I was I saw about 4 western faces during my near on 3 week visit. So as a westerner I was pretty isolated. I was stared at, secret photo’s being taken and even video’d sometime and I was in a city and a bloody big city at that. So I felt like I was somewhere where western people don’t go - so I could argue that I wasn’t in your usual place Shanghai or Beijing.
I haven’t been to the sticks but that’s like saying you haven’t seen England if you haven’t been to Margate, who the hell would want to go to Margate. Same in China - I wouldn’t want to visit a 3 shack village in the middle of nowhere. I don’t need to do that!
China is growing massively, I didn’t realise how much, more and more people have money, there was so many buildings going up it was crazy and this is not Shanghai or Beijing this was Harbin, a city really far north. Western influence is obvious but western money is also obvious, we have Holiday Inn’s, Crown Plazas, even a new Hilton is just being finished all in and around the district of Harbin. No wonder the US are worried.
There is a government control and the internet with no facebook and monitored emails - but at least they are honest about it. It is worrying that they have a record of everything someone buys due to the tech that’s in place, everything from what you eat, to what you buy, to what you do, is monitored and stored somewhere - that was an eye opener for me. But with the recent Facebook stuff, who’s to say that’s not what’s happening in the Western World.
I am looking forward to going back and seeing more of the mountains, visiting Shanghai next time even Beijing for a couple of days and maybe I’ll change my impression, but I enjoyed it and my time there and it was the people that made it. For more random pictures, please visit our gallery by clicking below.
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