I spent a couple of days in Beijing, mostly sleeping and booking tickets, so I'll just skip to the interesting stuff. Two days after arriving, I left for Harbin, a town in Northern China near the Russian border, nto far from Vladivostok (sp?); maximum of -10 during the day. It's famous for street ice scupltures, as you can see ^^ I was doubting whether it would be worth leaving early to fit this trip north in, doubting a lot really, but I was pretty excited by this stage :)