Back in Harbin – it’s been just about a year since I was here last. Just like last time, I can’t decide if I like Harbin or not. The city certainly has charm, especially in summer, when the streets are lined with green, leafy poplars, and everyone gets to go outside for some badly needed sunshine.

On the other hand, there’s no mistaking that Harbin is rough. I recently read a great book, which used Japanese police records to paint a picture of daily life in the city during the 1920s. The book was beautifully written and brings up vivid images like how poor male workers who found themselves dying in one of the city’s flophouses would be robbed of their clothes and dumped in the snow to die outside. Harbin feels like the kind of place where that could have happened not that long ago.

It’s also more “old school” than most cities in China. Even the architecture mixes beautiful art deco with a Stalinist aesthetic that in most places has been built over. Let’s just say that I wasn’t surprised to be refused entry into the archives (though I was surprised at how nice they were about it).

But like it or not, the fact is that Harbin is exciting, and probably always has been. While finding pictures for my new book, I came across a great collection of Japanese postcards of Harbin, probably from around 1930. (There are more of these in the wonderful East Asian Image collection at Lafayette College)  I think I actually recognize some of the buildings.

The pictures below are from the pedestrian street near my hotel, and also from the two cathedrals. The brown one is the Orthodox Sophia Cathedral just across the street, the brick one was originally Orthodox, but was converted to a Catholic church after the Cultural Revolution.