Word: harbin
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...trifle lightly with the Harbin mattress," warned travel writer Putnam Weale after a trip to China's frozen, northern metropolis. "It is capable not only of assuming a defensive attitude, but one of absolute offense." A century after Weale's Harbin sojourn, accommodations there are more, well, accommodating. Among the classier places to stay is the Lungmen Hotel, tel: (86-451) 8679 1888. Once a station hotel along the Trans-Siberian railroad, the Lungmen is a portal to Harbin's colonial past, when the city was ruled by Russians and vied with Shanghai for the sobriquet "Paris of the East...
...Built by Muscovites in 1901, the Lungmen has changed hands as often as Harbin itself. Not only was it a hotel during the Japanese occupation, it was also once a hospital, a Czarist embassy, and a hostel for Soviet advisers. Renovations last year uncovered original marble floors and restored the wainscoting. With chandeliers, brass fittings and just two floors of rooms, the Lungmen rates an adjective rarely applied to a Chinese hotel: intimate. My room's floor-to-ceiling windows framed locust trees and pistachio-color Russian buildings; lying on white sheets in a fluffy bed, China felt very...
...Zhen scanned her husband's face for signs of trouble as he descended from the prison bus. He'd seemed nervous lately and had complained of threats against him. But now hope had surfaced once again. After repeated denials, prison authorities in Harbin, near the Russian border, had announced that Fan's husband, Zhu Shengwen, would be home by the Lunar New Year, granted medical parole after seven years in jail. All that remained were some medical exams that Zhu, who suffered from hypertension, was scheduled to undergo on the afternoon of Dec. 29, the day of Fan's visit...
...happier days, Zhu had been vice mayor of Harbin-a man of considerable power in Heilongjiang province. But in 1997, he had fallen from grace in spectacular style when a local court sentenced him to life in jail as one of 67 officials indicted for taking bribes while supervising the conversion of Harbin's bomb shelters into an underground shopping mall. Accused of pocketing some $112,000 in bribes, Zhu attracted huge media attention on the mainland. He was fictionalized first in a best-selling book, Covering the Tracks, then in a hit TV mini-series. Now, his drama...
...Undeterred, 20 towns-people decided to travel to Harbin in late October to plead with the provincial authorities. While waiting for their bus, they were accosted by five county leaders, five police cars and 25 cops. The secretary of the local Public Security Bureau, Bai Qingzhu, asked them who their leaders were, but they said they didn't have leaders. Bai ordered five of the 20 detained, including Su. "They told me we were guilty of illegal organizing," says Su. The five were held in the county jail for 20 days. "We had to sleep on the ground," recalls...