In the morning of Day 4, the party was heading for Harbin via newly-inaugurated Ha-Da(Harbin to Dalian) high-speed railway.  With over 300 kph the train took us traversing the legendary, vast Song-liao Plain to Harbin in less than two hours.  The terminal(Harbin West Station) is so gigantic that the fully-loaded passengers of 25 cabins dissovled in couple of minutes.  When you see that crowded East Station(the old one, still in use.  I'll talk about it later.), you would realize why Mainland China is so eager for longer, faster high speed railways to reach every city as possible as she can.  Go ahead, do it.  Make good use of your abundant money when you still have.  But please don't let that corruption case of former railway commissioner happen again. 

Harbin used to be a quasi-Russian-colonial city in early twenty century, so it is still dotted with the relics of Russian outlooks among modern buildings.  Saint Sophie Orthodox Church is one of them.  The church was built in Byzantine style: tinted windows, a green dome and spires.  Like churches or cathedrals in Europe, Saint Sophie also has a broad square with pigeons waiting on food from tourist.  But the pigeons here are different.  They don't shun no matter how near people are close to them.  They even jump on your arm or palm begging you to feed them.  What an lovely scene of pigeons and humans getting together so amiably.  Then we went to Loong(dragon) Tower, a recreation center and the tallest building of the city.  From the top of the building, your can take a bird's eye view over the whole city, including the mother river of Northeast:  Songhua River. 

On the way back to our hotel, we were passing Polytech University of Harbin, the alma mater of the honorable late Premier Sun Yun-syuan.