The Tower of Dragons

Harbin's handful of tall buildings are too spaced out for me to be sure, but it looks like the tallest player in town is the 龙塔, or Dragon Tower - a futuristic communications tower that looks like it shares some stylistic cues with Shanghai's Pearl Tower.

Despite the name, the place looks nothing like a Dragon. In fact, the exterior is a parabolic lattice which supports a giant ball hovering above a flying saucer. Perhaps I would find the mythical creatures hiding inside? I went in to have a look.

The first few floors housed a hodge-podge of disparate attractions. Apart from the obligatory gift-shop, there was a fountain, a creepy film set ...


... a plasticky temple, a couple of over-sized drum scrawled with graffiti in black marker pen, and finally a dinosaur museum. Not quite the pack of dragons I was hoping for, but close enough - after all 'dinosaur' in Chinese is rendered 恐龙, or 'fearsome dragon'.

The flying saucer housed a revolving restaurant, much like that found at the top of Shanghai's Pearl Tower. I went up in the dizzying glass-fronted lift with rock-bottom expectations. After all, if even Shanghai's iconic skyscraper could manage to combine shoddy service and execrable food with international business traveller prices, what hope for this, a remote outpost in a frozen corner of the country?

In the end, my expectations were just about satisfied. Waitresses barked orders at us, forgot or ignored our various requests, and slammed down the bill as if affronted we had the cheek to disturb their scowly-faced loitering.

Meanwhile, the food was definitely middling buffet fare - a Cantonese-style roast meat carvery, salad bar, limp sushi, and for dessert, uninspired cakes and two flavours of ice-cream that both left a synthetic aftertaste.

One unexpected delight was an American-style grill serving up pork and lamb chops. Confusingly, sausages were of the sweetened, dry Chinese variety, and the most popular offering was a giant bowl of squid legs.


A decent grill alone does not a good restaurant make though, and business was sluggish.

On the other hand, the view was very pleasant. The whole city was tinged in that odd haze which seemed to afflict every city in this country to a greater or lesser degree. I'd be tempted to call it smog, except it doesn't taste like pollution, and most days it's only visible from the air. Perhaps its just low-lying cloud.

At this height, Harbin no longer appeared as a slightly eccentric backwater, but finally looked like the humming, living metropolis of almost 10 million people that it always was. The city seemed endless, with distant lights smudging away in the distance. At intervals, someone would call out, spotting a landmark such as the twin commercial buildings near Hongbo square, or the Amusement Park's Ferris wheel.