...Every window seemed to hold a different life, my mind started creating dreams again, like an old couple eating quietly beside fogged glass, a girl reading alone under warm light...

Strangers laughing somewhere above me while the wind carried the smell of roasted chestnuts through the frozen air. Harbin had this strange way of making loneliness feel beautiful instead of heavy for living there...

Saint Sophia Cathedral emerged through the snowfall like something unreal its green domes blurred by winter mist, its silence untouched by the chaos outside. I stood there longer than I meant to, watching snow gather slowly on the steps, thinking about how some places don’t need words to make you emotional...

Later, I visited the Harbin Grand Theatre, rising from the white landscape like it had been carved by the wind itself. Inside, everything felt soft and endless, as if the building had been designed not for performances, but for people carrying thoughts too large to explain out loud.

But the city changed completely after sunset...
At the Harbin Ice & Snow World Festival, entire castles of ice glowed electric blue beneath the black sky, and people wandered through them like tiny figures inside a frozen fairytale. The cold became unbearable at some point, the kind that burns your face and sneaks into your bones, yet nobody wanted to leave. Neither did I. Because standing there, surrounded by light trapped inside ice, I realized Harbin was teaching me something I had spent years avoiding: some of the most beautiful things in life only exist because they melt...!

Chapter 8 - Reza in Harbin // 01 Feb 2025