Animal ears and pom-poms on fuzzy hats adorn tourists’ heads on the streets of the frigid northeastern Chinese city of Harbin, which is enjoying a surge in visitors driven by social media.
Photographs and videos taken at the city’s landmarks flood platforms such as TikTok counterpart Douyin and Instagram-esque Xiaohongshu — many featuring tourists from the warmer south.
They are affectionately known as “southern little potatoes,” a reference to their alleged smaller stature and cutesy winter gear that contrast with the area’s stereotypically coarse character.
Photo: AFP
A search for “southern little potatoes visit the north” racked up more than 428,000 notes on Xiaohongshu.
That is where Chen Xiting, who works in e-commerce in southern Guangdong Province, said she was inspired to visit.
“It’s the quickest way young people get trip recommendations,” Chen said.
Photo: AFP
She said she had noticed a sizeable number of fellow southerners.
“I heard quite a bit of Cantonese, which we’re very familiar with, today at tourist sites and on the street,” said the 29-year-old, wearing a hat with dog ears and with only her face exposed to the air.
Liu Rong, a student from Sichuan Province, said that the city’s push for more southern tourists was clear from the surge in videos about Harbin he often watched with his wife.
“These years, especially this year, Harbin’s cultural tourism has placed a lot of importance on paying attention to us southerners,” Liu said.
Harbin is the capital of Heilongjiang, one of three provinces that make up the Dongbei (northeast) region, where temperatures can reach minus-30°C during winter.
Bordered by Russia and North Korea, it is one of China’s poorest provinces, but the first five months of last year saw the operating income of Heilongjiang’s cultural, sports and entertainment industries rise nearly 60 percent year-on-year, official data showed.
Tourists spent 154 billion yuan (US$21 billion) in the first half of last year, up 171 percent from the first half of 2023.
Popular novels and dramas set in the northeast have also helped spark a travel boom to the region.
“A lot of southerners, who we call ‘little potatoes,’ came over here for travel and made our Harbin very trendy,” said Emily Liu, a local tour guide.
The online fame has been good for the travel business, said 30-year-old Jiang Zhonglong, energetically gesticulating in front of his tripod just meters away from Liu.
He started working for a Harbin-based travel agency three years ago, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and said business was now much better.
“So many little friends, southern potatoes, tourists have all come here,” he said.
STEPPING UP: Diminished US polar science presence mean opportunities for the UK and other countries, although China or Russia might also fill that gap, a researcher said The UK’s flagship polar research vessel is to head to Antarctica next week to help advance dozens of climate change-linked science projects, as Western nations spearhead studies there while the US withdraws. The RRS Sir David Attenborough, a state-of-the-art ship named after the renowned British naturalist, would aid research on everything from “hunting underwater tsunamis” to tracking glacier melt and whale populations. Operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the country’s polar research institute, the 15,000-tonne icebreaker — boasting a helipad, and various laboratories and gadgetry — is pivotal to the UK’s efforts to assess climate change’s impact there. “The saying goes
Floods on Sunday trapped people in vehicles and homes in Spain as torrential rain drenched the northeastern Catalonia region, a day after downpours unleashed travel chaos on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Local media shared videos of roaring torrents of brown water tearing through streets and submerging vehicles. National weather agency AEMET decreed the highest red alert in the province of Tarragona, warning of 180mm of rain in 12 hours in the Ebro River delta. Catalan fire service spokesman Oriol Corbella told reporters people had been caught by surprise, with people trapped “inside vehicles, in buildings, on ground floors.” Santa Barbara Mayor Josep Lluis
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
TICKING CLOCK: A path to a budget agreement was still possible, the president’s office said, as a debate on reversing an increase of the pension age carries on French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday was racing to find a new prime minister within a two-day deadline after the resignation of outgoing French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu tipped the country deeper into political crisis. The presidency late on Wednesday said that Macron would name a new prime minister within 48 hours, indicating that the appointment would come by this evening at the latest. Lecornu told French television in an interview that he expected a new prime minister to be named — rather than early legislative elections or Macron’s resignation — to resolve the crisis. The developments were the latest twists in three tumultuous
RSS