The HeiLongJiang Province Broadcasting Tower is more commonly referred to as the "Harbin Dragon Tower", or "Longta" in Chinese. It is Asia's tallest standing steel tower (336m), second tallest in the world only after the Kiev Tower in Ukraine (385m). It surpassed the Tokyo Tower, which was the previous tallest steel tower in Asia. Construction of the Harbin Dragon Tower cost $100 million RMB, and the Dragon Tower serves as a multi function steel tower for television and video transmission, touring, and environment and weather monitoring.
The Heilongjiang Broadcasting Tower has a floor space of 16,600 square meters - 13,000 square meters are basement space, and 3,600 square meters are floor space inside the tower body. Tourists that visit the Dragon Tower can ascend up to 206 meters, and get a bird's eye view of the entire Harbin city.
The Dragon Tower is so tall that I couldn't get the entire structure in one photo.
My Tour of the Harbin Dragon Tower
I had gone for a walk at the Harbin Stalin Park, and from there, I took a taxi from Stalin park to the Harbin Dragon Tower, which cost me $24 yuan. About a 15 minute ride later, I arrived at the Dragon Tower around 2pm, located at the intersection of ChangJiang Lu (road) and HengShan Lu (road).
The base of the Dragon Tower - there is an ice sculpture of a dragon infront of the Dragon tower.
After entering the Dragon Tower, you must first purchase tickets before being allowed to tour the broadcasting tower. There are 6 available purchase options. 3 options includes a meal on top of the Dragon Tower at the revolving restaurant, and 3 options are just tickets for touring inside the Dragon Tower.
The tickets with the meal portion cost $180, $190, and $200 RMB, which are basically the same. The only difference is that with the full ticket costing $200yuan, you get access to all the tour areas, whereas the $180 and $190 do not have access to all the tour area. From my experience, it would not seem that much of a difference between the $180 ticket and the $200 yuan ticket. But in hindsight, it was only an extra $20yuan that I paid, which isn't that big of a deal.
Inside the main floor of the Dragon Tower - a large open area, with the elevator base located in the center of the tower. On the wall is a large red Chinese character "Long" or "Dragon".
Besides tickets with the meal component, there are also 3 options for just touring the Dragon Tower, costing $110, $120, and $130 RMB. So, it would seem the meal costs $70 RMB.
After purchasing the tour ticket, I headed up to the second and third floors where various tour attractions are hosted. Here, you will see a small museum of dinosaur fossils, a museum dedicated to Kongzi (or Confucius), a science playground for children, and a 3D motion movie. Most of these were rather bland and not very interesting, which gave me the feeling that the Dragon Tower was simply trying to fill some space. Of course, my purpose here is to go up the Tower, so how interesting the individual tour spots inside the tour were, had little impact on the overall experience of touring the Dragon Tower.
Climbing The Harbin Dragon Tower
The entry to the Elevator is located on the third floor. After showing my ticket, I waited several minutes before the elevator arrived, and inside was an attendant that operates the Elevator, and provides the tourist with some basic information about the tower and the elevator. The elevator moves at 2.5m/s.
A view from inside the 180 meter level of the Dragon Tower. Large round windows with cautionary messages are available for tourists to view Harbin City.
The first stop is at 180 meters, where I got off the elevator, and walked around to see the scenery through large round windows. I made a circle around this floor, and began my next climb up to 190 meters, where you can get to the outdoor area to get a better view of the entire Harbin City. At this height, it was very windy outside, it was bone chilling cold. So I didn't stay outside for very long.
A view of Harbin City at the 190 meter level - at the outdoor area of the Dragon Tower.
Next, I climbed the narrow steel stairs up another 13 meters to 203m which has some Chinese buddhas and statues on display. Going up 1 more level is the highest climbable area of the Dragon tower at 206 meters above ground. |
