Lemon: Alternative Places in Europe, World Wide & the Harbin Dressing Room

Talking with a Harbin resident in the Harbin dressing room this morning from western Europe, I asked her what alternative places or organizations, like Harbin Hot Springs or the Rainbow Gathering, are around today in Europe. She mentioned ZEST and said that there are others, but didn't give me any other names of these. She recalled how in the 1980s, people would form human chains to protest the nuclear industry, for example. This is the alternative movement she knows in Europe. She doesn't know of many places like Harbin in Europe.

Here are a list of intentional communities world wide from Wikipedia.


The Harbin dressing room is fascinating for a variety of reasons. Men and women undress and dress here before and after going in the pools, especially when it's cool outside. In warm weather, many people disrobe on the sundeck or around the pool area. People new to Harbin, and who carry with them concerns about their bodies, encounter something new with the dressing room. The context normalizes, and transforms, ways of men and women being together. It's part of the Harbin experience which can surprise people new to Harbin. E, who came on Friday and Saturday to Harbin for the first time, was surprised. There isn't really any place to undress and dress in private at Harbin. While there are a few toilets with lockable doors, most people don't use these for the purpose of changing. And there really isn't any point, because almost everyone is naked in the pools and in the pool area. So most people open to what is normal at Harbin, to body affirmation - nudity - or they don't return. Many take to it normally, especially vis-a-vis Harbin's hippie-mindedness. A few people do wear bathing suits, like E, but, in my experience, this doesn't last very long. This dressing and undressing in the dressing room can sometimes be erotic in interesting ways, but the norm that everybody is naked at Harbin changes aspects of eroticism. The woman in a young couple who spoke Russian last week seemed . . .