Architecture On Ice
Written by John Mackey
You and your kids may be very proud of the cute snow man you built in your front yard last weekend, what with its corncob pipe and button nose and all, but if you want to retain your icy sense of frosty accomplishment, you might want to look at the People’s Republic of China’s incredible Harbin Ice and Snow Festival, because these guys know snow!
Officially titled the “Harbin Ice and Snow Big World” in that classically awkward Chinese to English translation we’ve come to know and love, the annual winter festival takes place in the chilly northeast province of Heilongjiang in the capitol city of Harbin, where the cold, harsh winds of nearby Siberia blow down and make everyday a sweater day. Average winter temperatures hover around zero.
But the remote location and frigid temperatures couldn’t deter hundreds of thousands of bundled-up tourists from visiting the winter wonderland of mind-boggling sculptures and structures during the minus-zero month of January. Beginning each December, 15,000 workers start cutting 4.2 million cubic feet of ice in blocks from the frozen Songhua River. And then it’s on with the snow!
The festival is divided into two exhibitions sites. The first is the peaceful Snow Festival at the ironically named Sun Island Park, featuring large-scale snow sculptures intricately carved by teams from all over the world into frozen piece of fine art. Keep on truckin’ up the ice road and you’ll come to the Snow Festival’s showy cousin, the Harbin Ice Festival, where booming music and flashing neon buried deep in the ice create a carnival atmosphere. Here, you’ll learn one cold, hard fact - that even in at the top of the word, there’s no business like snow business!
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