Harbin Snow and Ice Festival

The temperature in Harbin reaches forty below zero, both Fahrenheit
and Celsius, and stays below freezing nearly half the year. This
Chinese city is actually further north than notoriously cold
Vladivostok, Russia, just 300 miles away. So what does one do here
every winter? Hold an outdoor festival, of course! Rather than suffer
the cold, the residents of Harbin celebrate it, with an annual festival
of snow and ice sculptures and competitions. The festival officially
runs from January 5 through February 15, but often opens a week early
and runs into March, since it’s usually still cold enough. This is the
amazing sculpture made of snow greeting visitors to the snow festival
in 2003.

Snow and ice sculpture in Harbin dates back to Manchu times, but the
first organized show was held in 1963, and the annual festival itself
only started in 1985. Since then, the festival has grown into a
massive event, bringing in over a million tourists from all over the
world every winter. The sculptures have become more elaborate and
artistic over time; this bear and cub are just one small part of a
fifty-meter-wide mural sculpture.

Most of the sculptures appearing at the snow festival are
competitive entries. Each team starts with a cube of packed snow that
appears to measure about three meters on a side, and then starts
carving away. Teams come in from all over the world - Russia, Japan,
Canada, France, even South Africa. Part of the fun is guessing the
nationality of the team, based on their sculpture’s artistic style,
before reading the signs. I believe this was a Russian entry.

The sun begins to set behind the magnificent entryway sculpture.
The snow festival is actually separate from the ice festival; both take
place on the wide open spaces of Sun Island north of Harbin’s river,
Songhua Jiang. Harbin is situated south of the river, so it’s a chilly
ride over to the sites. It seems even chillier when crossing the
bridge over the very wide and very frozen Songhua Jiang.

I was surprised to discover this sculpture of a Native American
sitting in the frozen northeast of China; sure enough, I read on the
sign that a Canadian team sculpted this entry. Chinese teams had many
sculptures at the festival as well, off in another section, but a vast
majority didn’t measure up to these amazing works.

Too cold and tired to walk around Sun Island Park to view the snow
festival sculptures? No problem; these folks are just waiting to show
you around. It’s difficult to imagine sitting outside for hours in
this temperature, but these guys do it. The dogs seemed to take it all
in stride; some were lounging about and napping on the ice.

Even the sunsets in Harbin look cold. Though only mid-afternoon,
the sun was setting over the snow festival and the temperature was
falling even further below freezing. But the coming darkness was
actually good news, because it meant that the ice festival was about to
begin.

The ice festival, a few miles away from the snow festival, is
anything but dull and colorless. Crowds flocking to the entrance are
greeted by dance music booming in the distance, as if at an outdoor pop
concert. And bright neon colors shine everywhere, buried within huge
blocks of ice forming structures as high as thirty meters, such as this
huge structure beyond the entryway. You can just make out people
standing atop its blue and red stairway.

A view from atop that structure, looking back on a Russian-styled
building and a mock Great Wall, both constructed out of ice. Making it
to the top of this structure is an accomplishment in itself - imagine
walking up a stairway of solid ice for two floors with no handrails.
The yellow block wall on the right and the balconywork on the lower
left are all ice, with no internal support structure - just lights.

The Great Wall doubles as a long ice slide; just sit and go. You
can pick up some serious speed and wipe out spectacularly at the bottom
if you’re wearing a slick coat, but you won’t go anywhere if you’re
wearing corduroy pants.

An overview of the ice festival from atop the Great Wall of ice.
It’s like a Disney theme park, with multiple attractions and food
hawkers and kids running around and people lined up for bathrooms. The
only differences are that the temperature is about a hundred degrees
colder than the typical Disney park, and all the structures are made
out of ice rather than plastic - and slipping and falling here doesn’t
result in tremendous lawsuits.

One of the popular activities at the festival is climbing a wall of
solid ice. Amazingly, I didn’t see a single person fall, and most
everyone made it to the top. All the ice comes from Songhua Jiang, the
nearby river, which provides a limitless supply; huge chainsaws are
required to cut through the ice, which can be meters thick.

The snow festival is mostly a display of art; the ice festival is
mostly a display of architecture. Nevertheless, a number of sculptures
can be found at the ice festival, such as this life-sized horse.
Notice the layers of ice in the horse; blocks of ice are fused together
to form larger blocks so that sculptures - or huge buildings - can be
made.

Agile youngsters with good balance can climb atop the horses to have
their pictures taken. This horse appears to be taking a break from all
that. Notice the see-through horse right behind this one, also grazing.

An entire ship constructed of ice, with passengers onboard. Though
it might not be seaworthy, the ship would certainly float - after all,
it’s made of ice. Hundreds of years ago during the Manchu days of ice
lantern art, the sculptures were lit only by candles.

With all this ice around, it was inevitable that someone would try
this. No, her tongue did not get stuck - it would have taken licking a
frozen metal pole to do that - but goodness knows how many people tried
this same thing on this same spot of ice before she did; and Songhua
Jiang river ice is not exactly clean.

A bridge of ice, spanning ice, leading to more icy ground. Atop the
bridge columns are dozens of intricately carved fu dogs, just like
those that would appear on old traditional bridges in China.

A Thai temple of ice...

...complete with hallways and rooms inside.

Outside the main entrance to the ice festival, called “The Fourth
Annual Harbin Ice and Snow World.” Long ago, Disney made a
CircleVision 360 film called “Wonders of China” - still showing at the
China pavillion in the World Showcase at EPCOT - which includes a brief
section on Harbin’s ice festival. In the movie, the sculptures are
quite low-key, little more than blinking light bulbs inside small
globes and ice carvings. Things have changed a bit since those days.