A World of Ice and Snow Sculptures
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To my great excitement, my visit to Harbin coincided with the first snow the city witnessed for the winter spanning 2007 and 2008. I have not yet figured out how the world of ice and snow, a theme park of ice and snow sculptures in the capital city of Heilongjiang Province in northeastern China, was built before the first snow fell, but by the time I arrived, the park had long since opened its ice and snow marvels to tourists. It was the theme park’s 9th annual celebration of chills and thrills since 1999. On the last night of 2007, I visited the wonderland.
The celebration of ice and snow occupied an area of 400,000 square meters. The park displayed sculptures made of 125,000 cubic meters of ice and 100,000 cubic meters of snow. The theme park honored the 2008 Beijing Olympics in six sections. A 40-meter ice tower stood in the center of the park, surrounded by more than 20 ice sculptures in the shape of track and field athletes in action. A 1,400-meter-long and 10-meter-wide avenue led tourists to do sightseeing all the way through the park. All the sculptures shined in colored lights.
The tradition of making ice lanterns dates back to ancient times. Poet Zhang Wentao (1764-1814) of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) poeticized about the charms of ice lanterns. Residents in the province started making ice lanterns in the Qing Dynasty. Scholar Xi Qing of the Qing Dynasty relates a lantern festivity in Qiqihar, another key city in Heilongjiang Province: “A celebration of lanterns went on for five consecutive nights. At night one could hear from afar the carriages with village women coming into the city. An ice sculpture stood five feet tall in the shape of the God of Longevity. Inside the sculpture were two lanterns shining, making it look like a man of crystal.?
Some sightseers at the park wondered how ice rises in dozens of meters in height without anything else as support. A local engineer named Wang Lisheng discovered in the 1960s that ice blocks are almost as strong as bricks. The 75-year-old is now regarded as the city’s founding father of ice architecture. In 1982, he designed Harbin’s first ice house, which covered an area of 50 square meters and used neither a piece of wood nor a bar of reinforced steel.
I took a thrilling nose-dive ride down a 368-meter-long chute. The starting point was 14 meters above the ground. I sat on the sledge and raced all the way down the chute. There were two chutes in parallel. The slide was designed by Zhu Xianqi, a graduate from the Central Academy of Crafts and landscape designer. He began to involve himself in the making of ice lanterns in 1979. Some of his masterpieces are brilliant pages in the annals of ice lanterns. He says that there is a three-point criterion to examine the art of an ice lantern. It should be a visual delight at the first sight; it should reach out to your heart, and it should fascinate you so much that you like to stay and admire it for a long while. An ice sculpture masterpiece should meet the three standards.
During the sightseeing around the park, I heard about a local family of ice and snow sculptors. Zhang Dexiang, a middle school principal, and his family have won more than 40 prizes for their ice and snow artworks. In 1986 his wife bought him a cutting knife and that started him off on an ice and snow sculpting career. Over all the past winters, Zhang, his wife, his two sons and two daughters-in-law have been enthusiastically engaged in creating sculptures. They are just an outstanding representative of the local people who love life, winter’s long nights, ice and snow. The sculpted thrills are their artistic response to the winter’s chills. Behind every shining sculpture in the park was at least a master sculptor, ideas contributed by fellow sculptors and artistic work of craftsmen.
Watching a group of skating Russian ballerinas staging a grand show on an ice rink and the audiences bursting into applause now and then, I realized that Harbin attracts visitors and the visitors become friends of the city. Some foreigners say that they find ice attractive because of Harbin and they find Chinese people lovely because of the city’s ice and snow sculptures.