Harbin's incredible 11th Ice and Snow Festival, 2010

Dave and I took a weekend trip to Harbin Ice and Snow festival, 2 hours by plane NE of Beijing in Heilongjiang province, where the temperature has been known to drop to -40C in winter.  Luckily for us, when we arrived at midnight, it was a relatively balmy -23C, and we happily skidded on sheets of ice across town in pimped up taxi.

 

I have never been anywhere like Harbin, or anywhere that cold and wintry, so I found it particularly interesting.  In fact, I felt like an intrepid explorer in all my layers and with self-heating wonder packs tucked under my bra straps to keep me warm from the core!

 

The Songhua river completely freezes over, and essentially provides a massive new expanse of land on which to create a winter playground, including your usual, run-of-the-mill-for-us-Beijingers chair-skating and ice-biking opportunities (see previous post), ice slides, snowmobiles, buggies and a rally track on the ice! (Very Top Gear...)

 

The ice festival was simply the most mind-boggling thing I have ever seen in China, and definitely one of the best.  The photos above give some indication, more of mine can be found here and here, and some of photographer R. Todd King (who goes every other year to take pictures!) can be found on his website, and give a good idea of just how impressive the festival is.

 

There were ice Terracotta Warriors and an ice Forbidden City (both decidedly better than their stone counterparts!), as well as other famous buildings and recognisable objects, such as the World Cup trophy, the Colosseum, the Temple of Apollo and the Great Wall of China.  All made out of ice (natch!), and with some reaching over 50 metres high.

 

The festival is now in its 11th year, and I would be interested to know whose idea it was in the first place to mine all of this ice, and sculpt it over a period of weeks in temperatures that get as low as -40C.... Rather them than me!  Of course, all the Chinese love it when the sculptures are all lit up, but I am glad we went early to see them in the daylight and the sunshine, as in the evening, while impressive, the effect is a little tacky for my tastes!

 

We also visited the bizarrely-named "Sun Island", where the Snow Sculpture Art exhibition/competition is held.  Unfortunately, the weather was quite overcast on Sunday and so the light was not the best for viewing these sculptures - but even so, they were very impressive.

 

On the food and evening entertainment front, Dave and I were a little less successful...!  First, we were exhausted by the cold weather and the lack of food (for some reason, the pot noodles and cold plates of sausage and fake cheese didn't provide much sustenance...).  Then, we headed to a bar recommended online (NB: it looked a lot of fun, with photos of people dancing on the bar etc!) but on arrival, we found it to be completely empty and freezing cold.  Top that off with a beer that is half empty before it's been served to you, and you'll understand why we polished the beers off with a quick game of "lowest card drinks" before heading back to the hotel for some quality time with Jack Bauer.  In hindsight, we may have been better off aiming for a bar which warns of the frequent and violent Korean vs. Russian brawls!