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The northern Chinese city of Harbin is often called the “Ice City” and is a modern metropolis of 2.6 million people. Located along the Russian-Chinese border, the city’s culture is a rich and diverse mixture of many ethnic minorities from across Asia and other neighbouring countries. Many Russian refugees who fled the Revolution in 1917 also call Harbin their home. The construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway helped to industrialise the city, making it the number one manufacturing location in North-eastern China.
Harbin is also a major center for many kinds of processing facilities for such commodities as soy beans, sugar beets, leather and tobacco. More technologically directed factories produce electric power turbines and generators, plastics and equipment for oil field exploration and drilling. Why then, is Harbin’s most famous claim to fame its yearly Ice-Snow Festival?
For centuries Harbin was nothing more than a small dot on the map, a tiny and isolated fishing village. Various rivers are situated close to Harbin. During the long, cold winters it was common practice for local fishermen to carve ice blocks into rudimentary lamp shades or even hollow bulbs. These were set over candles to prevent them from being blown out by the frigid winds. This age-old custom was officially introduced at the first ice lantern show organised in 1963. Citizens crafted replicas of actual ice lanterns that their ancestors used and then set candles inside to illuminate their creations. The show was a success and from then on it became an annual tradition.
The Harbin Ice-Snow Festival is held at Zhaolin Park and lasts from New Year’s Day until the middle of February. Thesedays, however, it’s not just the local citizens putting their carved lanterns on display. The International Ice Carving Contest attracts talented ice sculptors from all over the world, either working alone or in a team. Using chainsaws and other special ice carving tools, they turn hundreds of cold blocks of ice cut from the Songhua river into semi-transparent masterpieces of many different shapes, sizes and themes. Some of the more recent designs have been political figures, television and movie legends, comic book heroes, fairytale characters and their glittering castles, groupings of animals and plants, reproductions of an artist’s favorite science fiction story and even recognisable landmarks like Japanese pagodas, the Great Wall of China and the Taj Mahal.
During daylight hours these intricate ice carvings are quite breathtaking. After dark they’re simply spectacular. Thousands of feet of neon lights are rigged inside each of the carvings and once lit, the icy creations turn Zhaolin Park into a surreal and dazzling landscape. Thousands of people travel to Harbin to either take part in or attend the Ice-Snow Festival.
To celebrate the year 2000 the city of Harbin decided to go all out and construct China’s tallest ice building at 11 stories high and covering an area of 1200 metres. It was dubbed “The Century Bell Tower” and workers used 4000 cubic metres of ice blocks to build it. Two electronic bells were installed at the top of the tower in time to ring in the new century. Organisers of Harbin’s millennium events were confident their tower would remain standing until the conclusion of the year 2000 Ice-Snow Festival.
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