Harbin Ice Festival, part one

[First published January 30, 2015] I am filled with admiration for whichever citizen of Harbin, China said, "hey fellas, it's freezing around here in the winter and we have a lot of ice -- why don't why carve the ice into blocks, make large structures, and light them up with bright colors?." Harbin should erect an ice statute to that person every year. Using just ice, imagination and a lot of labor, Harbin has created the world's largest tribute to ice -- the Harbin Ice Festival -- which must have transformed the city economy. Not that Harbin was a backwater. Due to various factors, this Chinese city just south of Mother Russia is both an industrial crossroads and a cultural time capsule. There is a strong Russian influence. Go here if you want to learn the history of why this is so.

Harbin is significantly colder than Shandong Province, so we prepared with long underwear, lots of layers and in my case, a Chinese Army-type great coat, which was inexpensive and very warm and just the thing for winter campaigns or ice festival viewing. Yes, it was cold, but the cold never bothered us. Anyway....

Ross and I visited Harbin after I finished up at the school for the semester. We flew out of Jinan via Shandong Airlines, which was just fine, and took a taxi from the airport to our hotel, which was our first clue that the prices in a tourist town are a lot higher than prices in our Chinese home town of Zibo. Although the taxi ride cost a lot of money (300 yuan, or 60 Canadian dollars taxi), we loved our hotel's location -- right downtown beside a pedestrian walking and shopping street, known as Central Street, and very close to the riverfront. That in itself saved us money and time. Better yet, the hotel offered us a free ride to the main Ice Festival grounds, which I'll tell you about in a future post.

Central Street is a cobbled street lined with handsome European-style buildings. Light classical music played from speakers in the trees. And this is not because the festival organizers are catering to foreigners; there were some laowai in Harbin, but the tourists were overwhelmingly Asian. They want to stroll along a street with gingerbread architecture while listening to the Skater's Waltz. They want to go to coffee shops and, for reasons that elude me, they want to shop at stores selling babushka dolls, Russian vodka and ugly china tea cups and tchoktches. I use the word "tchoktches" advisedly because Harbin used to have a large Jewish population. 

We also came across a big, glamorous mall full of high fashion and exuding prosperity and sophistication. There were lots of alternatives to Russian kitsch. Ross especially enjoyed a Badpanda t-shirt he spotted that said, "I was young. I needed the money."

And all along this beautiful street, there were ice sculptures and snow sculptures. 

The Coca Cola polar bears were there, and giant ice rams, because this Chinese New Year marks the Year of the Ram. There were abstract sculptures and sculptures of musical instruments and on and on. 

Small courtyards off the main street held large ice sculpture displays, statues and street vendors. You'll also notice a KFC behind Ross. 

We were told that Harbin has four famous foods -- beer, bread, sausage and ice cream (again, all due to the Russian heritage). This is why hundreds of tourists were walking the sub-zero streets eating ice cream bars. We thought the bread and the ice cream were nothing special, but the sausages were okay and so was the beer. Of greater interest to us was the fact that hot Coca Cola is the winter-time beverage treat here.  Yes, it's heated and sold in Mayor-Bloomberg's-head-would-explode size cups. We didn't try it. That's sausage on a stick below right and behind me is a variety of bite-size pieces of fruit covered with chewy sugary syrup, also on sticks. They look pretty.

For dinner we found a small local restaurant and had to order food by pointing at pictures. We ended up with some noodles in broth, some spiced gristle and other odds and ends of animal parts, and some spicy cucumbers.  Okay, but not memorable.

We followed Central Street down to the river, but that will wait for part two. Until then, a few more pictures of Central Street. A lot more ice to come.

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