Harbin Ice Festival, part two

On our second day in Harbin, we strolled down Central Street to look at the river. We passed a large,  handsome hotel and crossed the street to a plaza overlooking the river. You can see the ice gate overlooking the river and more of those pretty frozen fruit sticks above right. We tried a stick of fruit (chewing on frozen fruit in sub-zero temperatures is a test of one's dental work and one's desire not to waste money after buying an over-priced tourist snack). As we sat and ate it, several Chinese people stopped and took our photograph. And turnabout is fair play, I say.  Whether they find us funny or quaint or (dare I suppose) exotic, we've been taking pictures of them, so they can take pictures of us.

Below is a converted railway station and lots of squid on a stick.

As we crossed the plaza and reached the top of the riverbank, I heard a lot of cracking noises.

Before I had time to wonder if it was the sound of cracking ice, we saw lots of people, young and old, "whipping" little tops and making them spin on the ice.  I imagine that people have been playing this game at this spot for hundreds of years. The music playing in the background in the video clip is "Little Apple," the Chinese pop mega hit. I don't know if the river was frozen solid all across, but all along the riverbank in front of us, we could see families enjoying themselves. 

And below right you can see an ice castle. People climbed the stairs to go down an ice slide on the other side. There are lots more amazing ice buildings to come in our tour of Harbin.

Dusk was falling, so we returned to the hotel but we came back the next day to take in more of the scene.  This time Ross persuaded me to walk down the icy steps of the riverbank. We just enjoyed walking along and watching everybody and admiring the tenacity of commerce on a frozen riverbank, with people selling snacks and gloves and mufflers and tops, and people offering various vehicles to travel on the ice and snow.                                                              

You could be pulled over the ice by a pony, a reindeer, a ram, or sled dogs. 

Another thing that we glimpsed was a group of about forty people, some in ethnic costume, doing a circle dance on the ice. For a change, they weren't dancing to "Little Apple," and I imagine it was a folk tune that we heard. Unfortunately this gathering was behind a fence and we couldn't get a clear shot of it. But dang it all, I am showing you the little fragment we got, anyway. There seems to be some kinship between the earliest cultures in this area, with the reindeer culture of Lapland and the Inuit culture of Canada.

Stay turned for the grand finale of our trip to Harbin -- the spectacular Ice and Snow World!

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