A Reason for Blogging

The 2008 Harbin Ice Festival

There are few things in China that have lived up to their hype. Okay, the Great Wall, but then, you can only see small pieces of it and that's when the air is clear enough to see the next hill. Hukou Falls in Central China was interesting. But for the most part, I haven't been really impressed. Last week, however, I had the opportunity to visit the Ice Festival in Harbin, China.
For those of you who don't know, Harbin is in the extreme northeast of the country, very close to Siberia. It earns the title "The City of Ice" with an average temperature below freezing. The countryside is bleak and hard with an edge that tells you something is different here. The Ice Festival is the bright spot of a bleak long winter.

The people harvest ice blocks from the nearby SongHua River (the same one that was contaminated with a major benzene spill several years ago the shut down the water supply to Harbin for a week.) They also gather snow. From these piles of ice blocks and snow, they raise a magnificent city of ice and wondrous sculptures of snow. The night we visited, it was a balmy -22 degrees farenheit. It was so cold, that my fingers felt frostbit from removing my glove long engough to take pictures.

And I need to shout out to Robin from Vermont. She was kind enough to snap a picture of the group. I noticed her when I heard a girls voice proclaim that it was "F.....g COLD". Enough talk, here are the best of the pictures. Remember, everything you see, except the people are either snow or ice.

The Entrance

The Ice Steps. No OSHA in China.

An actual functioning radio tower of ice.

The Russian Palace of Ice.

Thank you Robin From Vermont. It is a small world. Alos thanks to Sara Fang for being our guide.

My frozen Porsche Boxster. This one was hard to get into.

Just another magnificent structure.

Another huge ice building on the hill.

The Olympic Village.

Snow Budda