After a two hour delay on Friday evening we finally departed for Harbin, Heilongjiang Province (what was many years ago known as Manchuria). It was a three hour flight from Shanghai and as the last hour had clear skies it was fun watching towns pass below.
A friend of my sister travelled with us. On arrival the temperature was -28 deg... MINUS 28 degrees! There was a car with driver waiting for us in a huge underground heated garage, where one waited for the door to open in order to leave. The sight of all those cars and minibuses driving around in a closed heated space was quite eye popping. But within 5 minutes of setting out there was ice on the inside of the car windows.
We were so late that it was 4am by the time we were registered and in our hotel rooms, so not much sleep was had.
Saturday morning was sunny and the temperature had risen to a mere -21deg, positively balmy! In the sunshine with the dry air one did not really notice the cold for several hours but in retrospect, I do think it sapped the energy somewhat.
Sun Island Park is the snow sculpture part of the Festival. The Festival has been going for 40 years, and for the last 35 of those it has included a snow carving competition as well as the huge professional sculptures. But if you are thinking along the lines of pumpkin carving or nice little snowmen, think again!
The big sculptures were at least 8m tall I am guessing and some 20m or more long, huge, but HUGE! The plinth of this dragon was at about my eye level. The smaller competition blocks were about 3m cubed in size, like this 'little' dragon:
Since it is the Year of the Dragon there were a lot of dragons, all slightly different.
I have to wonder what they practice their skills on; bars of soap? bits of wood? There was one sculpture by a team from Indonesia; now where would they find snow?
As words cannot do justice to the skill, vibrancy, beauty, size and volume of sculptures I will just post photos. It took us over three hours to look at everything. (And truly, the photos do not do it justice either, especially the huge sculptures.)
As you can see, some sculptures are in bas relief, some 3D, and apparently snow painting is also a skill; sometimes on a flat surface and sometimes to tint a sculpture. And then of course one can dye the snow pink to create an effect!
How many sculptures were there? 70? 80? I don't know.
By about 2pm we were hungry, a bit cold (although the temperature had risen to -18 deg) so we returned to the hotel for lunch and several more layers of clothing.
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