Ice city

Read time is roughly the same as this track. Sit back and enjoy

January 2015.

It wasn’t cold enough in Shanghai and my friend and I wanted to go somewhere colder. Luckily for us, the Harbin Ice and Snow festival was on and Harbin daily -25° Celsius was perfect to achieve our frozen dream.

After a quick phone call to decide on a date, we jumped on a plane headed to Heilongjiang capital, Harbin.

The plan was fairly simple: to check out the biggest ice sculpture festival in the world and the unique but somewhat controversial Siberian Tiger Park.

As we landed in Harbin late at night, it became obvious from the beginning that it would be quite fun to spend most of the following few days in the outdoors at -25 plus wind chills.

At the time I was quite worried about camera damage that could be caused by the extreme temperature differences between the indoors and outdoors, but I soon overcame that fear. That was a great learning experience that changed completely the way I look at my gear by making me less worried about how I treat my camera in challenging environments. After that trip my cameras have been in deserts at 50° Celsius, in my pocket while snowboarding or skiing, held at face level in the sea while the rest of my body was submerged, enveloped in volcanos sulfur vapours and more.

Despite arriving late to our hotel, we had a walk around Harbin at night nonetheless and we quickly spotted few ice cream eaters. At first we thought that eating ice cream in that temperature was a terrible idea, but we then realised and confirmed through a trial process involving vanilla and chocolate ice cream that the ice cream felt warmish when compared to the outside temperature. I have to admit that it felt pretty good to walk around at below 0 while eating an ice cream.

The next morning started early and it begun with a scuba diving style preparation before heading outside, with my buddy making sure I brought the necessary layers to stay warm during the day.

One thing that wasn’t immediately obvious to us was that the Ice festival not only covered a massive area on the other side of a fully frozen river, but it was also split in multiple zones. The first area we visited was the main sculpture park, on Sun Island. On the way to the sculpture park, we spotted a couple of cars making donuts on the thick ice covering the river.

The second thing that wasn’t immediately obvious was how much colder the air would feel once the wind kicked in. And on a massive, hundreds of meters long bridge you could immediately feel the only part of your body that was left uncovered, your face, turning stone cold as soon as the breeze hit it.

One of the many early morning activities, metal chains whipping

After a fairly long stroll, we reached Sun Island filled with excitement.

Being an international event, the organisation was pretty good, with quite a few refreshment stations on the way to and inside the main sculpture area, where we could refuel and heat up with some hot corn, sausages and beverages. That was definitely my favourite part of the whole trip, the feeling of going from incredibly cold outdoors to the astoundingly hot and heated up restaurants, shops and so on. Every time it felt like receiving a warm embrace.

The sculpture park felt unique from the very beginning, with its very detailed snow sculptures made by artists from all over the world. There was everything, from sharks to portraits, from cartoons to pseudo-propaganda sculptures. And then, at the very end of the park, a massive castle resembling a mix of St. Basil and the Disney castle and surrounded by Forbidden City-like outside walls. It was one of those walls that was hiding a gents toilet, useful for a quick break.

It was getting late and we had to head to the next venue, the Ice and Snow World.

The Ice and Snow World is possibly the highlight of the festival, with incredibly intricate, small and complex ice statues sided by massive ice buildings, complete with slides and walkable staircases.

Welcoming the tourists, there was of course a giant Harbin beer bottle. Next to it, a frozen lake with ice skating bikes. After a few donuts, I left the bike on the lake shores and immersed myself in the fairytale.

To contribute even more to the dreamlike nature of the place, there was an arctic fox running around. I just saw a white dot moving across the Ice City and I yelled at my friend “A FOX! A FOX!” to which he replied “Yeah, sure”. A few seconds later, a man went running after the fur ball and came back with this:

Sunset arrived sooner than expected and tinted everything with a light magenta.

Before exploring the Ice City at night we decided to take a quick break in the main igloo to enjoy some warmer weather and a refreshing Harbin. On the way to the igloo, Cinderella’s carriage crossed our path.

A chariot moving fast on the snow at the Harbin Ice and Snow festival — *You can get a print of this photo by clicking on it so that you can stare at it all day long from the comfort of your home*.

The rest of the night doesn’t need many words. It just didn’t feel real.

It was late and we were starting to feel the cold. So we headed to a dumplings place and enjoyed those delicious jiaozi. Very tired, we headed to our hotel, kept the feet on the heated floor and then fell asleep, continuing the dream that had started during the daytime.

The second day we took it a bit easier and just explored the city a bit, browsing the shops and trying out some street food, including our favourite, the ice creams.

Around lunchtime, we headed to the Siberian Tiger Park. One interesting fact about the park is that if you’re willing to pay, you could buy food for the tigers fostered there, from a steak to an alive calf. While I was there, a family bought an alive chicken that was put in a cage and brought on top of the tigers. Then, the bottom of the gate opened and the chicken fell briefly before getting mauled by a group of tigers. Or a herd of tigers. Or a constipation of tigers. Either way, it was brutal.

(I just googled what’s the collective noun for a group of tigers and it turns out that it is ‘an ambush of tigers’. It fits perfectly the scene I witnessed).

We got back to town late in the afternoon and the next place to visit was one of the examples of Russian influence in Harbin, Saint Sophia’s Church, now a museum for obvious reasons.

We didn’t have much time left before heading to the airport, but we had enough to explore a couple of smaller parks near the church that were also part of the Ice and Snow Festival.

One of them even had an obstacle course made of, you guessed it, ice! It was totally safe and we immediately went for it. Three seconds in, my friend slipped and fell hard on the ice. Running on an ice gymkhana wasn’t a great idea after all.