Ice carving, a seasonal art in the far north China, is also called “ice lanterns” and has its origin in local life. To prevent lights form being blown out by the winter wind, people started long, long ago to use hollowed ice blocks as lantern bulbs, giving the art its primitive form.

The citizens of Harbin, capital of the northernmost Heilongjiang Province, put on the first “ice lantern show” in the winter of 1963. by means of moulds they made various ice lanterns, in which they lighted candles. It proved a success and established a custom; since then an “ice festival” has been held every year lasting from New Year’s Day to the traditional Lantern Festival (about mid -February), with the scale growing ever larger and the skills more and more perfected. Apart from the usual lanterns, pavilions, terraces, bridges and towers are built in ice to decorate the landscapes formed by sparking mountains, crystal trees, glistening birds and animals, fish swimming in transparent pools … Ice sculpture is also found to be an artistic form suitable for reproducing scenes of well-known dramas and stories of science fiction often seen at the festival. Some works are of colossal dimensions: a pagoda may be built of up to 200 huge ice blocks, and it makes an impressive sight when lighted at night by hundreds of built-in colored lamps. The ice show, with its translucent works and sparking lights, reminds visitors of the fabled emerald and crystal palace of the legendary Dragon King.

The main material for ice sculpture is obtained form the rivers. With the mercury constantly kept down at minus 20℃ --30℃ in winter, the water in the north provide an inexhaustible supply of ice. It is first sawn by workmen into blocks, and then the sculptors will put them to different uses according to thickness, strength and transparency. A large work is usually assembled of many component pieces.