Study Buddy (Explorer): Ice art and snow fun in freezing Harbin, China

[2] This ice sculpture festival is a major tourist draw for the former industrial centre, a city with Russian legacy and Tsarist-era architecture found nowhere else in China. The festival’s riverside site features giant artworks depicting the Taj Mahal in Agra, India, the Osaka Castle of Japan and Beijing’s Temple of Heaven – all carved from clear blocks of ice.

[3] Jin Yiting visited with her parents from Shanghai, enjoying the wintry contrast to central and southern China. “The ice sculpture looks exactly the same [as the Temple of the Heaven]. I touched the ice, and its texture was solid and translucent. It looks elegant when the sunlight passes through,” she said.

[4] Another visitor, Song Shukun, seen pushing his girlfriend in a doughnut-shaped sledge, said the ice blocks helped him understand how the structures were assembled. “I can see the inside of the structures and how they are arrayed and laid out. It reminds me of the bricks of the Great Wall [of China],” Song said.

[5] The main festival covers 1 square kilometres (0.39 square miles) of the city, with the sculptures using 13,000 cubic metres (around 459,100 cubic feet) of ice blocks cut mainly from the adjacent Songhua River. There are satellite parks elsewhere in Harbin. “When I come here and see all the ice sculptures and snow, it’s just, wow!” said Gu Junyan, who is from the Henan province, which sees little snow.

[6] Ice slides – the longest ones reaching 521 metres (around 1,710 feet) – are a main attraction, with visitors waiting almost an hour to get their chance to go on. “In the beginning, it was steady. The wind was strong once I slipped off the slope, and I felt cold. It was very exciting,” said Gong Caiyun after coming down a slide.

[7] Sculptors prefer to keep things simple for maximum effect, said artist Andreu Aleas. “We don’t want a lot of details – just playing with size and making these lines very clean, plain. Sometimes, it’s difficult to appreciate the details with snow because everything is white. We decided to do this kind of fine artwork with just some lines, planes and curves,” Aleas said.

Source: Associated Press, January 9

1. What are the attractions mentioned in paragraph 1 made of?

2. How often does the Harbin Ice and Snow World take place, according to paragraph 1?

3. What did Harbin used to be, according to paragraph 3?

4. Decide whether the following statements about paragraphs 2 and 3 are True, False or the information is Not Given. Fill in ONE circle only for each. (4 marks)
(i) Jin lives in the city where the Temple of Heaven is located.
(ii) Temperatures in central and southern China are usually 20 degrees Celsius higher than in Harbin during this time of the year.
(iii) Being able to look into the ice sculptures helped Song understand how they were built.
(iv) Song visited the Harbin Ice and Snow World with his relatives.

5. Find two words in paragraph 4 that mean something similar.

6. In paragraph 5, which word suggests that the Songhua River is close to Harbin?

7. Which of the following best describes Gu’s reaction in paragraph 5 when he saw the ice sculptures?
A. excited but worried
B. shocked and confused
C. amazed and impressed
D. none of the above

8. Paragraph 6 describes …
A. the experience of going on one of the park’s most popular attractions.
B. how one of the park’s most popular attractions was made.
C. the type of visitors who frequented the park’s most popular attraction.
D. the idea behind the park’s most popular attraction.

9. Who does “we” in paragraph 7 refer to?

1. ice
2. annually; every year
3. an industrial centre
4. (i) F; (ii) NG; (iii) T; (iv) F
5. assembled / arrayed / laid out (any two)
6. adjacent
7. C
8. A
9. ice sculptors