Friday is the 15th day of the first month of the Lunar New Year, or what we call Lantern Festival, which officially marks the end of Spring Festival celebrations. CCTV reporter Fei Ye brings us a story on an icey way to celebrate it right here in Beijing.
Don’t bother with Harbin, stick around in Beijing and head over to the Olympic Park for its first ever Ice Lantern Art Festival, which is not only icetastic, but also a lot warmer. The main feature is of course the ice lanterns, but the festival has many other attractions, including a man-made snow slide and many colorful lanterns.
"Well you know we are having a warm winter this year and we wanted to do something grand. This experience is great for people who didn’t go out of town for the holidays, and for people who didn’t see or enjoy enough snow. All these ice sculptures show the uniqueness of Beijing. We hope to put everyone in a festive spirit and bring fun activities to families here," said Sun Jingwei, supervisor of Ice Lantern Art Festival.
If you don’t think Beijing is cold enough than come to the Olympic Park for a winter wonderland. There are about 80 ice sculptures that include the Forbidden City, the great Buddha, many Olympic themed ice sculptures and many more. It took 100 artists almost a month to complete all of these.
The favorites at the exhibition are the horses that guard the entrance and the mini Forbidden City. It’s 30 meters long and nine meters high.
"My children have never seen such beautiful ice sculptures before. They learned a lot about ice today. This event is a great way to introduce and expose traditional culture to them as well. My husband’s and children’s last names are Ma, or horse, so we took a lot of pictures in front of the horses," said Xu Bing, a visitor.
"We actually just went to the Forbidden City yesterday and for us to see it again in this form, it’s just beautiful. It’s great because we don’t have to go to Harbin anymore to see ice sculptures. My daughter was also born in the year of the horse so we were really excited to see those too," said Li Huifeng, a visitor.
And the fun doesn’t end here. For more activities, head outside to the man made slides.
And to warm up, move to the theater next door for an acrobatic show. The Ice Lantern Festival will continue until February 24th.
