A: Is for Art of a Frozen Kind!

As our temperatures have us bundled and wishing for the warmth of spring, the temperature in Harbin, Russia reaches forty below zero, both Fahrenheit and centigrade, and stay below freezing nearly half the year. Every winter they hold an outdoor festival and celebrate with an annual festival of snow and ice sculptures and competitions. Their are two festivals, one for snow and another for ice. The ice festival is colorful and brightly lit. . Crowds flock to the entrance and are greeted by dance music booming in the distance, as if they were attending an outdoor pop concert. Bright neon colors shine everywhere, buried within huge blocks of ice forming structures as high as thirty meters. The Great Wall doubles as a long ice slide; just sit and go. You can pick up some serious speed and wipe out spectacularly at the bottom if you're wearing a slick coat, but you won't go anywhere if you're wearing corduroy pants. Making it to the top of this structure is an accomplishment in itself - imagine walking up a stairway of solid ice for two floors with no handrails. Most have no internal support structure - just lights. Like a Disney theme park, multiple attractions, food hawker, kids running around and people lined up for bathrooms, are all regular occurrences. The only differences are that the temperature is about a hundred degrees colder than the typical Disney park, and all the structures are made out of ice rather than plastic - and slipping and falling here doesn't result in tremendous lawsuits.

An entire ship constructed of ice. Though it might not be seaworthy, this ship would certainly float - after all, it's made of ice. Hundreds of years ago during the Manchu days of ice lantern art, the sculptures were lit only by candles.

The annual Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival has been held since 1985. Although the official start date is January 5th each year, in practice, many of the sculptures can be seen before. While there are ice sculptures throughout the city, there are two main exhibition areas: Enormous snow sculptures at Sun Island (a recreational area on the opposite side of the Songhua River from the city) and the separate "Ice and Snow World" that operates each night. Ice and Snow World features illuminated full size buildings made from blocks of ice. Winter activities in the festival include Yabuli Alpine Skiing, winter-swimming in Songhua River, and the ice-lantern exhibition in Zhaolin Garden. Snow carving and ice and snow recreations are world famous. The "Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival" is one of the world's four largest ice and snow festivals, along with Japan's Sapporo Snow Festival, Canada's Quebec City Winter Carnival, and Norway's Ski Festival. Every November, the city of Harbin sends teams of ice artisans to the United States to promote their unique art form and that is a chilly F.A.C.T.