The coming year of the dragon and Chinese New Year is set to be celebrated with a 137 ft ice dragon near Beijing in the Longqing Gorge Ice Lantern Festival. This year there are 300 ice works on display, including the dragon, properly named Take Off 2012, a lit city and lanterns carved from ice.
First held in 1963, this years festival began on January 5 and is set to last for an entire month, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors from all parts of China. This festival celebrates some of the largest man made ice structures in the world.
The city of ice was created by stacking ice blocks to create buildings, often with lights frozen in the cubes to create the atmosphere shown here. The city created represents a typical Chinese town and the buildings found in it. Snow machines are used during construction to stop the over 10 million pounds of snow and ice from melting.
Ice sculptors use picks and chisels and say that they find it a pleasure to create such works of art and plan on doing so for as long as time will allow. The ice used in this festival is unusually clear, creating an interesting lighting effect, because of its location in the river which allows it to freeze slower than normal while the water runs underneath.
Construction of this ice festival takes months to finish, some sculptures taking up to 5 days and multiple workers to complete. After construction has ended, sub-zero temperatures must be maintained in order to keep the ice sculptures in tip top shape.
Additional sculptures include animals from other years, ice mazes and a slide. The creators of this year’s ice festival say that the theme centers around prosperity and harmony because of the financial crises running rampant in many parts of the world.