In Harbin, a country of ice and snow, there is a "sun island", which sounds very novel. But for the people of Harbin, Sun Island is all too familiar. It is located on the north bank of the Songhua River in Harbin, which is a river island on the river, and on both sides of the river is the new and old urban area of Harbin.
One theory of Sun Island is derived from the transliteration of the Manchu "bream fish", and another is that the slopes of the island are all clean sand, and the sun is particularly hot, so it is called Sun Island.
In the 1980s, when the entertainment culture was not so rich, Sun Island had a beautiful environment, with beaches and wetlands, and became a favorite playground for Harbin people. With the establishment of the "Sun Island International Snow Sculpture Art Fair" (hereinafter referred to as the "Snow Expo"), Sun Island has become one of the three major landscapes of the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival.
Every year during the Spring Festival, going to Sun Island to see snow sculptures has become a tradition of many Harbin people.
Exquisite snow sculptures are naturally inseparable from those creative ice and snow carvers. It is understood that there are less than 30 people (more than 20 people in Harbin) issued by the Ministry of Light Industry in the country ,more than 20 people in Harbin, and the current qualification certificate has stopped issuing, which also makes ice and snow carvers more scarce and precious.
Zhang Ningge is the first generation of snow sculpture art creators in mainland China. Accompanying the birth and growth of the Snow Expo, he has walked through more than 30 spring and autumn seasons, and led the team to participate in the design of more than 20 pieces of the main snow sculpture of the Sun Island Snow Expo. For him, Sun Island was the ice and snow paradise of his childhood, the stage to realize his dreams, and the snow sculpture has become a part of life, even in the year of the flower armor, still struggling in the front line of creation, not afraid of the cold, just to send a winter-only gift.
What is the charm of the snow sculptures on Sun Island? How to become a qualified ice and snow carver? What kind of story does the art of snow sculpture face today?
The following is Zhang Ningge's self-statement
When I was a child, Harbin was much colder than it is now.
At that time, every household burned coal, and when it snowed, the children would come out with shovels and stove hooks to build snowmen and have snowball fights.
There is also the "foot scratcher", that is, the simple ice knife shoes of the past, which are equipped with two parallel wires under a wooden board, nailed with two rows of nails on both sides, wrapped in ropes and tied under the feet, and can be slid on the ice. Several children competed with each other for who slid fast and sweated as soon as they ran, so they didn't feel cold at all.
In the northeast, every child had a pair of "foot strokes". Screenshot of China Jilin Network video
The other one is ice pumping. The wood is carved into a round pointed bottom, a circle of concave carvings in the middle, and a small whip is drawn, and it is turned. If you want it to spin faster, drill a small eye at the bottom, with iron nails or round iron beads. If there is no ice gag, take the soda bottle and you can also play.
At that time, the economic conditions were not good, and the gadgets were all made by themselves, and they were not sold on the market.
Ice pumping, that is, playing the top. Visual China figure
Sun Island is a very famous attraction in Harbin.
At the beginning of the 20th century, with the construction of the Middle East Railway, many foreign expatriates came to Harbin. They found that Sun Island was a good place to escape the summer, so they built villas here, and Sun Island became the earliest place for health care in Harbin. In 1964, the Sun Island Scenic Area was officially established. In 1989, it was named Heilongjiang Provincial Scenic Area.
But at the end of the 1980s, Harbin's winter entertainment was still relatively simple, and the most well-known was the ice lantern parade in Zhaolin Park. Sun Island in Jiangbei is still deserted, and it is even more inaccessible after winter.
In this regard, the government of Harbin City at that time attached great importance to it, and felt that it was not enough to have ice, but also snow, and to enrich harbin's ice and snow culture. Therefore, since 1988, the first mass snow sculpture competition was held on Sun Island, also known as the Snow Sculpture Garden Party, to encourage enthusiasts with art skills to participate in the competition during the snow season and attract tourists to visit the island.
Sun Island is the earliest place of health care in Harbin. Visual China figure
Sun Island is said to have evolved from the Manchu transliteration of "bream fish", and another theory is that the slopes of the island are all clean sand, and the sun is particularly hot, so it is called Sun Island. Visual China figure
I've been interested in painting since I was a kid. After graduating from high school, he took over his father's class and began to work in Harbin to build a machinery factory. At that time, movie posters were all hand-drawn, there were no prints, because I could draw, the union transferred me to the cultural palace of the factory to paint movie posters, what "Hunting", "Shangganling", "Tunnel Warfare", I have painted.
In 1989, the second snow sculpture parade of Sun Island began, when the newspaper published an advertisement for the national snow sculpture competition on Sun Island to collect mass works. I immediately contacted a few friends to study the creation plan.
At that time, the snow sculptures were not as big as they are now, only one or two meters high, and the largest was no more than three meters. A total of more than 20 teams competed, each team had only three people, and it was required to be completed within three days. My entry is called "Grassland Divine Comedy", two people playing flutes back to back, and two sheep are carved underneath, symbolizing the yearning for a beautiful grassland life.
It was my first time competing, I was new to snow sculpture, the technique was naturally not very skilled, especially the shape of the snow was not particularly familiar, so I finally won a commemorative award.
Interviewee Snow Sculpture Master, Zhang Ningge.
Of course, I was a little disappointed not to get the ranking, but I was a character who did not accept defeat, and I had to think about it and study it thoroughly to learn anything. So when I went back, I started to study how to do the snow sculpture well. The next year, my work "Zhong Shen" won the only first prize in the competition.
In 1996, the Asian Winter Games were held in Harbin. I designed the work "Joy in Ninety-Six", which captures the instantaneous dynamics of three athletes on the ice rink, showing the passion of sports and the joy of victory. As a gift, my team and I challenged for the first time a large snow block five or six meters high. Because of the success of this work, soon Sun Island began to invite us to participate in the creation of large-scale main snow sculptures at the garden party.
In 2000, the Snow Sculpture Garden Fair was officially renamed as Sun Island International Snow Sculpture Art Fair.
Snow sculptures by Zhang Ningge and his team
Snow sculpture is an art that tests the artist's ability to shape, but it is also a manual work, so the team is very important.
Because they often participate in competitions and the circle is not large, several old partners who do snow sculpture have become familiar with each other over time. Everyone is also very good, so I began to think, why can't we form a team and do something for Sun Island together?
Therefore, Jia Shiyuan, Yin Xiaoshi, Dong Xiaobo... The four of us started mobilizing our friends and family. There are exhibitors of the Northeast Martyrs' Museum, drivers of heavy machinery factories, and owners of art clubs, although they all come from all walks of life, but in the winter, they put down their work and came to Sun Island to do snow sculptures, and the longest work has been 20 or 30 years.
To do snow sculptures, the team is very important.
Every year around December 20, we go to Sun Island to pile snow. Thirty or forty meters high, 100 meters long snow blocks, even thicker than buildings, it takes more than ten days to pile snow, and the real carving is only about 8 days.
Although there are small samples, flat drawings, calipers and other tools, the larger the scale of the snow sculpture, the more difficult it is to grasp the proportional relationship of each component, and it is not like painting to add, snow sculpture to do subtraction. Therefore, the experience and feeling of a snow sculptor is very important.
Snow carvers also have to overcome their fear of heights. People stand on the scaffolding more than ten meters high, glance at the bottom, if the eyes are dizzy, it is not OK.
It can sculpt details and make large materials.
Every time we do snow sculptures, at seven o'clock in the morning, we start to dry, until the sun goes down, and the snow sculptures that are more than ten meters high have to climb three or four times a day. After so many years, several of our old partners are in good health, and some of them are still on the front line in their sixties.
In 2006, the main sculpture of the 19th Sun Island Snow Expo, "Niagara Scenery", won the Guinness Book of World Record for the Longest Snow Sculpture. This is the first time in the 19 years since the Sun Island Snow Expo was held that it has won this award. In 2007, the 28-meter-tall Romantic Style won the title of Guinness's "Tallest Snow Sculpture".
In 2007, the 28-meter-tall Romantic Style won the title of Guinness's "Tallest Snow Sculpture".
From 5 meters, 10 meters, to explore 15 meters, 20 meters. Our tallest snow sculpture to date, Crown of Ice and Snow in 2015, is 51 meters tall, making it the tallest and largest snow sculpture in the world. An American carver came to visit the Snow Expo and was very amazed at how such a large snow sculpture we did.
This year, we combined the cartoon images of ice piers and snow melting, designed the main snow sculpture "Winter Olympics Sun Island Tour", and carved the second half of the snow sculpture with Harbin's famous city landmarks, such as Harbin Grand Theater, St. Sophia Church, etc., to welcome and celebrate the arrival of the Winter Olympics.
The main snow sculpture work of this year's Harbin Snow Expo, "Winter Olympics, Sun Island Tour", integrates Olympic elements. Visual China figure
Ice and snow culture has now become part of the Tradition of the Spring Festival in Harbin, and between the first and fifteenth days of the first year, a large number of tourists flock to Harbin to play on the ice and snow. For more than 30 years, while pursuing artistry, we have also pursued elegant and common appreciation, making Harbin's ice and snow more participatory and interesting, so that everyone can not only watch, but also interact with snow sculptures.
Not only can people watch, but also interact with the snow sculptures.
I happen to be 60 years old this year, and the average age of the snow carvers in our team is over 40 years old, and the proportion of young people is not much, which is indeed a bit broken. Because doing snow sculpture is still very hard, there is not much feedback, and now young people have more ways to entertain and choose more, and perhaps they may do snow sculpture in a virtual space in the future, which is not impossible.
But where does our attachment come from? Still love, deep affection for Harbin ice and snow culture. For me, doing snow sculptures on Sun Island is a happy thing.