Ice blocks in Harbin are stored for a year without melting

Harbin, a northern city in China, becomes an enchanting ice and snow world built from ice blocks every winter. This year, the overall planned area of the Ice and Snow World is 810,000 square meters, the largest scale in its history. With 250,000 cubic meters of ice and snow, over a thousand ice and snow landscapes have been created.

As a tradition, during the ice harvesting construction period of the previous year, an additional batch of good-quality ice is selected for storage each year in Harbin. These ice blocks will be stored outdoors for nearly a year, and even after the hot summer, the ice will not melt.

What kind of ice can be of good quality? The water must be cure, and the ice blocks are slightly blue. They are the essential materials for building the Harbin Ice and Snow World in the coming year.

The ice used in the Ice and Snow World comes from the natural ice of the Songhua river. As winter arrives, the areas along the banks, where the water flow is slow, begin to freeze. With the temperature dropping, the frozen area expands until the river is completely frozen. When the ice surface freezes to the center of the river, the color of the harvested ice becomes blue, indicating its purity.

After harvesting the ice from the river, ice harvesters will immediately transport it to the ice inspection site. Qualified ice blocks are then sent to the ice storage site. The traditional ice storage method is combined with modern multi-layer insulation technology.

A heat-insulating layer is placed between the ground and the ice, and insulation materials such as thermal insulation cotton and straw are applied. Sufficient warm quilts allow the ice to be preserved like being covered in a large quilt. Suitable storage conditions, including low temperature, light avoidance, heat insulation, and sealing, keep the ice blocks below 0°C, causing only a minimal loss even at summer temperatures exceeding 30°C.

Source: CCTV News; trans-editing by Wang Yunya