Xi'an May 2002
    Update
   Church
   Terracotta soldiers
   The Nestorian tablet

A friend and I took advantage of a few days between the end of classes and the Amity winter conference to go to Harbin, in far north China, near the Russian border. So pervasive is the Russian influence in architecture and culture, just about the only items in the many souvenir shops were Russian goods, such as the nested dolls, fur hats, Russian chocolate, gilded mirror compacts, and tools. The main attraction in Harbin in the winter is the ice lantern festival, which began some years ago by cutting blocks of ice from the frozen Songhua River, and building huge, lighted structures. I think the ice blocks are manufactured these years, but the festival goes on.

Another park contained snow sculptures made from compressed blocks of snow. There was so little snow in Harbin this year, all the snow for the sculptures was man-made. Nevertheless, they were very impressive. The bottom photo is a man-made mountain and boat on a frozen lake.