FOR ENGLISH FANS: Ice festival builds frozen cityscape in north-east China

Saturday 4 January 2014

Ice festival builds frozen cityscape in north-east China

Artists and workers make their final touches to monolithic ice sculptures on Saturday ahead of an annual international ice festival in Harbin, north-east China. This year's festival has been constructed on a larger scale than last year to mark the event's 30th anniversary. With sculptors and labourers working around the clock, organisers claim they used over 180,000 square metres of ice and 150,000 square metres of snow.

Outstanding! Really!

Source: Reuters
Length: 1min 43sec
theguardian.com
Saturday 4 January 2014

In these stunning photographs the festival's amazing sculptures are seen illuminated from the inside after night has fallen - with visitors meandering in between the impressive works.

Those who attend the event can navigate the ice cities on foot or via the festival's horse and carriage rides. As well as walking around and marvelling in awe at the colourful creations, they can also zip down snowy slides or climb up the staircases of ice castles and investigate what's inside.

The Harbin Ice and Snow Festival is one of the world's top ice festivals.

Ice to see you, to see you ice! The scultpures are illuminated from the inside with complex, computer-controlled LED systems

It was suspended for some time during the Cultural Revolution, then it started up again - finally, in 1999, the city government started the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival.

At first its clientele was mainly Chinese, but in the last few years it has become an international festival and competition attracting people from all over the world.

The growth of the festival has been in tandem with the continued growth of China's economy, which in turn has contributed to the magnitude of the snow sculptures and ice architecture.

How did they do that? This impressive skyline was made from blocks of ice measuring up to three feet wide

Last year, tens of thousands of people laboured on the displays, which include world record-sized snow sculptures - some longer than two football fields, while other monuments measure up to 50 metres tall (160ft high).

They all use technologically sophisticated equipment with computer controlled LED and regular lighting creating the stunning displays of colour seen in all of these photos.

Of course, with such rapid growth this year's event is touted as being one of the biggest so far.

Slippery slope: Visitors are dwarfed by the giant ice architecture

From the Guardin and the Daily Mail online

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Who am I?

My name is Maria Dulce Branquinho and I teach English in a school not far from Lisbon. I 've been teaching for 35 years now. I love teaching and I love my pupils. I'm very concerned about the environmental problems, namely pollution, animals' rights, species in extinction and everything related to our planet's health or the lack of it.

One of the aims of this blog is to give people, especially my pupils the opportunity to know what's going around the world. Of course I only choose news I think can interest them because they´re odd or are, in some extent extraordinary. The other aim is to provide my students with exercises they can try to practice the English language and be able to improve it. I hope you all like my blog. Don't be shy and leave your comments or if you want you may become one of this blog's followers.

Agatha Christie's short biography

Agatha Christie was born in 1890, the youngest of three children in a conservative, well-to-do family. Her father was called Frederick Miller so she was born as Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller. She was educated at home and studied singing in Paris.

In 1914, at the age of 24, she married Archie Christie, a World War I fighter pilot. While he was off at war, she worked as a nurse. It was while working in a hospital during the war that Christie first came up with the idea of writing a detective novel. Although it was completed in a year, it wasn't published until 1920.

In 1926, Agatha made news herself when she disappeared for a few days after her husband wanted a divorce. She was soon found to be staying in a hotel under an alias. Her disappearance is still a mystery! She and Archibald divorced in 1928.

She fell in love with Max Mallowan, a young archaeologist whom she met on a trip to Mesopotamia and married in 1930 and Agatha Christie became Agatha Christie Mallowan. In 1971 she was awarded the high honor of becoming a Dame of the British Empire.

Agatha Christie ultimately became the acknowledged Queen of the Golden Age. She wrote nearly seventy novels in her career and more than a hundred short stories. Her most famous characters are Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Agatha Christie also wrote six romantic novels under the name Mary Westmacott. Several of her works were made into successful feature films, the most notable being Murder on the Orient Express (1974). Agatha's plays have also made her famous and her best known play, The Mousetrap, is most likely the best known mystery play in the world. Her work has been translated into more than a hundred languages. In short, she is the single most popular mystery writer of all time.

Agatha Christie died in 12 January 1976, two years after Max Mallowan died.

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Mª Dulce Branquinho

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Saturday 4 January 2014

Ice festival builds frozen cityscape in north-east China

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