Downtown ice sculpture show offers a cool cultural treat

Iced over

What: Harbin Ice Lantern Show.

When: 1 to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday; 1 to 11 p.m. Saturday; closed Sunday.

Where: 129 1/2 N. Third St.

Cost: $15 general admission; $12 for local residents and seniors.

Information: Call 889-8918.

It's the coldest show in town, baby!

Near the bright lights of the Fremont Street Experience sits the new cultural exhibit from China, the "Harbin Ice Lantern Show," an intricately carved, larger-than-life ice sculpture that took more than a dozen men and 600 blocks of ice to complete. All in the largest refrigerated room in Las Vegas.

"It's minus 1 degrees in here to keep the (form) of the ice," Philip Chy Zhang, spokesman for the ice show, said.

And it's the experience of the art in the room that makes it so cool.

Dragons guard the frosted arched entrance with inlaid neon lights. Warriors wait in regal fashion beside their fallen ruler, a replica of the ancient grave long ago uncovered in Northern China. A corridor winds through lions, temples and a 20-foot slide in the shape of the Great Wall of China, which makes for merriment in the middle of the tour.

"It's a cultural opportunity, unique to Las Vegas," Zhang said after cautiously sliding down the frosted wall into a pile of rubber inner tubes. "Instead of traveling thousands of miles to China, tourists can come to Las Vegas and experience this art."

The white building with the silver steel doors took six months, 450 tons of specially designed ice blocks and $1.6 million to build. More than 600 blocks of clear and frosted ice were shipped in from California to create the cold maze. Blue and red neon tubes shine from beneath thick walls of ice, giving the room a soft glow.

"The crystal clear (ice) is the most expensive," Zhang said, pointing to perfectly sheer ice stacked 10 feet above his head. "It takes a special (process) to make sure it's perfect."

Although Las Vegas has yet to warm to the concept, the ice show is a popular exhibit in China, with whole parks donated to the art form. The dozen sculptures at the Las Vegas exhibit were chosen for their symbolic nature and as a nod to Chinese culture.

"The corridor represents what Chinese have in every house, it brings good luck, energy," Zhang said.

Near the entrance, a smiling man plays what looks to be a wind chime, and a gold plaque explains the 8-foot sculpture.

"It's (a copy of) one of the oldest musical instruments from ancient China," Zhang said. "It's hard to translate into English."

But the amount of work and care that was put into the hand-tooled sculpting is not hard to understand. "The artists worked in T-shirts and jeans, just comfortable like that," Zhang said. "It's amazing."

The 18 artists from Harbin, a city of more than 2.5 million in Northern China, arrived in Las Vegas during the sweltering summer and spent the last seven months in the minus-1 degree Celsius building and molded the ice into symbolic works of art for public display.

The artists are accustomed to working in minus-30 degrees Celsius in Harbin and laugh when the cold temperature is mentioned. "We are used to it," Zai Chun, an ice sculptor from Harbin, said through an interpreter.

Chun and his colleagues are part of 4,000 esteemed ice sculptors in China who make entire cities out of ice and charge admission to view them. "It's not a task, it's something we love to do like any artist, painter," he said of the art form. "I like creating, turning a simple block of ice into a work of art."

The ice art form is a tradition in Harbin and an annual show since 1963. Each year the artists have tried to outdo themselves, decorating entire city blocks with an ice shell of ancient arches, temples and structures.

On a recent afternoon Zhang gave a tour of the exhibit, placing his coffee on a two-foot high wall of carved ice with no damage done to the thick structure.

"It's cold in here, to keep the ice (forms), but it's interesting," Zhang said. "People can come in from the heat of the desert and see all this."

Zhang bought 500 durable long coats for guests to wear during the 15-minute tour, offering a more comfortable glimpse into a different culture and intricate art form.

"There is a lot to see," Zhang said. "You have to look at everything and see the detail."

Against a far wall, a faux forest draped in ice creates a serene backdrop.

"They use real tree branches, tie them up and spray them with water," Zhang said. "To get the forest feel they spray the water continually for three or four days and it freezes as it falls."

Zhang says that he thinks that the large refrigerated building, built on the Fremont Hotel's employee parking lot behind the casino, is well placed for exposure.

The Fremont Street Experience pulls in between 3,000 and 7,000 people per show, Zhang claimed. That may be exaggerated, but the Fremont Street Experience does attract tourists and creates a pool of people right outside the front door of the ice show.

"If we draw 10 percent of that, we'll get 2,000 people (a day) easy," Zhang said.

Above all, Zhang added, he hopes that tourists and locals will stop and experience the intricate beauty of another culture's art as they meander through the downtown Experience.

"That's what Las Vegas is missing," Zhang said: "More cultural exhibits."

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