Chinese ice workers carve frozen fantasies at National Harbor
Here beside the Potomac, Li, the head carver, and three dozen co-workers put in 12-hour days for a month.
OXON HILL, Maryland: Li Jiayan was chiselling an ice angel in a massive refrigerated tent at National Harbor. It was nine degrees. And he was feeling fine.
“We’re used to it,” said Li, a retired art teacher wearing snow boots he brought from home in China’s industrial north- east.
Back in Harbin, where temperatures can dip to 20 below, farmers pull frozen slabs from the Songhua River and carvers like Li turn them into 15- storey towers that make visitors to the city’s famed outdoor ice festival look like Lilliputians.
Here beside the Potomac, Li, the head carver, and three dozen co-workers put in 12-hour days for a month.
Working with two million pounds of clear and coloured ice trucked in from Ohio, they have crafted a frigid “Elizabeth, will you marry me?” sculpture – custom made for a just- departed White House worker planning to propose in the space the next day.
What drew the Chinese crews to the Gaylord National resort in suburban Maryland – and similar gigs in Orlando, Dallas and Nashville – was a mix of aspiration, adventure and cold cash.
They are the international carnies of the frozen-wonderland industry, fuelled by Yunyan brand cigarettes, dumplings rolled in an office trailer and an occasional splash of fiery “white alcohol.”
By spending a few months in the United States, then doing a similar carving stint in a warm Chinese city seeking to experience Harbin’s icy aesthetic, some of the workers earn enough in six months to cover a full year’s expenses.
Zhou Yubin, who’s been in the United States six times for ice duty, wielded a broad blade to scrape a jade- green dragon into shape.
Back in Harbin, he built a 20foot ice replica of Tibet’s grand Potala Palace, part of a vast constellation of glowing riverside creations, from towering Buddhas and pagodas to Disneyesque castles and Russian onion domes. For the exhibition here, which runs through New Year’s Day, Zhou crafted a toy factory.
Although the US version is a shrunken- down stand-in for creations back home, coaxing life from stacks of 300-plus-pound ice blocks remains a source of pride. “I made this!” he said.
The imported artisans generate a degree of awe among colleagues who share the 15,000- square-foot tent, which is insulated with foam walls and outfitted with chillers.
With piped-in bagpipes and Christmas carols wafting past a multicultural cast of smiling, hand-holding ice- children, Marciano Benjamin marveled at the workers, what they wrought – and what they can withstand.
“It’s like being in Alaska,” said Benjamin, a native of Jamaica who lives in Lanham, Maryland, and was trying to fight off the freeze with three shirts, two parkas and a blue scarf.
It was his first of seven 30- minute shifts that day guiding customers through the Gaylord’s “ICE!.
Benjamin has been in the cold for just a few weeks. Most of the Chinese workers have been at it for years. “They’re out of this world. Yeah, man. It’s creative,” he said. “It’s good work.”
The bulk of the workers returned home when the exhibition opened before Thanksgiving. —WP-Bloomberg