You may know of Harbin’s ice lanterns and ice engraving, famous all over the word. However, do you know about the ice sculpture carvers?

More than 100 ice engravers recently came to learn carving skills at Heilongjiang University in Harbin. Some of them are from well-known families of carvers, others still are students pursuing their degrees at university and some are sculpture teachers returning from abroad.

They will listen to classes given by sculpture masters and exchange ideas about the art. Their work will be displayed at Zhaolin Park.

"I have seen snow only twice in my life, but it melts quickly,” said Zhao Liang from Kunming, Yunnan province.

Zhao came to Heilongjiang University to attend the training program for artistic designers of ice lanterns and ice sculptures. He is one of the students in the program whose hometown is the farthest from Harbin.

Zhao’s father and grandfather are also engravers and he played in a stone carving workshop during his childhood.

"I intentionally applied for the training program,” said Zhao, “I summited my materials in June and was expecting to be chosen for the program to have a tour in Harbin.”

"I was so excited the day I answered a phone call, telling me that I was enrolled into the program,” he said.

"Cold weather is a challenge for me, but I also want my work to be displayed in Harbin this winter,” he added.

As one of only two females chosen for the program, Qu Yingtian, a student from Shanghai University, said that she is a Harbin native, and she likes ice lanterns very much.

"I wish to learn as much ice sculpture carving technology as I can,” she said, “I will try to hold an ice lantern sculpture exhibition in Shanghai to show ice and snow sculptures to people from South China.”

"We would like to take this opportunity to promote Harbin’s ice lanterns to the world,” said Yu Yan, chief of the program for artistic designers of ice lanterns and ice sculptures.

The ice engraving called “Guard” ("Shouhu literally in Chinese”) at the 35 national profession ice engraving competition in China. [Photo/my399.com]

The first prize work for the seventh International Students Snow Sculpture Competition [Photo/my399.com]