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A Big Wall Falls in China to Make Room for Mickey

米老鼠走进哈尔滨冰灯节

For decades, locals in this frigid outpost south of Siberia shaved and chipped and hacked away at big blocks of ice to create China’s most popular wintertime tourist attraction.

几十年来，这方南西伯利亚寒地的冰雕艺术创造了中国最受欢迎的冬季游览胜地。

Rising among the barren trees, the sculptures of the Harbin Ice Lantern Festival took the shapes of iconic Chinese monuments: the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, sacred Buddhist mountains.

在光秃的树丫间，哈尔滨冰灯节的雕塑颇具中国特色：长城，紫禁城，神圣的佛教名山。

They took those shapes, that is, until this winter, when in sauntered Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Winnie the Pooh.

冰雕的造型诸如此类，直到这个冬天，米奇老鼠，唐老鸭和维尼熊走进了冰灯节。

What is perhaps the world’s most famous ice festival has become another of the world’s Disney theme parks, with a Disney licensing company taking over operations from the local Communist government. It is the first time a private company has run the ice festival.

随着一家迪士尼授权公司从共产党政府中接手了冰灯节的操办，这个世界上最著名的冰灯节可能会变成另外一个迪士尼主题公园。这是首次由私人公司操办冰灯节。

Snow White has replaced snow dragons. Children wander through the frozen hallways of Aladdin’s Castle instead of a Qing dynasty palace. “It’s a Small World” plays in one corner of the park. (What better theme music for globalization?)

白雪公主替代了龙。孩子们穿梭于阿拉丁神殿的走廊之间，而非身置清代宫殿之中。公园的角落播放着“世界真小”。（还有比这更好的全球化主题曲吗？）

“It was too stodgy,” Qi Juwei, 51, the organizer of this year’s event, said of the old festival. “You can’t keep putting the same light in the same block of ice.”

“以前的活动太平庸了，”今年活动的组织者51岁的齐居伟（音译）说。“你忍不住想把同一盏灯放在同一块冰上。”

Mr. Qi is a native of Harbin who immigrated to Japan in the 1990s. (His legal Japanese name is Saito Miyori.) At age 12, he stood here in Zhaolin Park and marveled at an ice replica of the Yellow Crane Tower, an ancient pagoda. A few years ago, as vice president of Rendez-Vous, a Shanghai-based company that licenses Disney products in Asia, he gazed across the park and imagined workers stacking blocks of ice to build Cinderella’s castle, Mickey’s house and a Pirates of the Caribbean frigate.

齐先生是哈尔滨本地人，90年代时移居日本（日文名字Saito Miyori）。12岁时，他曾对兆麟公园的冰雕黄鹤楼啧啧称奇。几年前，作为Rendez-Vous（一家以上海为基地，经授权在亚洲销售迪士尼产品的公司）的副主管，他在兆麟公园流连忘返，想象着工人们雕刻出灰姑娘的城堡，米奇老鼠的家和加勒比海盗。

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The first ice lantern festival was held in Zhaolin Park in 1963. It became an annual tradition, with sculptures eventually supplanting lanterns, though the festival halted for several years during the Cultural Revolution. The event was so popular that it inspired two larger copycat ice and snow festivals on the outskirts of town.

首次兆麟公园冰灯节于1963年举行，自此之后变成每年的传统（雕刻渐渐取代了冰灯），在文化大革命时间断过。这个活动如此受欢迎，它带动了郊区另外两个更大的冰灯节的举行。

The one in Zhaolin Park is now in its 35th season, and it is a far cry from the days of candles flickering in ice lanterns. The Cinderella castle has an escalator running up and an ice slide running down. The entire park glows pink and blue and yellow from neon tubes in the sculptures. A Ferris wheel dominates the skyline.

这是兆麟公园的第三十五届冰灯节，冰块里闪烁的烛光已成为历史遥远的记忆。灰姑娘的城堡里，自动扶梯慢慢攀升，冰滑梯顺势直下。整个公园沉浸在冰雕内粉蓝黄的氖灯光里，摩天轮划过天际。

The Disney sculptures were created over a two-week period. Workers began hauling chunks of ice out of the Songhua River on Dec. 6. At the start, when the ice is thinner, the blocks weigh more than 850 pounds. As the ice thickens during the winter, the blocks can weigh up to twice that.

迪士尼雕塑的完成花了超过两周的时间。工人们自12月6号就开始从松花江里搬运冰块。这时候，冰还比较薄，但也超过850磅。随着冰在严冬里逐渐变厚，冰块可以变成原来的两倍大。

A ticket costs $15, almost double what it was last year. That is expensive by Chinese standards, but the festival is still a big draw, with an average of 3,000 attendees per day. On a recent night, when temperatures dipped below minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit, thousands of people streamed in.

门票15美元，几乎是去年的两倍。这对中国人来说算是比较昂贵了，但是冰灯节深得人心，平均每天约有3,000名游客前来游玩。最近某个晚上，当温度达到零下4华氏度时（-20℃，译者注），数千人鱼贯而入。

“This is beautiful,” said Li Jing, 22, a university student wearing fake cat ears who posed for a photo beneath a picture of Tigger on an ice wall. “It brings my childhood memories back. I watched a lot of cartoons when I was young, like Winnie the Pooh.”

“这些太美了，”22岁的大学生李静（音译）说，她戴着假猫耳朵与一只冰墙上的跳跳虎合影。“这让我找回了儿时的回忆，小时候我看了很多像维尼熊之类的动画片。”

People coming to see more Chinese-themed sculptures now have to go to one of the two festivals north of the city, both run by the government or a state-owned enterprise. The older of the two was founded 15 years ago and has giant snow sculptures — a central piece this year is a replica of the Olympic stadium known as the Bird’s Nest. The other festival, The World of Ice and Snow, is only 10 years old, but has become the biggest and most popular of the three.

想要看到更多中国主题的冰雕，就要选择城市北部另外两个冰灯节之一了。那两个都是政府或者国有企业主办的。其中一个建立于15年前，有巨型冰雕——今年的压轴作品是奥林匹克体育场，也就是众所周知的鸟巢。另外一个——冰天雪地，仅仅建立了10年，但是已经成为三个中最大也最受欢迎的一个。

The same size as Tiananmen Square, it is several times larger than the one in Zhaolin Park. It took 12,500 people to create the sculptures. It has soaring ice cathedrals with flashing lights, a gargantuan snow Buddha and an outdoor skating musical with an actor dressed as Uncle Sam.

与天安门广场的面积相同，它比兆麟公园的冰灯节规模大得多。12,500人参与冰雕的制作。其中，带着闪烁灯光的冰雕大教堂与日俱增。公园里还有一座大型的冰雕佛陀和户外溜冰音乐剧，演员着装颇似山姆大叔。