Chinese ice sculpting: Cool new experience for downtown

Erin Neff

Tuesday, Sept. 14, 1999 | 11:11 a.m.

Dwindling entertainment options downtown may have put a chill on revitalization talk, but a colder reception will be welcome for one new artistic endeavor near the Fremont Street Experience.

A world-renowned Chinese art exhibit, The Harbin Ice Lantern Show, will open in a few weeks in a new 10,000-square-foot building behind the Fremont hotel-casino on Ogden Avenue.

Visitors will get a reprieve from more than the afternoon desert heat with the zero degree temperature inside. The artisans sculpting huge blocks of ice into magical glowing art will offer a break from the neon, clanging slot machines and cheap drinks hawked a block away.

"Instead of people traveling thousands of miles, they will get a chance to see this right here in Las Vegas," said Philip Chy Zhang, general manager of Planet China Inc. -- the local company bringing the Harbin show to town.

Planet China Inc., a privately held subsidiary of the China-based Regent Industry & Commerce, doesn't plan this exhibit to be temporary.

"If it's successful, we'd like to keep it there long term," Zhang said.

Harbin, China, has been the cradle of the Chinese art of snow ice sculpture since the first artisans began chipping away at ice blocks for public display in 1963.

The Harbin Ice Lantern Development Co. has taken exhibits of the art form to France, Singapore, Mexico and Canada, and had a smaller-scale version of the exhibit on display in Anaheim, Calif., in 1997.

"But they didn't do it to the potential they're capable of," Zhang said.

In Las Vegas the show will have more space and a better location to draw in the thousands of tourists who come to the Fremont Street Experience each night.

"We think it'll be a great addition to the downtown environment," Fremont Street Experience President Mark Paris said. "It'll give tourists another nongaming option."

His company is also looking to build a 30,000-square-foot building to encompass both the ice lantern exhibit and a public ice skating rink in the future. Eventually, Planet China hopes to offer tourists a Chinese garden, a Chinese food bazaar and authentic souvenir shops peddling arts and crafts from China's 30 provinces.

For now, Planet China has spent $450,000 building a state-of-the-art freezer that takes up a whole city block.

When the exhibit opens -- sometime around Oct. 1 -- tourists will be given a huge winter parka to wear while they tour the building and watch the artisans at work. General admission will be $15, with discounts available to senior citizens, school groups and special tours.

sculptors, engineers and administrators who will be running the show are awaiting receipt of the necessary visas. Everyone from Sen. Harry Reid to Mayor Oscar Goodman have been writing letters urging immigration officials to clear the way for the artisans to come.

"They'll get them, it's just a matter of when," Zhang said.

Immigration requirements aren't the toughest problem to solve before the exhibit opens, however.

There's the difficult matter of getting 2,300 blocks of ice weighing 300 pounds each into the desert.

In China, artisans sculpt the natural ice blocks from the Songhua River. In Las Vegas show officials are trying to decide whether to buy their clear sculpting ice from Canada or build a separate warehouse to produce the ice themselves.

Once the ice blocks cometh, the artisans will spend anywhere from 15 to 20 days sculpting them.

A total of 200 to 300 sculptures will be on display. About nine of them will be typical of the large outdoor sculptures found in China.

Some of those ice sculptures have taken the form of the Great Wall, the Sanhay Gate and St. Sofia's Church. When the display is outdoors in Zhaolin Park in Harbin, it includes slides for children and steps for visitors to climb.

Indoors, the exhibit will include colored fluorescent lightbulbs inside the ice.