Snow Village in China
By admin on 2014-12-26

Shuangfeng Forestry Center, also called Snow Village, is located in Hailin Prefecture, Heilongjiang, a four-hour driver west of the city of Hailin. In recent years, its fame has brown by leaps and bounds as it has won a number of international awards for its incomparable scenery. The novel Tracks in the Snowy Forest, which tells the tale of Yang Zirong taking Tiger Mountain by strategy and liberating Jiapigou, was set in this area.

Snow Village has a unique geographical setting. When raise your head, all you see is trees. This is the home of red and white pines, and it contains a 297-hectaure primeval red pine forest whose trees average 400 years old and more than 30 meters high. The wind soughs through the forest like thunder, setting the verdant trees in motion. The Hailang River, the largest tributary of the Mudan River, has its source here, pouring forth in a constant flow. In the summer people come here for rafting, camping, exploring the forest, and gathering mountain flora. In the winter, this is the best place for people to go skiing or otherwise enjoy the snow and watch professional skiers perform.

Snow Village’s climate is affected by the nearby mountains, and every winter it starts to snow early and accumulates to depth of about two meters. The snow season lasts nearly seven months there, and it is widely agreed that it gets the most snow of any place in China. One reason Snow Village is so famous is because the quality of the snow is excellent. Cold air from Siberia  mixed with warm air from the Sea of Japan to form translucent, wet snow that accumulates around the objects underneath like endless variety of mushrooms and gives a distinctive cast to houses built in the traditional local style. Here, you can not only personally experience the charms of snow but also deeply appreciate the feeling the locals have of living with the snow, relying on it for their livelihood and being totally surrounded by a pure white landscape.

Snow Village, where the forestry center is located, is very small, and if you go there in winter, you can see only one road covered in snow. All the village streets are regularly shoveled clean, with walls of snow rising on either side. They’re very narrow and wind around past everyone’s home. The vehicles in the village include trucks ofr hauling lumber as well as horse-drawn sleighs and dogsleds. Most of the people in the village are employees of the forestry center and their families. For the most part they no longer rely on lumbering for a living, but spend most of their time gardening and offering hospitality to tourists. When tourists come to Snow Village, the locals warmly welcome them into their homes, where the tourists are served natural food grown locally, sleep on heated brick beds that are distinctive feature of homes in Northeast China, and get taken to see the sight in dogsleds. Visitors are always mesmerized by the fresh, crisp air after a snowstorm and the simple and pure temperament of the local people.

The homes in Snow Village are all old wooden houses, and when it snows, they look like short stout mushrooms that just sprung up, standing there lazily. The houses all have a small garden right out the door surrounded by a picket fence that follows a line like in a freehand charcoal drawing. When the residents hang their silver coats on the pickets to dry, they look like ice cream bars about to melt and the bare pickets between the clothes by contrast look like cakes. Strolling through Snow Village looking at the snow mushrooms, cakes and ice cream bars, you get the feeling of being transported into a painting of winter landscape. Snow Village looks even more beautiful at night. The villagers all hang large red lanterns from the eaves of their houses, and the light from the lanterns magically transforms the landscape so it seems like clouds have descended from the sky and are floating all around.