The village is dressed in a gorgeous coat by the brilliant fireworks, revealing kind of mystery that used to appearing in a dream.
The snow in the village has great mucosity. Once it snows, some sticks to the eaves, gradually accumulating to a mass of cream, with others floating around with wind, turning out to be the mushrooms on the stakes or other animals.
Those are not big plums! Pears are nearly black because of the freezing weather, and being put in cold water is necessary before eating, which makes them a specialty of the northeast China.
A big flake of snow is as soft as a piece of goose feather, spiraling and floating down in the mid-air. If lucky enough, it would be taken to the village of snow, where makes it possible to stay unmelted for 7 months. The village of snow has long ago dressed in splendid silver white attire when most of the northern China experiences temperature dropping with no snow. You won't really realize it until you yourself have the experience in the village that it is the place owning the heaviest snow in China.
Who Is It That Creates the Kingdom of Snow?
In the January of 2007, the snow on the streets of Harbin, which fell not long ago, had been thoroughly melted, and that added doubt to me whether there would be snow in the legendary village of snow.
The car bumped in the deep jungle. We were in the place named Dahailin, a part of Changbai Mountainrange, located in the southward slope of Zhangguangcai Mountain. Zhangguangcai Mountain, which can be clearly seen in the geographical map, is with zonal distribution from northeast to southwest, stretching to Jilin Province. I called in my mind the name of Dahailin, while the birches and the Korean pine flitted by the car. The village of snow is just hidden in the depth of the jungle that is as broad as sea.
The temperature in the mountain was obviously lower than that in the city. The snow that fell several days ago was still unmelted. Though the white melting snow had already made me excited, the driver told us it hardly counted compared with the village of snow, which was quite another world! Sure enough, when the car took another turn, the world of white suddenly extended, as if shouting to us, "Welcome to the kingdom of snow!"
The eaves made of snow that bulged from each house's eave was the first thing catching my eye. They were just like Disney's shops during the Christmas that as if you could buy the decorations for Christmas tree such as pompons and magic wands, as long as you went inside them. The snow eaves were about one to two centimeters in breadth, and more than ten centimeters in depth, stretching out of the eaves for dozens of centimeters without dropping down, which strongly resembled the thick cream wrapping the birthday cake, licking my chops. The most interesting thing was that some of the snow eaves could turn a corner in the mid-air, bending down to the ground and mixing with the snow accumulating on the ground. That muffled houses up and made them a complete snowscape.
It snows little outside the village, and it is even hard to find any trace of snow, while the village of snow is all covered with falling snow, just like the big clothespress in The Chronicles of Narnia, a magical film, in which a frozen world is just hidden behind the clothes. Who on earth creates the miracle? Geographers unveil the truth:
Actually, the village of snow has an average altitude of more than 800 meters, higher than the areas around, forming a certain gradient. Plus Laotudingzi, the highest mountain in Heilongjiang Province, owning the altitude of 1,686.9 meters, together with Yangcao Mountain nearby, surrounds three sides of the village. There meets the Siberian cold snap from north and the warm and wet current of the Japanese Sea from south frequently, while warm currents from the ocean are obstructed by the two mountains, so is the dust outside the mountains. Hence the heaviest snow in the village of snow, and the record of snowfall hit two meters! In terms of geography, the situation is called "microclimate".