Development of Ice Lantern

Although the ice lantern has a long history, it takes a long time to rely on garden art, take architecture and sculpture as the means of expression and take cultural consumption as the purpose. According to its purpose, the ice lantern has gone through three stages: its practical stage, its folk entertainment stage and its art consumption stage.

In winter, in order to avoid the long cold night, residents in cold areas are used to closing windows with wooden boards, which can not only block the snow, but also keep out the cold. On a moonless night, people who go out and come home late easily get lost. They need light to tell them where to go. To this end, those who go out use the oil lamps commonly used at home to point out the direction at the door of their own yard. In order to prevent the candles from being blown out by the wind, they used ice cubes or buckets to hold water and freeze it into ice, and then hollowed out the center of the ice cubes to put oil lamps. This folk custom can't be found in ancient books, not only because there is no attention from scholars, but also because oil consumption is rarely used to solve the problem of indicating direction. But it can be inferred that when oil lamps are used as night lighting, ice lamps may appear.

The purpose of ice lanterns in this period is to show the practical purpose of orientation. At this time, the ice lamp is as simple as an inverted ice bucket.

In the stage of folk entertainment ice lanterns, according to Li's research, there was a record of "ice net lanterns" in the late Ming Dynasty, and people used ice lanterns to celebrate the festival of "the fifteenth day of the first month". Although the ice lanterns in this period are similar to those in the folk practical period in terms of luminous energy, they are entertaining in purpose. Due to the participation of the rich, people and animals appear in the form of ice lanterns, which are much larger than "ice buckets". However, due to the limitation of oxygen required for oil lamp combustion, its volume is bound to be very small.

The art consumption period of ice lanterns began on the 14th day of the first lunar month in 1963, and its appearance in Harbin was not accidental. Its creators are not only the secretary and mayor of the municipal party committee at the decision-making level, but also the Municipal Construction Committee and the municipal trade union at the organizational level, as well as the park personnel at the design and construction level, the professional team of gardeners and sculptors, and the general public at the consumer level.

In the form of providing light energy, electric lamps are used, that is, fluorescent lamps with less heat release are used. At this time, the ice lamp does not need oxygen to support combustion, and the scales of the ice lamp have been broken.

In terms of artistic source, it absorbed both garden art and sculpture art, thus introducing round force, straight force and wrestling into the production tools, and combining with the physical properties of ice, adding tools such as chainsaw and flat shovel.

Yu Guangyuan, a well-known economist in China, believes that since the ice lantern art came into being, Harbin's winter has become a tourist season. The success of this innovative move comes from three factors: the first is to use local materials, the second is the mass base, and the third is the professional team.

From the above analysis, it can be concluded that modern ice lantern art has four characteristics of organic combination.

First of all, it is the product of the organic combination of China traditional culture and northeast regional folklore. In China, there is a tradition of "Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first month", while there is a custom of ice lanterns in Northeast China, so the combination of hatchbacks is natural.

Secondly, it is the product of the organic combination of garden art and sculpture art. The artistic charm of the ice lantern lies in the diversity of its artistic sources, not mechanical copying, but mastery.

Furthermore, it is an organic combination of ancient ice and modern civilization. Ice is cold, light is hot, they should be at odds, but in the art of ice lanterns, they complement each other, but you have me, which is rare in other kinds of art.

Finally, the river flows through the organic structure of the city and urban culture. The river that flows through Harbin is Songhua River. It is this river that provides an inexhaustible source of ice for Harbin to make ice lanterns. Although modern technology can be used to hold indoor ice lantern art exhibitions in tropical Malaysia and other cities, because the ice is artificial, the technology is still not as transparent as the ice in Songhua River. This is what we call one man's soil and water. Legend has it that a long time ago, every winter night, on the Songnen Plain, people always saw groups of farmers and fishermen leisurely feeding horses for fishing. The lighting tools they used were lanterns made of ice. This is the earliest ice lamp. At that time, the process of making ice lanterns was also very simple. Put the water into a wooden bucket and freeze it into ice cubes, hollow it out, and put an oil lamp in it for lighting. The ice blocked the cold wind, and there was an immortal lamp in the darkness. Ice lanterns have become an indispensable helper in people's lives. Later, during the Spring Festival and the night of Shangyuan, people decorated it, which became a unique artistic expression for people to watch. The Qing Dynasty's "The Story of Heilongjiang" recorded this in detail: "Shangyuan, the city was brightly lit for five nights, and the village women came to see the play, and the car rang all night. Carved five or six feet of ice for the birthday lamp, with two torches in the middle, which looks like a crystal man. " At that time, ice lanterns appeared in some places in the south. During the years of Qianlong and Jiaqing, Zhang Wentao, a Sichuan poet, wrote a poem about ice lanterns, named Ice Lantern. The poem says: "When the night is cold, the ice lamp emits a long flame. According to the heat, the chisel leaks cold light. The shadow is wet and the stars are heavy, and the moon is clear. Three winters are full of literature and history, and the bottom is used to explore fireflies. " When Jin Derong, a Nanjing poet, was detained in Barkun, Xinjiang, he also lamented in his ancient poem "Song of Ice Lantern in Barkun": "Snow Mountain meets Tianshan Mountain, and there is eternal snow on it. The north wind turns into ice overnight, and the snow is turned into ice by skillful hands. Alum won't melt in ice, but candles will glow on ice. It is bright within five miles and can be taught for half a month day and night. The bright moon shines in the sky, and ten thousand people enter the Crystal Palace. "