A slightly longer version of this story appeared in the Post-Star
today.

This one came from:
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0312china-
ice0312.html

A link for the Harbin China Winter Festival is:
http://www.rtoddking.com/chinawin2005_hb_if.htm


China swimmers hit the ice
Performers splash into holes during winter tourist show

Audra Ang
Associated Press
Mar. 12, 2006 12:00 AM

HARBIN, China - It's so cold it hurts to breathe, but Wu Jing wears
only a purple swimsuit and ruby-red high heels as she struts around
a pool cut into river ice 2 feet thick.

In minutes, she will join a dozen other swimmers in the frigid
Songhua River, part of a twice-daily show where performers ham it up
on diving boards made of ice blocks covered in hemp sacks before
splashing into an 80-foot by 30-foot hole cut into the ice.

Wu waves to warmly dressed people who paid the equivalent of $3.50
each to watch the show. It's zero degrees Fahrenheit under the
morning sun. advertisement




"How are you today?" she calls, smiling and tossing her long black
hair as the spectators snap photos. "Welcome!"

Harbin is a hot destination when it's cold, drawing millions of
tourists each year to a winter festival whose highlights include
replicas of world monuments modeled out of ice. Think Arc de
Triomphe and Big Ben look-alikes.

There's an ice carving competition, a Siberian tiger park, sledding
and a restaurant made of ice, where customers cook meat and
vegetables in boiling broth at the table.

Then there's ice swimming in the Songhua.

Winter swimming began in China in the late 1940s and has
unexpectedly taken off, said Lin Senlin of the China National
Swimming Association's Winter Swimming Committee. He said there are
now about 200,000 registered amateur ice swimmers in China, mostly
retirees, although there are likely more unofficial participants.

"It's become more and more popular each year," Lin said.

The purported health benefits are the main draw, he
asserted: "Through practice, diseases like high blood pressure and
heart disease can be eased, even cured."

There are annual winter swimming championships and even
international competitions that spotlight interest in ice swimming
in parts of the United States, Canada, Finland and Russia.

Unlike other Chinese and foreign cities where people get together
informally for "polar bear swims," there's a fee to watch the
swimmers in Harbin.

With an announcer yelling a running commentary through a megaphone,
the show is short - and a bit anticlimactic.

The swimmers, mostly aged 50 to 70, jog out from a rundown building,
stretching and flailing their arms. Some wear white swim caps with
the Chinese flag. Others have canvas shoes and rubber gloves.

One by one, they jump, dive or slowly climb down a ladder into the
water. They dip their faces in, blowing and sputtering like whales.

They climb out after swimming a length or two, staying in a minute
and a half at the most. And the show is over.

The Harbin swimmers perform between December and March, and are paid
75 cents for each show. One of the rare times the show was disrupted
was in November, when a toxic chemical spill polluted the Songhua,
forcing officials to cut off running water to the city for five days.

Wu Jing, the 52-year-old "Queen of Ice Swimming," said the activity
helped her get over a divorce and realize her dream of being in the
spotlight.

"At first, it helped me to get rid of my bad mood. Then I felt it
was good for my health and good for society," said Wu, who wears
thick mascara and a slash of bright red lipstick.

She said she got her nickname from Russian ice swimmers when she
beat them in a competition in the 1990s.

For 78-year-old Fan Xuetong, ice swimming is the best way to "raise
the body's resistance."