Merrell/Chong Family travels: Turns out there are 4 venues for the ice festival

The high today was something like 1 degree above zero (Farenheit)! Our plan today was to go to the last and biggest venue for the ice festival. We had already been to the ice lantern park and the snow sculpture park. Our plan was to save the biggest and oldest for last. We were going to the Harbin Ice and Snow world today. Our taxi driver had other ideas. He told us he would take us to where we could take the free bus. Turns out he actually took us to a tour agency where they sold us tickets( and gave him a kick back) and then took us in van to the park. Except they took us to Wanda World for what turns out to be a 4th venue for the ice festival. Wanda is kind of like a Chinese Disneyland owned by one of the richest men in China. He owns ski resorts, and hotels, and amusement parks and god knows what else all over China. In Harbin he has decided to turn his amusement park into another ice festival and we ended up there. It had some big buildings built of ice, some smaller ice sculptures and the usual ice based activities; slides, ice go carts, bumper cars, ice bikes, dogs and ponys hooked to sleds, one sad looking reindeer hooked to a sled, and a few weird things. There were some little sleds on the ice that had levers that moved spiky arms behind the sled to push you along. They looked for all the world like some sort of steampunk ice insect. Also there was a carnival ride that drug you around the ice on an inner tube. Finally there were two little army tanks, one broken and one you could drive around on the ice. All of this was scattered amongst the closed rides, stores and restaurants of the amusement park. A few restaurants and stores were open and they had even hired a blond girl to stand in front of the Russian restaurant and greet everyone who walked in with "Dasvidaniya"
There was a 20 minute ice capades like skating show with skating penguins and people skating on stilts. It was only 20 minutes long because at 5 below you can't stand still and watch for much longer. Finally there was an hour long indoor stage show that everyone went to if nothing else to get warm. The stage show was sort of like Cirque du Soleil but with a few ice skaters and some indoor ski jumpers. I think it was supposed to be sort of a world tour but like most Cirque du Soleil shows a bit hard to follow a plot and then you add in the Chinese weirdness. As Nick said, it was also more than a bit racist. The USA was represented by a brief bit of break dancing done by a white guy in an afro wig and actual black face. Which I don't fully understand because they had real black people in the Rio-Carnaval piece and the African piece which also included a giraffe that looked like it had been stolen from Lion King. France was represented by a BMX bike performance because when I think of France I think BMX. However, Netherlands was represented by French girls doing the Can Can in front of Dutch windmills while little Dutch boys jumped out of the windmills on to trampolines. Russia was represented by some women dressed up like weebles and some acrobats on a giant swingset. After that either I lost track or the LSD wore off.
Tomorrow we try again to go to the big ice festival.