China's coldest restaurant is doing a roaring trade as deep winter sets in, with customers flocking to the all-ice building and its steaming "hot pot" meals, state press reported yesterday.
An enterprising businessmen in north China's freezing city of Harbin recently set up the Ice Restaurant, a 260m2 building made from 800m3 of ice, the China Daily said.
The restaurant can accommodate 100 patrons, who reportedly love the novelty of even the bar, tables and chairs being made from ice.
"This is my first time to see ice and snow. Who could believe that I am eating in an ice restaurant?" the China Daily quoted Li Hong, a tourist from the much warmer Sichuan Province as saying. "Aren't we like the modern Eskimos?"
Not surprisingly, the meals on offer are designed for warmth, with "hot pot" meals the main fare on offer.
"We ask our waiters to get the ingredients ready as fast as they can as we don't want our customers to wait with empty stomachs in this chilly environment," sales manager Liu Jianguo said. "But once you take one bite of the steaming delicacies, you would definitely forget the cold."
Liu said the temperature inside the restaurant was kept steady at minus 10?C, although the chair seats were covered with woollen cushions to give customers a little warmth.
"Of course, we aim to attract them to sit down, not to freeze them," Liu said.
Harbin is one of China's coldest cities, and each winter hosts a festival in which famous buildings and landmarks from around the world are recreated in ice.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,