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.
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
FOREST SITE: A rescue helicopter spotted the burning fuselage of the plane in a forested area, with rescue personnel saying they saw no evidence of survivors A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed yesterday in a remote spot in Russia’s far eastern region of Amur, with no immediate signs of survivors, authorities said. The aircraft, a twin-propeller Antonov-24 operated by Angara Airlines, was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at about 1pm. A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 16km from Tynda. Videos published by Russian investigators showed what appeared to be columns of smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane in a dense, forested area. Rescuers in
‘ARBITRARY’ CASE: Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has maintained his innocence and called the country’s courts an instrument of oppression Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) president Joseph Kabila went on trial in absentia on Friday on charges including treason over alleged support for Rwanda-backed militants, an AFP reporter at the court said. Kabila, who has lived outside the DR Congo for two years, stands accused at a military court of plotting to overthrow the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — a charge that could yield a death sentence. He also faces charges including homicide, torture and rape linked to the anti-government force M23, the charge sheet said. Other charges include “taking part in an insurrection movement,” “crime against the
POINTING FINGERS: The two countries have accused each other of firing first, with Bangkok accusing Phnom Penh of targeting civilian infrastructure, including a hospital Thai acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai yesterday warned that cross-border clashes with Cambodia that have uprooted more than 130,000 people “could develop into war,” as the countries traded deadly strikes for a second day. A long-running border dispute erupted into intense fighting with jets, artillery, tanks and ground troops on Thursday, and the UN Security Council was set to hold an emergency meeting on the crisis yesterday. A steady thump of artillery strikes could be heard from the Cambodian side of the border, where the province of Oddar Meanchey reported that one civilian — a 70-year-old man — had been killed and