Xuexiang
Two metres of snow in a winter, roofs pressed into rounded edges, chimneys showing nothing but a hole.
Xuexiang sits in a fold of the Zhangguangcai range. It is not high, but the snow lies very deep: moisture off the sea enters the valley and stops, and two metres of it pile up in a winter. With little wind, the flakes stick together, settle on a roof without collapsing, and build up into a curve.
- Region
- Heilongjiang · Hailin
- Snow season
- October to April
- Snow depth
- Up to two metres
- Location
- Shuangfeng forestry farm, Dahailin
- Elevation
- About 1,100 m
Winter north-westerlies carry moisture from the direction of the Sea of Japan into the Zhangguangcai range, where it lifts and condenses in the valleys. Snowfall is heavy and wet; the valley is sheltered, so what lands is not blown away. Layer presses on layer, and the roof is pushed into an arc.
Eaves bent by weight
Snow on a roof is not stacked, it is pushed into an arc by its own mass.
Woodpile and snow
Firewood stacked square, then covered, so only a square outline is left.
The chimney hole
Only the top of the flue shows above the ridge; the rest is buried.
The depth hanging over the eaves says more about this winter than the snow itself.
The curve is pressed, not piled
Snow lands on a roof one layer at a time. The weight compacts what is beneath, the air between grains closes into translucent ice, and the load collects at the eave. The eave has nothing under it, so the snow begins to sag, and it breaks where the bending load is greatest, which is never the thinnest part. That is why the break is round.
The arc of an eave is not a shape that was piled up. It is what snow does under its own weight, and a row of arcs records how many falls there were and how wet each one was.
The tongue at the eave is layered through
On the longest eaves the snow overhangs by half a metre or more, like a tongue. Cut through it and there are layers: one white, one grey, a thin sheet of ice between them. Each layer is one snowfall, and the ice is a day when the surface melted and froze again before the next fall.
A woodpile is square. Snow covers it and leaves a square outline with a rounded top. The chimney on the ridge shows only its mouth; the rest is buried, and the smoke comes out of the snow.
Dry cold outside, two sets of clothes
Twenty or thirty below outdoors; indoors, a heated kang. The outer layer goes on before the door opens and comes off piece by piece once inside. In dry cold the hands and face feel it first while the body stays warm, so too many layers means sweating on the walk, and sweating makes the cold worse.
A camera or a phone goes into a bag before coming in, or the lens fogs and stays fogged for half an hour. Batteries drain fast in the cold, so a spare is carried inside a coat. It is dark by half past three, the snow throws the sky back up, and the eyes tire after a while.
After the price-gouging scandal of late 2017, Xuexiang posted fixed prices and registered its lodgings; the rate card is on every door.