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7 out of  48 HLJ participants joined the 10th International Collegiate Snow Sculpture Contest 2018 organized by Harbin Engineering University from 3/1 to 7/1 as parts of the Heilongjiang Challenge. We are the only team from Hong Kong and participants of HLJ Challenge have already continuously participated in this contest for ten years!
Day 1 ( 3 / 1 / 2018 )
Our international snow sculpture team travelled to Harbin with the main group by plane. Upon the arrival at Harbin, we took a group photo in the Harbin Taiping International Airport and then started to proceed to Harbin Engineering University without the main team. 
Day 2 ( 4 / 1 / 2018 )
Our team woke up early in the morning and first went to have breakfast with the HEU's student ambassadors. It was really awesome to eat something to be energetic before actually performing our work.
Day 3 ( 5 / 1 / 2018 )
Our team woke up early to continue to sculpt our snow cube. Having the previous day's experience in snow sculpture, we had better allocation of work among members and higher efficiency. We continued to try to cut away the snow of 1-metre width so as to create the shape of a “tram”. This time we had larger progress because we successfully removed a tremendous snow stone. 
Day 4 ( 6 / 1 / 2018 )
Since 6th January would be our last day to sculpt the snow cube and we must have to finish it by 5:00p.m., we all felt worried about our progress in the morning. Instead of being disheartened and lowering our pace, this stress increased our motivation to work faster. 
Day 5 ( 7 / 1 / 2018 )
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Reflections:
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Pun Rajan (Project Manager of ISS team)

Harbin's International Collegiate Snow Sculpture Contest is one of my most unforgettable moment of my life. It made me realized that the ability to change and adapt is highly important. No matter how good we plan or prepare, there will be some unexpected event happening. For example, while we were cutting one third of the snow cube as we planned originally, we realized that it is a waste of our energy, effort and time. We cut that much snow for nothing. Therefore, we decided the make a taxi out of the remaining snow as it saves time and we won't be wasting our energy just cutting snow.

 

This trip has opened my mind and made me think more maturely, it is totally worth my time and money. Lastly, I would like to thank all my snow Sculpture team members for being so supportive and cooperative!

On the way to the university, we were all excited. We did not only feel the coldness, but also a sense of freshness from breathing. The two HEU's student ambassadors were also very nice and told us about the details of the arrangements once we met.
They even took us to the supermarket for letting us buy any material needed these days. At night, all our team members got prepared and were ready for the snow sculpture in the following days.
After that, we went to the office building for getting the required equipment for snow sculpture and then walked to see where our 3m x 3m x 3m snow cube was located. We all felt amazed when we first saw this real snow cube in front of us. We also saw that teams from other places were working on their snow cubes at the same time. 
This year, our topic of the snow sculpture is "tram". We first started to decide the direction of our "tram" and the sides which were going to be cut. Then, we measured and marked lines on the snow cube.
Luckily, some students were willing to give us helping hand and volunteered to help us sculpt the snow cube. This gave us a lot of encouragement and made us feel warm. In fact, the snow was hard but delicate and it could be easily broken. We must have to be careful all the time. At the end of the day, we felt familiar with the techniques in snow sculpture and managed to cut some useless parts away. Having tried the actual work to sculpt the snow in cold weather, we found that it was not an easy task and indeed it required a lot of energy and perseverance.
At the end of the day, we already sculpted general shapes of a "tram" and a "taxi". In other words, over 50% works were finished at that moment but most of the detailed parts had to be done later. We were all satisfied with the look of this semi-finished snow cube but also felt nervous whether we had enough time to finish the whole snow sculpture before 5:00p.m. on 6/1. While we were sculpting the snow cube, some students also interviewed us and asked our feelings. It was so unexpected that someone was paying attention to our opus and would like to take photo with it because the other teams' snow sculptures were very magnificent.
However, after actually working on the snow cube, we decided to change our design a little bit and include a "taxi" in our opus. Since the snow cube was 3-metres high, sometimes we needed to climb the ladders provided to go to the top of the snow cube and then sharpen its shape. It was quite challenging for us because the floor was not flat and once we stepped on its top, there was nothing for us to hold and we needed to balance ourselves. It would also be dangerous if we were not aware. We would, therefore, help each other by holding the ladder tightly or giving a helping hand for balancing the bodies. 
With the help of some student volunteers, we successfully finished our opus at around 3:30 p.m.
One of the most difficult part faced was that we had to make two snow plates for the "tram" and "taxi" respectively and put it on top of the "train" because we needed to have large snow stones for us to use and sharpen as snow plates. In other words, we needed to cut the snow of 1-metre width in large pieces with the provided tools. After making the snow plates, they would be also very heavy and it was difficult to climb the ladder and bring them to the top of our opus. This finally involved quite many people's effort to solve the problem.
The photo shown on the left depicted our final finished opus, which included a tram and a taxi.
After a few days of cooperation among team members and effort contributed to the snow sculpture, here finally came the Closing and Awarding Ceremony.
We were all grateful and pleased that we got Recognition Award for our opus, "tram".
At the end of the ceremony, all our team members took a group photo with the trophy and certificates on the stage.
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