It’s Winter, Let’s Go See the Northern Lights in Saint Petersburg

As the glow of the sunset began to fade out, the entire city of Saint Petersburg was cast in a rainbow of colours; Hermitage Museum (the Winter Palace), Peter the Great’s Summer Palace, the Bronze Horseman, it was as if everything had frozen in time. The fine yellowish-green rays of light danced and darted about, spanning across the entire night sky. The lights seemed to swirl together, like faint clouds of mist, drawing attention. They glided across the night sky just like the light green ripples of water gliding across the bay in the spring; so lively, so vivid.

Such tranquility was like it was straight out of a children’s story book. Under the shroud of the Northern Lights, the beauty, warmth, and tranquility of Saint Petersburg is enough to enchant anyone. It is precisely as the Russian polymath and writer Mikhail Lomonosov (1711-1765) described in one of his poems:

Alas!

Though it is nighttime, day has graced the earth with its

presence.

What is it that has commanded this shinning ray of light to

tremble during the middle of the night?

What is it that has triggered this raging fire in the sky?

Like lighting without thunder clouds,

climbing from the ground up into the sky,

how does it become condensed steam,

when it becomes a bursting flame in midwinter?

From the very first moment that human beings discovered the Northern Lights, they have captured the hearts of many with their alluring and elusive force. The Northern Lights have spawned much folklore and legends far and wide. The one that has spread the farthest goes like this: Once upon a time, the youngest and most beloved daughter of God fell in love with a hunter. As a form of punishment, her father sent her to the secular world as a fox, an arctic fox…The distressed, yet beautiful, arctic fox wandered the earth looking for her “hunter.”

When she leapt through the air her tail would brush against the snow-covered ground, causing sparks to fly upwards into the sky. These sparks gave birth to the mysterious and magnificent Northern Lights. It is said that this was a blessing bestowed upon the daughter of the helpless God. In the end, the arctic fox was able to find her lover thanks to the Northern Lights. As a result, people believe that the cities graced by the Northern Lights are cities blessed by God!

Not only is Saint Petersburg a city blessed by God, it is also believed to be a heroic city by the Russian people. Historically, from the reign of Peter the Great to the October Revolution of 1917, for more than 200 years, Saint Petersburg has been the capital of Russia. Saint Petersburg witnessed the rise and fall of the Tsarist Empire from the time of its establishment as the capital on May 27, 1703 until the moving of the capital to Moscow on March 10, 1918. On Bloody Sunday, January 22, 1905, unarmed demonstrators were fired upon by soldiers in the public square of the Winter Palace. The incident caused nationwide outrage. The Bolshevik Regime, responsible for the October Revolution of 1917, moved the capital to Moscow for fear of attack by foreign army troops. During the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) period (1922-1991), the city of Saint Petersburg changed its name to Leningrad.

For many Chinese people their first impression of Saint Petersburg comes from the heroic city Leningrad that is portrayed in their textbooks. As the birthplace of the Bolsheviks, Adolf Hitler vowed to wipe Leningrad off the face of the earth. However, the people of Saint Petersburg withstood 900 days of siege attacks which sufficiently proved their strength and bravery. After the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, the people of Leningrad decided to reinstate the city’s original name of Saint Petersburg through a municipal vote.

Saint Petersburg truly is a dream-like masterpiece of Peter the Great. As Russia’s most Europeanized city, Saint Petersburg has been praised by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799-1837), a great Russian romantic poet, referring to it as Russia’s “window to Europe.” Regardless of whether it is the Winter Palace (which is one of the world’s four largest museums), the elegant and luxurious royal garden, the Summer Palace of Peter the Great, and the royal village, or the Kazan Cathedral and Saint Isaac's Cathedral, all of these places give the lasting impression of being noble, beautiful, and spectacular.

When the Northern Lights shine down on Saint Petersburg, the whole city's aesthetics, mystery, fantasy, romance, and beauty is magnified. Momentarily, the entire city hovers between fantasyand reality, the light intertwining and scattering as if it were just some ordinary wonderland. All the words in the world are not enough to describe the beauty of Saint Petersburg! One cannot even come close to understanding the capacity of the Northern Lights until they have personally experienced, personally witnessed, the “Fireworks of God” and listened to the sound of the arctic fox’s tail brushing against the snow.