Journey To ChinaLast updated
A Madieer ice pop is easy to eat while walking along Central Street. Visitors also make this a winter street ritual, while the cold-drink hall serves frozen desserts in summer. Flavours and availability depend on the day's menu.
Central Street is lined with long-established names including Madieer, while Qiulin Lidaosi and other brands have their own storefronts and signs. Seeing these different names side by side is part of the street scene around the ice-pop experience.
Traditional dairy flavour and today's menu
A supervisor at the Madieer cold-drink hall describes the traditional original ice pop as made with milk and egg, sweet without being cloying and fragrant even while icy. To start with that classic profile, ask for the traditional milk or original ice pop and confirm the item on the menu or package.
Other flavours are also produced. A 2026 Xinhua report recorded classic original, cranberry and Wuchang rice versions, and quoted the company describing local flavours such as frozen pear and frozen persimmon. A simple comparison is one milk-based pop and one fruit or grain flavour from the current menu; availability varies by shop and time.
A cold-drink business beside the hotel
Madieer's early ice-pop story is tied to the hotel and cold-drink business on Central Street. Company material places the cold-drink hall on the north side of the hotel and notes that the early hotel business included frozen desserts and introduced Western food techniques. Xinhua places the ice pop's development in the wider setting of European migration to Northeast China in the early 20th century. Together, these details connect the treat to Harbin's early commercial life and culinary exchange.
Russian entrepreneur Joseph Kaspe founded the Madieer Hotel in 1906. In a Xinhua interview, a cold-drink hall supervisor dated the ice pop's debut to 1914.
From hand production to several kinds of frozen dessert
Company material describes the early pops as handmade. The Harbin Daily reports that Madieer established a cold-drink factory in 1969 with a shop-and-factory model that linked retail service to production. The range later expanded into several flavours and shapes, as well as milk cakes and ice cream. Read the product category on the menu or package before choosing a flavour.
The traditional milk ice pop and the brand's milk cake are different products.
