… at China’s National Engineering Research Centre for Agricultural Product Logistics in Jinan, sandwiched between the “Time/Temperature/Tolerance Laboratory” and “Small-size Instruments Storage,” the curious cryo-tourist can visit “The Room of the Sleeping Fish.” As I describe in a forthcoming issue of Harvard Design Magazine, the Centre’s scientists have developed a way to ship live fish out of water, by using refrigeration to induce a sort of suspended animation.

According to the technician in charge of the process, the fish are sent to sleep by gradually lowering the temperature of the water, half a degree at a time over the course of twenty-four hours, to just above freezing. In this sluggish state, a fish can be rolled up, popped in a clear plastic poster tube, and mailed to anywhere in China. As long as they arrive at their destination within three days, the Centre’s Director explained, they will simply wake up and start swimming again as soon as you slide them out of the canister.