Harbin Ice Sculpture Festival 哈尔滨国际冰雪节

The thing to see in Harbin in the cold freeze month of January is the International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival 哈尔滨国际冰雪节. This is the main reason why my classmates and I endured this bone chilling fun time. Though, there were lots of times I wondered why I was there.

The ice sculpture festival goes all throughout winter, with the best times in January. This reknown festival is one of four major festivals held annual in the world, with others – Japan’s Sapporo Snow Festival, Canada’s Quebec City Winter Carnival, and Norway’s Ski Festival. Harbin’s snow festival has 1 major location – which is best seen during the day. I will post about this venue later. And the ice festival has 4 different locations throughout Harbin.

We were able to visit the largest one, which featured the most sculptures. Though we regret not visiting more. The ice sculpture park is only open at night to enhance the beauty of the ice with lights. Otherwise, during the day, you’d see a bunch of ice cubes, with the daytime light obscuring the shapes. We saw a large windmill, a Thai Buddhist temple, a Russian Church, characters from Pixar’s Toy Story, a big bear, Chinese buildings and temples – all made of ice and lit up with LED’s. These structures were amazing to see against the dark cold night. There was a huge castle-like structure with blazing music playing. There was a large traditional bell, in which I rung. We saw llamas and reindeers just moseying around as if the cold weather was nothing.

I knew my classmates and I asked if we could have just stayed in the warm hotel rooms, rather than spend another minute outside. Yet, we all regretted not visiting the other ice parks. Special thanks to Mr. G, Miss Y, Miss C, and Mr. Y for contributing some pictures to this post.

Harbin-Ice.net
Wikipedia listing
Another site featuring pictures

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