It has been particularly cold in Harbin this year with winter temperatures reaching 30 degrees below zero. Our guide told us that Harbin maintains more than 190 days each year at below freezing temperatures, enabling the city’s festival of ice. We felt lucky that it was only 10 below F when we visited the ice sculptures at 4:30 in the afternoon. It was dark and the lights were brilliant. We appreciated our hand and foot warms and were able to spend nearly an hour and a half enjoying the spectacle.
Some say beautiful and some kitschy, but the ice festival, launched in 1963, is a delight. Most of the structures are copies of favorite sights, illuminated with brilliant colored lights. For example, this year we saw the Coliseum, St. Basil’s Cathedral, a spire from Iraq, Borobudur (Indonesia), St. Paul’s facade (Macau), and the Sphinx. We chuckled as we entered the ice version of the Grand Palace in Bangkok, having visited the real thing only a week before in sweltering hot temperatures. And of course our daughter enjoyed the many ice slides throughout the complex of structures.
Would I go back? Nah. The Harbin Winter Ice Festival is definitely worth a visit – once. Maybe more for those who embrace the cold.