Fun with ice and snow

The annual Harbin Ice and Snow Festival started on January 5 this year, featuring various ice and snow artworks and attracting many visitors from both abroad and inside China, especially those from South China.

Three major activities constitute this year's Harbin Ice and Snow Festival: the ice lantern artistic show at Zhaolin Park, ice sculptures on display at Ice and Snow World and the ice sculpture artistic show at Taiyang (the sun) Island. Go and check them out.

Ice lantern artistic show at Zhaolin Park

The earliest and largest ice lantern artistic show in the world, Zhaolin Park's ice lantern artistic show is the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival's main event. This theme of this year's ice lantern show is a "Wonderful Garden 0n the Silk Road, and Ice and Snow on the North of the Great Wall". It consists of 2,002 pieces of ice sculpture artistic works in ten scenery zones.

At Zhaolin Park, visitors may also try its outdoor theatre, roller-skating rinks, kids' amusement park and flower and fish exhibition hall.

Ice sculptures on display at Ice and Snow World

Ice and Snow World has five theme areas. The Sino-Korea friendship plaza, the major landscape area located in the center of Ice and Snow World connected to the east gate by a 120-meter long avenue lined by sixteen calligraphy lighting columns featuring the works of Chinese and Korean calligraphy masters. There are two one hundred-meter long snow dragon sculptures, the longest snow sculptures since the launch of this festival, and a 60-meter high Sin-Korea friendship tower for visitors to view.

The remaining four are Korean landscape parks featuring ice sculptures modeled after famous, historically significant Korean architecture and miniature Korean temples; the Chinese landscape park modeled after the famous Chinese Daoist mountain, Mount Wutai which provides snow slides and skiing for visitors, Adventure Park featuring various exciting free snow slide activities, labyrinth, ice rock climbing and snow field football, and the Future World Park creating a surreal future world of lights and shining ice sculptures.

This year's Ice and Snow World also features many free activities including Korean and Russian dance shows and lots of games.

Ice sculpture artistic show at Taiyang (the sun) Island

Using the changing colors of maple leaves as its theme, this year's ice sculpture artistic show at Taiyang Island is held in cooperation with the city of Montreal, Canada, and features a panoramic display of the Canadian landscape.

The ice sculpture display is held in seven thematic areas; they are the Maple Journey showing various maple-leaf ice lanterns, Saint Dennis Street modeled after antiquated Quebec streets, the Victory Goddess displaying Taiyang Island's history and culture, the Happy Castle representing famous Quebec castles which are fun for kids, the Peaceful Messenger singing songs of praise of the friendship between Canada and China, the Niagara Landscape featuring the longest snow stage with Niagara falls and the Bering strait as the background staging Russian ballet performances and, last but not least, the competition area holding snow sculpture competitions.

With such a beautiful landscape, Taiyang Island is also a nice place to have a picnic, go on a nature tour or go swimming.

The Chinese Harbin Ice and Snow Festival ranks among the top four world ice and snow festivals together with the Canadian Winter Carnival, the Japanese Sapporo Ice and Snow Festival and the Norwegian Ski Festival. It started in 1985 and is held on January 5 each year lasting until the end of February covering the Spring Festival, the Lantern Festival and the Ski Festival. The Chinese Harbin Ice and Snow Festival has only one opening ceremony for each on January 5 and no closing ceremony.