The winter season is just around the corner and its time for all snow lovers to look forward to what they have been waiting for all year long. Ice and snow festivals take place in many cold countries world wide and China has its own region which celebrates the festival as well. Known as the Ice city of China, Harbin is regarded as one of the ice and snow culture centers of the world. A place where you can celebrate and enjoy the wonderful scenery of North eastern China, if you want to take a tour to Harbin, fine quality leather hats, coats and shoes would be needed to keep you warm and be ready to drink bottles of beer and see large exhibitions of ice and snow sculptures.

Harbin is located in the Northern region of Heilongjiang province in China. It is a major tourist destination spot during the winter season. The region celebrates one of the annual ice and snow festivals because of the very low temperatures. As a tourist, you would need to know the climate of this place before embarking on a tour to Harbin especially during the Ice Festival, the average temperature is between -31 C to -15 C, although the record low temperature the region has experienced was -52.3C.

China is a country which is rich in culture and as part of their Ice and Snow festival in Harbin; their arts and culture is displayed in many of the snow sculptures exhibitions. Out of all the other ice and snow festivals around the world, the Harbin Ice and Snow Sculpture festival exhibition is a very unique event. It takes place annually in January and February featuring ice and snow festivals and ice lantern touring activities.

During the ice festival, Snow Arts is very popular. There are various slides, horse rides, small houses, and rooms all made out of large chunks of ice and snow. Almost everything around is made of ice and when you walk on the stairs, it is sometimes not easy to reach the higher areas but developing the challenge of reaching these areas allows you to see the bright pictures of the scenery from above.

One of the past opening ceremonies of the Harbin Ice and Snow festival was a group of women who performed a traditional folk dance behind a ten meter high rooster made out of snow. The significance of the rooster was to welcome the coming Year of the Rooster on the Chinese New Year.

Some of the ice lantern touring activities includes a tour to Harbin’s Zhaolin Park where there is an ice lantern exhibition, the winter swimming in the Songhua River, and Yabuli Alpine Skiing resort. In Zhaolin Park, there are lots of ice carvings of famous monuments and landmarks of different cities in China and around the world. On very cold winter days, some swimmers who are quite brave swim to the water holes of the frozen river. The Yabuli skiing resort is about 3 hours away from Harbin which houses one of China’s largest ski resorts. One of the famous around the world and the host of the 1993 Asian Winter Games, the Yabuli Ski resort is also known for its scenic beauty.

There’s more to do during winter as Harbin is ready to celebrate yet another annual ice festival in 2007.

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