The Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival is the largest of its kind in the world attracting over 10 million visitors a year. Held since 1963, the festival features thousands of ice and snow sculptures and entire buildings and bridges made of ice.
The event is spectacular and well worth putting on your travel bucket list if you can withstand the cold temperatures. On average, the temperatures during the festival run at about 0 degrees F (-18 degrees C).
The festival runs from around the last week of December through the end of February. We were in Harbin January 4-7, 2018. This year, the festival officially opened January 5th, although I understand the venues, especially the Snow Sculpture Art Expo, will open earlier.
There are three major venues for the festival:
- Zhaolin Park Ice Lantern Festival – best viewed at night, this features hundreds of relatively small sculptures and ice lanterns illuminated by LED lighting
- Sun Island International Snow Sculpture Art Expo – viewed during the daytime, elaborate sculptures carved out of compressed snow are featured through the park
- Ice and Snow World – the highlight of the festival, it features huge structures – some up to 150 feet high (46 meters) – built out of ice blocks and illuminated with colored LED lighting
Zhaolin Park Ice Lantern Festival
Just inside the front gate, you get your first taste of the Lantern Festival site. A smaller, more intimate venue, you get a chance to get up close to hundreds of illuminated ice sculptures
The grounds are lined with ice walls or fences that guide you through the park
If only I understood Mandarin. There are not many signs or explanations about the sculptures, but when there are, they are mostly in Chinese only.
The Lantern Festival seems very child-friendly with a number of ice slides, bridges to climb on, and this maze. Looks fun, and the walls are low enough that it would reduce panic if you had trouble finding your way out.
This is by far the largest sculpture at the Lantern Festival. That is my son and I at the base to give you an idea of the scale.
Sun Island International Snow Sculpture Art Expo
Even before you get to actual Snow Sculpture Art Expo, you get a taste of what is to come. This is a large snow sculpture on the road on the way to the Expo.
A little Canadian content in Harbin. This is patterned after Bonhomme, the mascot of the Quebec Winter Festival. My son thought he looked like a cross between Santa Claus and Bacchus – quite a combination!
Panoramic shot of the frozen lake at the center of the Expo site. You can rent the electric powered “innertubes on wheels” and cruise around on the ice, or get a bicycle type contraption that uses a bicycle tire on the rear wheel and had a couple of ice skate type blades where the front wheel would be. Alternatively, you can rent an inner tube and slide down the long slide behind the center sculpture.
Harbin was founded by Russian Colonists in 1898 and remained largely Russian controlled until 1946. You see quite a bit of Russian architecture in Harbin, not unlike this large sculpture.
Life imitating art – Susan striking a pose like the woman in the huge sculpture behind her.
This view of an innertube sledding area gives you an idea of the basic building blocks of the sculptures. Large blocks of compressed snow are stacked together and then carved into the desired shape.
One of the many smaller snow sculptures throughout the park. This one was quite elaborate and completely 3 dimensional with head opened up in the back.
We were fortunate to have great weather for our entire time in Harbin – clear skies are quite rare near any large city in China. This sculpture was still under construction when we visited. It was interesting to see the sculptors at work.
Ice and Snow World
The entrance of Ice and Snow World gives you some idea of the massive ice buildings you are about to see inside.
It is hard to show in still pictures, but the lights on many of the sculptures and buildings are constantly changing. Quite a sight to see.
You can get your picture taken with an Arctic fox. Must be fairly domesticated, it seems pretty sedate.
The vantage point from about three stories up an ice staircase on one of the buildings. I understand that many of the ice buildings are patterned after actual buildings from around the world.
These towers are really tall!
Another view from the third story balcony of an ice building.
This one is patterned after a temple in Nepal.
These sculptors are working on their creations for the International Ice Sculpture contest. One of the teams that we were close enough to see was the team from Mexico, not the first place I think of when it comes to snow and ice.
Getting There and Getting Around
Harbin is in north-west China and is only about 200km away from the Russian border. There are no direct flights from the USA or Canada, but you can connect through numerous airports in China and surrounding countries. We flew from Bangkok to Guangzhou, China for our connection to Harbin. Our son flew from Vancouver to Seoul to get his connecting flight. There are numerous high-speed trains from Beijing to Harbin as well.
The airport is about 60 km (40 miles) from the actual city of Harbin but is fairly easy to catch a cab from the airport. As always in China, you should have the address of your hotel written out in Chinese to give to the taxi driver as few will speak English. Try to get them to use the meter, but if they refuse, make sure you negotiate before you get in. We were originally told 300 yuan but negotiated down to 200 yuan ($32 USD). Our son, who arrived later, did not negotiate and got charged the full 300 yuan ($45 USD). When we took the taxi from the hotel to the airport on our way out, we paid the meter rate and ended up paying about 150 yuan ($23 USD).
We used some of Starwood Hotel points and stayed at the Sheraton Hotel about 15 km (9 miles) from the Ice Festival venues. We used a taxi from our hotel to get to the various sites. From the hotel, the taxis always used the meter and were quite reasonable. The hotel did have one shuttle bus a day that went to the Ice and Snow World.
I did a fair amount of research online, as I usually do before visiting an area, but had trouble finding complete, accurate, up to date information about the festival. The vast majority of the visitors to the Ice Festival are from within China, so I assume that most of the promotion is in Chinese in China based websites. Most of the information I found online in English was from tour companies that gave you a little bit of information about the festival, but were obviously focused on selling you a package tour. Apparently, there are cultural events, concerts, sporting events, etc. surrounding the Ice Festival, but I could not find any of these details in English online.
Tickets
You can get tickets at each of the venues. However, there are numerous outlets around town that sell tickets as well. Our taxi driver took us to get tickets off-site for the Snow Sculpture Art Expo. It was the same price as if we bought at the event, but theoretically, we avoided having to wait in line outside at the venue.
At the Lantern Festival, we were approached by a young man who spoke perfect English offering us tickets at a 20 yuan ($3 discount). The trick was he could only take two of us in at once. I later learned that they must sell tickets to “guides” at a discount but that the only thing these guides will do is guide you to the entrance.
We ended up buying our tickets three different ways for the three different venues: from an offsite vendor for the Snow Sculpture Art Expo, from the “guide” for the Lantern Festival, and from the on-site ticket station at the Ice and Snow World.
Lantern Festival – 150 yuan each ($23 USD)
Snow Sculpture Art Expo – 240 yuan each ($37 USD)
Ice and Snow World – 330 yuan each ($52 USD)
Relative to admission prices for many other sites we have visited in China and South East Asia, I found these a little on the expensive side, but still well worth it.
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