- Thousands tourists throng Harbin to attend Ice Festival
- Festivities to continue till late February
HARBIN, China: The 36th International Harbin Ice and Snow Festival kicked off here on Sunday with a style as the tourists from across the world gathered to celebrate the start of new year.
The festival would continue till February in Harbin, Heilongjiang, China as China’s top government officials, senior leaders of the Communist Party of China (CPC), diplomats and foreign journalists attended the proceedings in huge numbers. The event was hosted by the Harbin Municipal Party Committee’s Cyberspace Office, Harbin Culture Radio, Television and Tourism Bureau, and co-organized by the International Online Heilongjiang Channel.
With the launching of the festival, fireworks lit the sky above ice sculptures as visitors rejoiced the unique experience at the world’s biggest ice and snow festival.
Over 10,000 workers worked for 15 days to build ice sculptures to make the festival as the world’s largest ice show. Over 170,000 cubic metres of ice bricks were cut into pieces from the nearby Songhua River to develop Ice City at Harbin. The ice was enough to fill 70 Olympic swimming pools, officials say.
This year, the festival has an “Ice Snow Integration, Happy to Go Together” theme, as activities of tourism, culture, fashion, trade and sports have been showcased.
The Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival in the frigid northeastern Chinese city is known for massive, elaborate and colourfully lit ice sculptures featuring animals, cartoon characters and landmarks.
The festival runs January through late February each year. The ice part is filled with structures made from giant blocks of ice said to be taken from the frozen Songhua River, which runs through the town.
“The show blew me away when I first saw pictures, and seeing them in person is even more impressive than I imagined,” said Musap Eryigit, a journalist from Turkey told DiploMag.
Many of the structures at the festival resembled the architecture of temples in various parts of Asia.
“The walls of ice, shooting straight up, were massive, and I couldn’t resist touching them,” says Marwa Nourddine, a Tunisian journalist who works with China, Arab TV.
The Harbin Ice and Snow Festival is not only an exposition of ice and snow art, but also an annual cultural event for international exchange. Every year, there are many ice sculpture experts, artists and fans from America, Canada, Japan, Singapore, Russia, China, etc. gathering in Harbin city to participate in the ice sculpting competitions and to communicate with each other in the ice and snow world.
Also, Harbin ice lanterns have been exhibited in most of China’s main cities as well as in many countries in Asia, Europe, North America, Africa and Oceania.
For more than 40 years, the city’s local natural resource of ice and snow has been fully explored to provide joy and fun for visitors to the city. Now during the festival, many sporting competitions are also popular including ice-skating, sledding and so on.
Weddings, parties and other entertainments are now very much a feature of this ice world, adding their own contribution to the celebrations of this great festival of art, culture, sports and tourism.
