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Monday, January 31, 2011

Harbin Ice Festival

A dream is realized.

I went to the Harbin Ice Festival last night with a group from the hostel where I'm staying. 280 RMB (about US $42) got me entry to the festival, plus transportation to & from the festival grounds. 

Our guide dropped us off at the entrance, saying that we should meet her back at the van in two hours. She said that we were lucky because it was warmer today than it has been recently. Instead of minus 30 degrees Celcius (about minus 22 F), it was only minus 20.



In addition to taking photos of the ice & snow sculptures, there were several other things you could do there.

Ice sculptures
Snow sculptures
Reindeer rides
Yak photos
Fling-o-Whirl
Ice slide

I zinged down the ice slide more than once. Wee!

Even though I had all my state-of-the-art snow gear on, my fingers & toes were pretty cold after about an hour. I ducked inside the warm-up tent, happily paying 40 RMB (about US $6) for a Lipton tea, & sat down to watch the goings on in comfort.

There is apparently another festival grounds where they have many more snow sculptures on display. The ones I saw were pretty impressive. Since the snow sculptures aren't all lit up with neon like the ice sculptures, I think I'll go over to that one in the day time, when it's a bit warmer.

3 comments:

Steve Skinner said...

Incredible!

scott said...

It was freezing today in Tucson. My little fleece wasn't cutting it. Guess it is all relative. :) You look super cold in the first photo. And the festival looks just incredible!

Kelly McMaine said...

I just found your blog. We were in Xi'an for 2 months last spring. Next time we're in China, we'd like to go to Harbin. Thanks for the preview! Awesome!