Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival

Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival
During the 2003 festival
Genre	Winter festival
Location(s)	Harbin, China
Years active	1963–present

The Harbin International Ice and Snow festival (Chinese: 哈尔滨国际冰雪节; pinyin: Hā'ěrbīn Guójì Bīngxuě Jié) is an annual winter festival that takes place with a theme in Harbin, Heilongjiang, China, and now is the largest ice and snow festival in the world. The festival includes the popular attraction Ice and Snow World (冰雪大世界). At first participants in the festival were mainly Chinese, however it has since become an international festival and competition, with the festival attracting 18 million visitors and generating 28.7 billion yuan ($4.4 billion) of revenue.^[1] The festival includes the world's biggest ice sculptures.^[2]

The festival exhibits open from late December to late February.^[3] While ice sculptures are erected throughout the city, there are two main exhibition areas:

• Sun Island is a recreational area on the opposite side of the Songhua River from the city, which features an expo of enormous snow sculptures.
• Ice and Snow World (冰雪大世界) is an area open in the afternoon and at night which features illuminated full size buildings made from blocks of 2–3' thick ice taken directly from the Songhua River. The park usually opens from late December to late February. In 1999, the first Ice and Snow World opened to public to celebrate the millennium. Each year the park has to be rebuilt with newly designed ice buildings and snow and ice sculptures. In recent years, the park has been as large as 800 000 squaremeters (80 hectares).

During the festival, there are ice lantern park touring activities held in many parks in the city. Winter activities during the festival include Yabuli alpine skiing, winter-swimming in the Songhua River, and the ice-lantern exhibition in Zhaolin Garden.

Harbin is located in Northeast China and receives cold winter wind from Siberia. The average temperature in summer is 21.2 °C (70.2 °F), and –16.8 °C (1.8 °F) in winter. Annual lows of -25 °C (–13 °F) are not uncommon.^[4][5]