Harbin - Oriental Paris

One of our goals of coming to China was a trip to Harbin city which is the capital of the Heilongjiang Province in Northeast China.

Harbin is one of the sources of ice and snow culture in the world. It is located in Northeast China under the direct influence of the cold winter wind from Siberia. Average -20 degrees Celsius is the temperature in winter.

The city is well-known for its Russian and European-influenced architecture. The great example of it is the Russian Orthodox church, St. Sophia Cathedral.

In the city there are many ice sculptures illuminated with colorful lights which really made great impression in the night.

"Ice City", which is other name for Harbin, is well known for its long and cold winter. Normally I wouldn’t want to go somewhere cold but this city is famous for its display of ice sculptures in the winter and I always wanted to visit the annual Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival.

In front of Ice City in Harbin

We went to Harbin for two days at the beginning of February although the official start date of the festival is January 5th. It was still the spring festival time but we were able to get tickets for a train.

Ice and Snow World was amazing but it was enormously freezing in there. We had to borrow coats from a friend who lives in Harbin because we would freeze to death I guess. Anyway you can see on the pictures that Dawei is having an army coat and I have a fur (poor animal by the way). The thing is that our friend's mum wouldn’t let us go in our regular clothes:) so we had to wear those "funny" clothes. I am glad she did that although.

The Ice City in Harbin

Dawei in the Ice City

I am on a huge chessboard in the Ice City

A Castle in the Ice City in Harbin

As you can see on pictures the place was huge and it had illuminated full size buildings made from blocks of ice. We even went to a huge ice slide which was a bit scary for me, specially finishing part when a seat made from metal went suddenly up and I landed on my back. Anyway worth to try;)