Harbin is located in Northeast China under the direct influence of the cold winter wind from Siberia. The average temperature in summer is 21.2 degrees Celsius, −16.8 degrees Celsius in winter.

The annual Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival has been held since 1985. Although the official start date is January 5 each year, in practice, many of the sculptures can be seen before. While there are ice sculptures throughout the city, there are two main exhibition areas: Enormous snow sculptures at Sun Island (a recreational area on the opposite side of the Songhua River from the city) and the separate “Ice and Snow World” that operates each night. Ice and Snow World features illuminated full size buildings made from blocks of ice. Winter activities in the festival include Yabuli Alpine Skiing, winter-swimming in Songhua River, and the ice-lantern exhibition in Zhaolin Garden. Snow carving and ice and snow recreations are world famous.

The “Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival” is one of the world’s four largest ice and snow festivals, along with Japan’s Sapporo Snow Festival, Canada’s Quebec City Winter Carnival, and Norway’s Ski Festival.

Every November, the city of Harbin sends teams of ice artisans to the United States to promote their unique art form. It takes more than 100 artisans to create ICE!, the annual display of indoor Christmas-themed ice carvings in Nashville, Tennessee; Kissimmee, Florida; and Grapevine, Texas. From wikipedia.org

Thanks to Iris, her wisdom help us to get those tickets at half price by pretending we were still college students. Maybe that was not so good, but who care~~ Let’s move out!
PS: Because those huge sculptures and buildings were all made of ice, this whole area is much colder than other place. So don’t forget to keep your camera warm when you were totally fascinated with those beautiful and colorful crystal. Your camera would be “killed” by the low temperature ! That’s the reason we didn’t catch all the sculptures, but we had captured them by our eyes

This Sphinx was not just a sculpture to see, it’s also a slide to play~ Galacy was waving her hand on the slide

As you saw, there are many many “buildings” stand in this park, they were all very famous symbol of those foreign countries. Just like the “Sphinx” I mentioned is the image of Egypt. The castle above is the very famous Japanese building. And there are more familiar building you might know about them:

BTW, there were also other funny ice sculptures like this one:

WOW, this bottle of Harbin Beer can make all of us got drunk.

Aslo so funny game to play:

Is that all? Of course not! We went to watch a wonderful show at the “Moulin rouge” and saw many beautiful Russian dancers~~
But before of that, all of our camera were killed by the frozen temperature…. So no photos about those beauties~~ Sorry

We didn’t leave there until the park began to close. That is the day I watch the most great number of ice in my life!!