China’s Winter Wonderland

The festival has been going on for decades thanks to Harbin’s reliably frigid temperatures.

Harbin is one of China’s coldest cities (see map, below). Its average temperature in January is about 9 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and 11 degrees below zero at night. (Water freezes at 32 degrees.)

The city’s location far north of the equator is one reason for its icy temperatures. (The farther you travel from the equator, the colder it usually gets.) Strong winds blowing southward from Siberia, a frigid region located mostly in Russia, make Harbin even colder. 

Harbin’s winter festival made its debut in 1963. The event was inspired by an ancient tradition in northeast China of carving decorative lanterns out of ice. But the festival temporarily stopped when the nation’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) took place. During that period, China’s leader severely limited education and the arts. The annual event resumed in 1985 and has been going strong ever since.

To build the enormous displays, workers called ice miners cut out tens of thousands of ice blocks from the frozen Songhua River, which winds through Harbin. Artists then carve the blocks into larger-than-life structures. They use chain saws to create rough shapes before switching to drills and chisels to carve the details. They also form sculptures from giant piles of snow. 

Canadian artist Rusty Cox, a regular in the festival’s ice-sculpting competitions, says there’s nothing like working with ice and snow.

“This is one of the most unique things you could ever do,” he told reporters, “using a [material] that is here one day and literally gone in a couple hours.”