This city of ice is one of the most popular attractions at the winter festival.

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STANDARDS

Common Core: RH.6-8.1, RH.6-8.2, RH.6-8.4, RH.6-8.7, WHST.6-8.4, RI.6-8.1, RI.6-8.2, RI.6-8.4, RI.6-8.7, W.6-8.4, SL.6-8.1

NCSS: Culture • Time, Continuity, and Change • People, Places, and Environments • Science, Technology, and Society

GEOQUEST

Temperature Map

China’s Winter Wonderland

Each January, the city of Harbin, China, puts on one of the biggest—and most spectacular—ice festivals in the world. It’s all possible thanks to the region’s chilly winter temperatures.

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Bundle up, grab some hot chocolate, and prepare to be dazzled! One of the world’s most spectacular winter festivals gets underway this month in northeast China.

The Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival kicks off on January 5. The annual event—which attracts up to 15 million visitors a year—is a winter wonderland featuring gigantic works of frozen art. Sculptors from around the world create thousands of intricate structures out of ice and snow, ranging from sleek castles to 150-foot-tall dragons. 

During the day, festival-goers can ski, ice-skate, go sledding, and ride bicycles on the ice. At night, the city comes to life in a rainbow of colors as neon lights shine through the displays.


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Special colored lights illuminate the festival’s ice castles at night.

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. 


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Artists create huge snow sculptures

A Cool Craft

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.”

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