Harbin Ice and Snow Festival 2015: China’s City of Ice and Snow Sculpture

Every winter, the city of Harbin in northeastern China builds a glowing city of ice. The Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival, the largest festival of its kind in the world, opened its 31st edition on 5 January 2015, with castles, towers and temples cut from the frozen Songhua River and lit up in every colour after dark.

Harbin Ice Festival history: from lanterns to a city of ice

Harbin is the capital of Heilongjiang Province and one of the coldest big cities in China, with average winter temperatures around −17 °C and lows of −25 °C. The festival grew out of a traditional winter ice-lantern show and garden party that began in 1963. Interrupted during the Cultural Revolution, it returned as an annual event in Zhaolin Park, announced on 5 January 1985, a date that is still the official opening day.

In 2001 it merged with Heilongjiang’s International Ski Festival and took its present name. The 2015 festival ran from 22 December 2014 to early March 2015 under the theme “Ice Snow Harbin, Charming China Dreams around the world”, with fireworks, ice lanterns, snow sculpture competitions, winter swimming, group weddings and concerts.

How the ice buildings are made

The raw material comes straight from the Songhua River. Each winter workers cut huge blocks from the frozen river with swing saws and take them to the festival sites, where builders stack them like bricks. Sculptors then shape the details with chisels, ice picks and saws. River ice is naturally translucent; deionised water can produce ice as clear as glass.

After dark, coloured lights set inside and behind the blocks turn the buildings into a glowing skyline. The structures last only as long as the cold: each spring they melt, and the whole park is rebuilt from scratch the following winter.

The main venues: Ice and Snow World, Sun Island and Zhaolin Park

• Harbin Ice and Snow World opened in 1999 and is the festival’s showpiece: full-size illuminated buildings made of ice blocks, open in the afternoon and evening, so you can see it both in daylight and after dark. By 2019 it covered more than 600,000 square metres, with over 100 landmarks built from 110,000 cubic metres of ice.
• Sun Island, across the Songhua River, hosts the big snow sculpture expo. In 2007 a Canadian-themed snow sculpture here set a Guinness World Record as the largest in the world: 250 metres long and 8.5 metres high, made from more than 13,000 cubic metres of snow.
• Zhaolin Park, in the city centre, is the original home of the ice-lantern shows.

Snow sculpture and the international competitions

Snow behaves very differently from ice. It does not let light through, so snow sculptors work with ridges, recesses and rounded surfaces that play with shadow in daylight. Teams from around the world compete at Harbin each year; the 2019 ice sculpture competition, for example, drew carvers from 12 countries.

Visiting Harbin in winter

The festival season usually runs from late December to late February, with the official opening on 5 January. Dress for serious cold: thermal layers, a down coat, insulated boots, a hat and mittens, plus spare phone batteries, which drain fast at −20 °C. Winter swimming in the Songhua River is one of the festival’s traditional events, worth watching from the bank.

For another winter attraction that changes between day and night, explore New Hampshire’s Ice Castles. For snow art on a smaller scale, meet the Bartz brothers’ giant animals.

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