The Great Meltdown

A look at the melting Songhua! Qingming Festival was our first day over 20 degrees this spring and even with all the dust in the air it was still lovely to be out and about on such a warm day!

A look at the patchwork of ice still clinging to the river.

Songhua in Early Spring

Given how warm (for here!) it's been lately I was more than a little surprised to see so much ice left on the Songhua! You definitely can't walk across it anymore, but it's still impressive how much of the river is still covered!

The trees are very wisely holding out till they're sure the warmer weather's here to stay...

People are already out flying kites again! (God knows there's always the wind for it!)

Zhaolin Park Ice Festival 2017

The south entrance to Zhaolin Park this winter. Every year the Park features incredible ice sculptures as part of the Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival. The entrance fee is ¥150 (about US$22) and well worth it!

The inner gate at the south entrance to the Zhaolin Park Ice Festival.

Looking back towards the inner gate. This year the walkway featured plaques with the history of Harbin's Ice and Snow Festival.

The skill and diversity of the ice sculptures featured at Zhaolin is just incredible!

There were two or three ice sculptures featuring dolphins, but this was my favorite...

Dancers - simple, yet elegant.

I believe this depicts a character from Chinese opera.

An ice sculpture of a Kazakh eagle hunter!

Some of the sculptures were simple, others (like the one pictured above) were quite complex.

There were some ice sculptures depicting cartoon characters, but I definitely wasn't expecting to see something from Alien!

Seriously so much gorgeousness!

One of the smaller entryways to the park. A lot of the more monumental ice structures at Zhaolin Park were beautiful homages to classical Chinese architecture, something sadly not seen in most Chinese cities today...

Fall Freeze

It's not even December yet and the Songhua is already frozen solidly enough for people to walk across it!

Ice City Roads

We got a lot of snow (for here) this November plus the usual fluctuations in temperature, which resulted in some incredibly icy roads even for Harbin! Pictured is the first bus I tried to take home from work. It got most of the way up this hill coming out of Qunli, but then got stuck on the black ice at the intersection. Most of us got out two or three times to try to push it along, but after moving a bit it would stall again and I finally called it and started the long walk home...

Ice and Snow Sculptures on Zhongyang

大白! A snow sculpture of Dà Bái or 'Big White,' as Baymax is known here. Apparently Baymax likes Manchurian kvass...

A sweet ice sculpture near Zhongyang Avenue's Bomele 1931.

An ice sculpture commemorating the 118th anniversary of Harbin's founding in 1898 by Russia's Chinese Eastern Railway.

Another lovely ice sculpture.

Another of the snow sculptures up now along Zhongyang Avenue.

Harbin Ice Festival 2016

The entrance to the Harbin Ice Festival on Sun Island, part of the Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival. I didn't realize until recently that there are actually two separate festival grounds, one housing ice sculptures and ice block buildings and the other of snow sculptures.

The Ice Festival was pretty amazing, although quite pricey by local standards as entrance tickets cost ¥300 (just over US$46).

I was able to visit the Ice Festival from mid-afternoon to evening, which was a great way to see the grounds in both the pre-sunset light and lit up in the dark. (As you can see, the lights were already on when I got there in the afternoon.)

The Ice Festival featured ice block structures inspired by buildings all over the world, although this is obviously a tribute to Harbin's Russian foundations.

It really is amazing how large some of the structures are!

A view of ice block buildings modeled on a Chinese building and either the Ottoman Blue Mosque or Greek Orthodox Hagia Sophia Cathedral.  

An overview of the Ice Festival grounds from the sledding hill.

The lighting was magnificent in the dark! 

I'm pretty sure you would easily be able to spot the Ice Festival grounds if you had an evening flight in or out of Harbin!

The Ice Festival did include this rather striking snow sculpture. I can only imagine how amazing the Snow Festival itself must be!

Another view of the night lights at the Ice Festival

A closeup of the Ice Festival's tribute to the Hagia Sophia or the Blue Mosque.

I still have no idea what this was supposed to be!

Although the festival grounds were markedly colder than the rest of the city, the Ice Festival is definitely worth checking out the next time you find yourself in Harbin in the winter!

Ice Sculptures In Progress

An ice sculpture dedicated to the coming New Year!

It's amazing how delicately beautiful so many of the ice sculptures along Zhongyang Avenue can be!

One of the ice sculptures outside the Coca Cola hall on Zhongyang Avenue.

An homage to the contents of the Songhua River, which I'm told is where all the ice blocks for Harbin's Ice and Snow Festival come from.

Ice Blocks Building an Ice City

It was so neat to see the ice buildings and ice sculptures start to go up on Zhongyang Avenue recently! Despite the at times horrific air pollution the winter really is a magical time in Harbin!

Winter Traffic

Curiously enough, China's Ice City is not so great at dealing with snow and ice. We recently had some heavy (for here) snowfall and it paralyzed the city for a couple of days. Buses driving busy routes that normally came every 5 or 10 minutes stopped running entirely, others came at much longer intervals than normal, taxis became impossible to find, and horrendous traffic jams made off-rush hour trips that usually took 15 or 20 minutes by bus take an hour or more. It's my second winter here and even though I left for work extra early each day I still barely made it on time, and once not at all! (Pictured above is the tail end of a traffic jam I got stuck in on a bus - it took nearly an hour to go a kilometer and a half. When we finally made it to a bus stop I walked the rest of my way.) So be warned, if you're going to be in Harbin in the winter, bring your winter gear and think about walking to wherever you're going if it's just snowed!