Harbin has earned the status of one of the coldest places on Earth. But the city found the most beautiful way to embrace their icy existence.
They adapted to the chilly weathers so well, they actually celebrate it and do that in the best way possible - they've been throwing marvelous winter festivities for the last 36 years during the International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival.
The 36th annual Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival opened on the 5th of January and is themed "Ice Snow Integration, Happy to Go Together", giving a lot of freedom for sculptors to express their creativity.
Harbin carved it's name strongly into all the books of popular winter destinations with it's annual winter wonderland that takes approximately 220.000 cubic meters of ice and snow to be built.
The festival attracts up to 15 million visitors annually, according to China Highlights.
The entire 600,000-square-meter area is filled with wonderful ice sculptures this year, the tallest one of them being 150 feet tall.
10,000 workers were brought in to cut, haul and sculpt the ice.
• Don't insult other visitors. Offensive comments will be deleted without warning.
• Comments are accepted in English only.
• No swearing words in comments, otherwise such comments will be censored.
• Your nickname and avatar are randomly selected. If you don't post comments for 7 days, they both are reset.
• To choose another avatar, click the ‘Random avatar’ link.
