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Freezing Your Butt Off for Fun in Harbin, China
Harbin, China’s northernmost major city, takes the lemons of winter—subzero temperatures under bleak gun-metal skies—and turns them into lemonade. The short days and dark nights mark the arrival of one of China’s large-scale oddities: the Harbin Snow and Ice Festival. Stroll through a life-sized European village, sip hot chocolate in chateaus, visit a zoo, even crane your neck at a mountainside right out of Yellowstone Park—all these fashioned with mad artistic obsession entirely out of snow. For an early dinner, scalding hotpot hits the spot, then it’s off to the Ice Lantern Festival. Perhaps the image of an ice rink lined with atmospheric red Chinese lanterns comes to mind. Think again. Scale up to a Disneyland scene with castle walls of ice shimmering in Technicolor light, music thumping, and even rides down luge-like chutes on burlap sacks. While you are trying to figure out whether to feel more amused or awed, you might forget for a moment that it is damn cold.
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