Harbin Ice & Snow Sculpture Festival
The international Harbin Ice & Snow Sculpture Festival is considered one of the most important festivals in China.
It is the greatest event of snow and ice around the world, so it attracts tourists from many places in the world. And in this article we are going to talk about this festival in details.
A description of Harbin Ice & Snow Sculpture Festival
This festival takes place every year in Harbin city, which is located in Heilongjiang province.
It is one of the biggest winter festivals in China and the whole world, for it attracts about 18 million visitors with high earnings of 28.7 billion yuan (4.4 billion).
At the beginning of this festivals, the participants were only Chinese. However, many international ice sculptures are shown in the festivals nowadays.
The festival is lunched every year on the fifth of January and lasts till the end of February. And the ice sculptures usually start melting in February.
A brief History of the international Harbin festival
First, it was agreed that the festival will be in Zhaolin Park on the fifth of January in 1985.
However, in 2001, the Harbin festival of skating was merged with the international Heilongjiang festival of skating to be the so-called “the international Harbin festival of ice and snow sculpting”.
In 2007, a Canadian sculpture was showed in the festival as a reminiscence of the Canadian doctor, Norman Bethune.
And this statue could get a Guinness prize as the biggest ice statue in the world. As 1300 cubic meters of ice were used to build the statue.
In 2014, after 30 years of establishing the festival, the Chinese celebrated it under the logo “50–Year Ice Snow, Charming Harbin“.
In 2015, the festival comprised: fireworks, ice lanterns, ice sculpting competitions, and other activities such as winter swimming, fishing, fashion shows, ice games and music concerts.
Where are the ice statues placed
The statues are erected in the whole city, but there are to main places for the exhibition:
- Shengsi island: it is an entertainment city by the other side of Songhua river. It contains a huge exhibition of ice sculptures.
- Ice and Snow World: this region is opened in the afternoon and at night.
It is famous for the completely lightened buildings, which are made of ice blocks with a thickness 2-3 feet.
Basically, the park is usually opened at the end of February. And in 1999, the first ice world was opened to celebrates the decade.
The importance of the international Harbin Ice & Snow Sculpture Festival
In fact, it is considered an essential celebration which has a great global attraction. Thus, many local and international tourists can be found in the festival.
Add to that, the festival has been developed to be a cultural celebration, in which there are many folk songs and dances.
In addition, many successful trading exhibitions take place in the festival and it is crystal clear that this has a cultural and entertaining importance.
From a cultural point of view, this festival increases the domestic production of the city that’s why getting to the festival is costly.
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Finally, we talked about the international Harbin festival of snow and ice in China. So, tell us what do you think about this festival in the comments.
