The icemen cometh. Harbin’s winter wonderland draws record crowds
It’s bitterly cold. The snow is deep. The pavement is icy. Your feet feel frozen. It may not sound like a tourist paradise, but the city of Harbin in northeastern China is raking in visitors this winter.
At the end of the three-day New Year weekend, the city reported a record 3 million visitors who spent a record 5.9 billion yuan (US$840 million). Prodded by social media hype, tourists flooded in to marvel at the magnificent frozen sculptures at the world’s largest ice festival.
This winter wonderland is in sharp contrast with the city’s longtime image as a heavy industrial city in China’s “rust belt.” It may be a bit of a backwater in warmer months, but in winter, the capital of Heilongjiang Province on the border with Siberia comes into its own.
The Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival grew out of the traditional ice lantern show that began in 1963. It has now been an annual event since 1985.
Artists from around the world come to carve more than 250,000 cubic meters of ice into nearly 1,000 ice and snow sculptures and installations. The ice is hauled to the site from the city’s frozen Songhua River.
At night, many ice sculptures are lit with multicolored lights, casting an enchanting, almost ghostly glow.
And the activities don’t end there. The festival offers a snowflake Ferris wheel, icy super slides, skating, snowmobiling and winter swimming — yes, it’s a very cold dip!
There are also fireworks, folk performances and for those who prefer more traditional sightseeing, Harbin’s Russian heritage buildings are popular venues.
The advent of social media has served to heighten the popularity of the Harbin winter extravaganza in recent years. Trip.com, an online travel platform, reported that tour orders for a trip to Harbin this season increased 158 percent from the same period last year. Most of the tourists come from Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing.
The festival normally lasts for about two months into late February. There is no closing date. It all depends on the thaw.
Harbin locals go all out in extending hospitality to visitors. There have been stories online of taxi drivers carrying tourists for free, and of residents dressed in garish cotton coats dispensing hot tea or candies to visitors.
Pampering tourists, they believe, will encouraging them to spend more.
Amid such unfettered exuberance, the local government is sounding a cautionary note. The Harbin Daily reported on January 3 that during the first two days of 2024, hotel operators were called into meetings to urge them to improve tourism services and keep prices reasonable.
Most hotels complied. Some extended breakfast hours, adding to their menus such local delicacies as dongli (frozen pear) or niandoubao, sticky bean buns.
Harbin, of course, would like to extend its tourism beyond winter. To diversify, it wants to parlay its rich history, traditional cuisine, folk customs and artistic performances into the rest of the year.
Handling volumes of visitors requires better infrastructure and monitoring of unscrupulous business practices. It needs long-term planning and a commitment to show visitors that it has something unique to offer.
If you decide to go to Harbin, remember to take warm clothes. Temperatures can plunge into the minus 30s degrees Celsius, and the average daytime high in January is minus 13 degrees.
Festival officials recommended wearing sun or snow glasses to avoid snow blindness, and taking warm refuge if signs of frostbite begin to appear.