China kicks off month-long winter fest in Harbin

HARBIN, Chin: Swimming enthusiast Yu Hongtao, 50, trained for months in the freezing water of the Songhua river to compete in a winter ice swimming tournament held annually in China’s northern city of Harbin, known for its bitterly cold weather.

“You have to start swimming from autumn so that the body can conquer the sudden icy impact on one’s cardio-vascular system,” said Yu, a Harbin resident. “The feeling of diving into the water is very cool.”

More than 300 men and women, wearing just ordinary trunks and swimsuits, on Saturday braved the bitter cold waters in the ice swimming meet, part of Harbin’s annual winter festival, among the biggest in the northern hemisphere.

Temperatures can plunge as low as 35 degrees Celsius below zero in the city in China’s Heilongjiang province.

The festival, which began yesterday, has drawn millions of visitors from around the world every year since its inception in the early 1980s.

Highlights include sled rides on the Songhua river, mass weddings, and towering sculptures of ice and snow carved by thousands of artists and workers.

Visitors marvel at the mini ice replicas of the Colosseum and of the Milan Cathedral, particularly in the long evenings when soft, coloured lights illuminate the sculptures. — Reuters

A man reacts as he catches a trout by bare-hand fishing during the annual ice fishing festival in Hwacheon, some 120 kilometres northeast of Seoul. The annual three-week festival reportedly draws up to a million people to the frozen Hwacheon river, where organisers drill some 20,000 fishing holes in the ice and release 180 tonnes of trout into the river during the festival period. — AFP photo