In China's coldest places, tourism warms up

The 22nd Harbin Ice and Snow World, a 600,000-square-meter wonderland of sculptures, opened on Dec 24 and will run until the end of February.

The park, an important element of the city's winter tourism season, has been an attraction for 21 consecutive years. It is built each winter with ice rather than commonly used construction materials.

As man-made ice often contains air bubbles and is not strong enough to carve, ice for the festival is harvested from the Songhua River, which runs through the city. Under the rules, each block of ice must be 80 centimeters wide, 40 cm thick and 120 cm long.

After the first block of ice was pulled from the frozen river on Dec 7, around 200,000 cubic meters of ice has been transformed into fanciful ice buildings and sculptures, making the park a winter wonderland.

Another important event in the city－the 33rd China Harbin Sun Island International Snow Sculpture Art Expo－kicked off on Dec 20 after three weeks of construction.

At the expo, which is located in Sun Island Park, tourists can view 50 groups of snow sculptures, which use more than 90,000 cubic meters of snow, including the 116-meter-long main snow sculpture The Chinese Dragon.

Several snow sculpture competitions will be held at the park during the expo, which will last until February.

With temperatures dropping to-40 C recently, Mohe, China's northernmost city, is also presenting its unique winter charms to tourists.

The city is one of the few places in China with a subarctic climate－long, severe winters and short, warm summers. Winter begins in early to mid-October and lasts until late April. It is the coldest place in China, holding the record for the lowest temperature, -52.3 C in 1956.

Beiji Village, 88 kilometers from the city center, attracts virtually all visitors who land at Mohe. They visit China's northernmost bank and post office and experience traditional rural life in the Northeast.

In the village, a recently built hotel made of ice and snow has become a popular attraction. Almost everything inside is made of frozen water in some form, including the beds, tables, sofas and decorations.

The ice beds, in particular, are popular as people like to try out the frozen surface.

There is also the first Christmas village in Asia, which started in 2012. In the village, 25 km from the center of Beiji village, people from the town of Santa Claus, Finland, play various roles. They had to pass an examination to be selected.

Smonlin Igor, the 17th Santa Claus, arrived in China in November. He dressed up as the Jolly Old Elf and posed for photographs with tourists. The greetings he wrote on postcards bore the signature "Santa Claus".

"It is really a unique experience of traveling from a place with temperatures of nearly 20 C to another place at lower than-30 C," said Qiao Ba, a tourist from Hainan province. "I was shocked when I entered the ice and snow world, and I believe I will never regret the visit here."