Also known as "Ice City", Harbin is most famous in China for its winter scenery and bitterly cold temperatures that accompany the freezing environment. The average winter temperature here is as low as minus 20 to minus 30 degrees C. Please make sure you come prepared with plenty of winter woolies!
The Harbinese however, really know how to exploit and make the most out of their situation and have a long tradition of using ice and snow in an amazingly creative and varied number of ways. Frozen lakes are used as natural skating grounds, ground snow is used instead of a refrigerator and even the frozen Songhua lake was once used as a highway.
To resistant to the cold weather, most of people eat the hot pot and other high-energy food to preserve the fat and energy. Meanwhile, as the history result, local cuisine combine the Russian flavor and mainly in Northeast flavor. Dumpling is one of the popular and normal food in their daily life.
Local persons make good use of their talents to innovate the ice sculpture to enrich the cold day. Ice sculptures first came into being as a traditional Chinese art form during the early Qing dynasty some 350 years ago. Over time, various types and shapes of sculpture have been designed and developed, all enhancing the status of this somewhat unusual art form so that today the annual Ice Festival is televised nationwide, attracting millions of viewers. Making the ice sculpture is a relatively straight forward process, especially in these freezing temperatures. When the idea first came into being, a colored lantern was p