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At China’s Harbin ice festival, a wintry delight of frozen palaces awaits
- Construction starts with workers mining blocks from the surface of the Songhua River
- Visitors to the 2021 festival must show a ‘health code’ on a contact-tracing app and have their temperature taken
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Giant snow mazes, illuminated frozen towers and crystal palaces etched from vast blocks of ice greeted visitors to China’s annual ice festival in Harbin.
The frozen dreamscapes have drawn millions of visitors over the years to the wintry northeastern city, which opened the festival on Tuesday despite Covid-19 outbreaks across the country.
Preparations for the annual winter celebration in the province of Heilongjiang begin weeks in advance, with workers mining millions of cubic feet of ice from the surface of the Songhua River over long, gruelling shifts.
Walls of ice carved into the shape of a giant flower were lit up on Tuesday night as the festival opened.
The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics have inspired a push across China to promote winter sports and tourism, with the number of Chinese snow resorts increasing nearly fourfold in the past decade.
China has largely brought coronavirus infections under control domestically, with entertainment and cultural venues reopening and life largely returning to normal in recent months.
But outbreaks in multiple cities have prompted authorities to step up testing and travel restrictions.
Visitors to this year’s festival are required to show a “health code” on a contact-tracing app and have their temperature measured before entering venues.
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