A Song of Ice and Snow: the international festival of ice and snow sculpture takes place in China

Every year for 17 years, one of the largest ice and snow sculpture festivals has been held in Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang Province, China. Every winter, starting in January, from 10 to 15 million tourists come to see the winter fairy tale.

The huge sculptures made of ice and snow are certainly impressive, but still a distinctive feature of the Harbin festival is the stunning night illumination of the ice giants. The effect of magic is achieved thanks to the imagination of the creators, as well as computer-controlled LED lamps of all colors of the rainbow.

The theme of this year's festival is "A pearl on a crown of ice and snow".

The 17th international festival will be visited by more than 1 million tourists.

The Harbin Festival always starts on January 5 and lasts about a month, depending on the weather.

And in the evening, all the ice and snow masterpieces are illuminated.

Ice for ice sculptures is taken from the Sungari River.

In fact, the festival has been held since 1963, but it was often interrupted, for example, during the Cultural Revolution in China. And since 1985, the festival was resumed and began to be held annually.

Guests of the festival can also go skiing, ice skating, arrange a sled race or swim in the ice hole.

Russian Russians founded Harbin in 1898 as a railway station of the Trans-Manchurian highway, so Russian tourists will surely see a lot of familiar things in the architecture of the city.

Harbin Festival is one of the four largest ice and snow festivals in the world, along with the Japanese Snow Festival in Sapporo, the Canadian Winter Carnival in Quebec and the Norwegian Ski Festival.