By Liu Mengdan, As the world’s largest ice-and-snow theme park, the ongoing 26th edition of the Harbin Ice-Snow World in Harbin, the capital of northeast China’s Heilongjiang province, is a romantic fairy-tale world full of ice and snow sculptures.
On Dec. 31, 2024, the operating hours of the park were extended until 00:30 am the next day, attracting a large number of visitors to ring in the New Year in the world of snow. According to statistics, from Dec. 11 to 31, 2024, the park received nearly 640,000 tourist visits.
“No matter how many ‘spoilers’ I saw online, the moment I entered the park, it completely refreshed my previous understanding of the beauty of ice and snow,” said Qin Er, a visitor from Nanjing, east China’s Jiangsu province, who was visiting northeast China for the first time.
Despite the temperature dropping to below minus 10 degrees Celsius, Qin’s enthusiasm remained high. He praised the ice sculptures in the park as “ingeniously crafted” and “exquisitely beautiful,” capturing over 100 photos with his phone.
With just over a month to go, the 2025 Asian Winter Games is set to open in Harbin. Themed “Dream of Winter, Love among Asia,” the park has incorporated elements inspired by the upcoming Asian Winter Games.
The main tower, themed “Love among Asia,” stands out as the park’s centerpiece. As the tallest structure in the park, it drew inspiration from the official emblem of the Olympic Council of Asia, with the central part maintaining a radiant sun-like shape. The main body of the tower is composed of intricately arranged towering ice columns that gradually taper inward from the base, creating a visual effect of ascending levels.
“Thousands of ice sculptors have gathered in the park, each presenting their unique skills, working overtime and putting in extra effort, all in the hope of creating a dreamlike ice and snow kingdom for visitors,” said Cui Shiyao, a designer of the Harbin Ice-Snow World.
Providing technology-enabled experiences
The park covers an impressive 1 million square meters and uses 300,000 cubic meters of ice and snow, setting a historical record. How was such a massive project completed with efficiency and high quality? The answer lies in the use of technologies.
In April 2024, Harbin Ice and Snow World Park Limited collaborated with Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) on a provincial sci-tech project to develop intelligent and automated equipment for making standard ice blocks.
“Unlike previous construction that mainly relied on manual labor, our equipment adopts multi-sensor data fusion and artificial intelligence visual recognition and measurement technologies after over six months of exploration and practices. It is able to automatically detect and recognize the status of ice blocks,” said Ren Bingyin, project leader and a professor with the School of Mechatronics Engineering of HIT.
Additionally, with automation control technology, the equipment can intelligently control the production process of standard ice blocks, greatly enhancing the production efficiency and quality of ice blocks used for landscape and architectures, Ren added.
The ice was collected from the frozen Songhua River and efficiently cut into uniform sizes by machines, which will make the surface of the ice blocks smoother and more even, laying a sound foundation for the subsequent ice construction, said Cong Peiyu, head of the design and research department of the Harbin Ice-Snow World.
Technology is also empowering visitors’ experience. As an icon of the park from the first edition to the present, the “Century Clock” has adopted more acoustic-optical technologies. Whenever the clock chimes, flowing light and shadows will appear on the petal-shaped ice structures around the clock, providing an engaging audio-visual interactive experience.
Magnificent world of snow sculptures
If the Harbin Ice-Snow World is the kingdom of ice sculpture art, the Sun Island International Snow Sculpture Art Expo, another iconic winter attraction in Harbin, is a magnificent world of snow sculptures.
The Sun Island International Snow Sculpture Art Expo has been held for 37 sessions, becoming a grand international event of snow sculpture art. Inside the park, a snow sculpture inspired by traditional Chinese blue-and-white porcelain has attracted a large number of visitors.
With a total length of 17 meters, a height of 14 meters, and a width of 8 meters, the snow sculpture uses about 1,800 cubic meters of snow. The “bottle” of the sculpture is surrounded by carefully carved traditional Chinese elements such as pine trees and auspicious cloud, exuding a graceful and elegant charm.
Apart from major tourist attractions, in different areas of Harbin, snowmen have taken on various poses, making visitors feel like they have stepped into a dreamlike fairy tale world. For instance, a snowmen landscape belt has been built at a street square in Xiangfang district; “snow couples” are hugging each other on the “Happy Island of Harbin Heart” in Harbin New District; and “snow dolls” customized to the Year of the Snake are displayed in the snow field of Yanjiagang Farm.
This winter, tourists from all over the world have been flocking to Harbin to enjoy ice and snow activities. From Dec. 1 to 21, 2024, Harbin Taiping International Airport handled over 1.42 million passengers, a year-on-year increase of 13.9 percent, about sixty percent of whom were tourists.
