Only in China...

Hey everyone! I know this is a super late travel post... it's like 10 months late.. but better late than never right?

During my Dec 2011/Jan 2012 China/HK trip, I went to Harbin for a couple of days!

Here are some information on Harbin which I have extracted off Wikipedia!

Harbin is the capital and largest city of Heilongjiang Province in Northeast China.

The city is known for its coldest weather and longest winter among major Chinese cities. Its "Ice City" nickname is well-earned, as Winters here are dry and bitterly cold, with a 24-hour average in January of only −18.4 °C (−1.1 °F), although the city sees little precipitation during the winter and is often sunny. 

The annual Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival has been held since 1985. Although the official start date is January 5 each year, in practice, many of the sculptures can be seen before. While there are ice sculptures throughout the city, there are two main exhibition areas: Enormous snow sculptures at Sun Island and the separate "Ice and Snow World" that operates each night. 

Ice and Snow World features illuminated full size buildings made from blocks of 2–3 feet thick crystal clear ice directly taken from Songhua River which passes through the city. 

The "Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival" is one of the four largest ice and snow festivals in the world, along with Japan's Sapporo Snow Festival, Canada's Quebec City Winter Carnival, and Norway's Ski Festival.

So that's where I went! The 13th Annual Ice and Snow World in Harbin! I will let all the photos do the talking.. but it was amazing.. the amount of labour that must've went into creating this! I guess why the title of this post is "Only in China".

The entrance! I think it stretches out for a bit longer than this but I couldn't capture it all with my camera!

Can you believe this is all man made?? And it's all ice??

Massive ice slide! Yes that is me coming down the slide hahaha! It's actually not that fun.. esp the second time when the slide was really bumpy and omg my poor bum =(

Started getting dark so all the lights came on!! Yes! There are lights embedded in the ice!!

I really love this picture! Can you believe it is all made of ice???

Pretty awesome Coke ad!

Love the dusking sky~

There was bumper car rides and snow motor sleds but I forgot to take photos of them!

Look at this hut made of snow!

I really love this photo below!!

Ice world at night!

Massive snow sculpture of Guanyin!

And ice sculptures! I think these were the finalists in an ice sculpture contest!

I think this is the one that won first prize! Romeo and Juliet!

Forbidden city!

They even have cute horse drawn carriage rides!

Massive Pirates of the Caribbean Snow sculpture! 

Disney Princesses!

Micky and Minnie mouse!

It was freezing cold! I think it was like minus 20-30 degrees Celsius! But my god it was soo worth it!! It was truly amazing and breath taking!!

Next day we went to the Yabuli Alpine Ski slopes!

Check out those ski slopes omg!

Ski lodges!

We took a cable car to the top of the slopes

And here we are, at the beginning of the slopes! And I saw this little russian kid with his parents going down that and I was like.. omg =O

Layout of the ski slopes! The black slopes are for expert/advanced skiers, blue is for intermediate and green is for the beginners. 

Since I don't know how to ski, I went down the slope toboggan style!! 

This is the toboggan entrance ^_^

Then we went to a baby slope to try out skiing for the first time! My family and I hired an instructor each to give us some basic guidance! It's much harder than anticipated but it was so much fun!! I can't wait to ski again!

Harbin at night! It was amazing because the city is lit up with lights like these...

And ice and snow "buildings" like below scattered all over the city!

If you ever travel to the northern part of China, I strongly recommend you to visit Harbin! Hope you enjoyed this post! I promise I will try and blog more frequently again!

I'll be travelling to New Zealand in December making a stop over in Melbourne and Sydney!

And I'm going to Tokyo for two weeks in April next year to see Sakura! I'm supppper excited about that trip and I promise I will blog sooo much about it! I'm going to buy so much EMODA and Mode clothes and shoes and everything!!!! I can't wait ^__^