Harbin

Harbin is the capital of Heilongjiang, China's northernmost province, at the border with Siberia. Winters get very cold (-30 degrees), but January and February are definitely the best months to visit: this is when the Ice Lantern Festival takes place.

In this period Harbin is transformed into ice: flowerbeds, garbage bins, advert panels... there's even an entire market made of ice! On the ground you can clearly distinguish the frozen spits, which remind you that you are in China, despite the general Russian athmosphere.

On January 18th five of us took the plane to Harbin to see the famous Ice Lantern Festival, which attracts a lot of tourists every year. We spent 2 days freezing at -15 degrees (a mild winter, according to the locals), exploring the town and warming up in the underground shopping malls and Russian shops.

The main site of the Ice Lantern Festival is in the outskirts of Harbin. It gets crowded in the evening, when hundreds of colourful neonlights illuminate the ice sculptures and miniatures of monuments (there's the Great Wall, the Summer Palace bridge, a church,...). The floor is very slippery (vero Andrea?) and in this cold the camera batteries last about 10 minutes.

The final effect of the neon fantasy world of the Ice Lanter Festival was too kitsch for my standards: I definitely preferred the visit to a more central location of the festival, by daylight, in one of the parks.

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