China's annual International Ice and Snow Festival held in Harbin is attracting record-breaking amounts of visitors in this year's iteration, with its fantastical and gargantuan ice sculptures "wowing" tourists and repeat-guests alike as it opened last Friday, Jan. 5, according to CNN.
People visit the Harbin Ice and Snow World in Harbin, in China's northeastern Heilongjiang province on January 5, 2023, during the opening ceremony of the 39th Harbin China International Ice and Snow Festival.
Harbin's Whimsical Winter Wonderland
The 2024 festival's park covers over 810,000 square meters with a whopping 250,000 cubic meters worth of artistically carved ice, some also functioning not only as a visual attraction but also as a fun physical experience through its sculpted slides and offered sleds.
Having said that, the current iteration of the long-reoccurring fest is no slouch regarding its aesthetical aspect as it spectacularly lights up the nearby Songhua River, whose frozen waters become the sole source of ice for the park, at night.
This light show pairs brilliantly with the sculptures fashioned to look like China's famed shrines, particularly one called the "Temple of Heaven" located in Beijing.
The Harbin Festival, which was first held in 1963, is also considered to be the world's largest ice and snow event, trumping Japan's Sapporo Snow Festival, Canada's Quebec City Winter Carnival, and Norway's Ski Festival.
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Highly Sought-After Tourist Attraction in China
In an interview with Reuters, the event's vice director of marketing, Sun Zemin, said that the current influx of visitors has risen to about 30,000 this year, which led to nearby hotels within Harbin getting fully booked even past February's highly-anticipated Spring Festival.
He also added that this year's festival has practically doubled the park's average attendees per day record in 2018 and the following years, with it hovering around 18,500 for the formerly mentioned year.
This is especially exaggerated with the passing New Year holidays as the fest accommodates over five-fold the amount last year during the same period.
Collectively and under this context, the annual festival has welcomed 163,200 people, with revenue from those people's admissions fetching over 46.18 million yuan, or around $6.45 million.
This is an income record that is nearly six times the amount of last year's iteration, as shared by the Heilongjiang TV station.
In terms of Harbin's tourism, the Ice and Snow Festival has largely been beneficial during the aforementioned winter periods, bringing around 3.05 million tourists to the capital city of China's northernmost province of Heilongjiang.
Despite success during this period, the Harbin Ice Festival discourages visitors from coming in the peak season which encompasses the dates from Feb. 9 to Feb. 15, as they warn would-be guests that the park will be very crowded on its website.
