Block city wars ice castle full#

After this spectacle, amble through an enclosed walkway where you can sacrifice some poor fowl yourself. Rangers will take you on a 30-minute pseudo-safari through the prison-like compound and let loose some live chickens to lure the slumbering cats towards, or even to the top of your vehicle.

Block city wars ice castle full#

The grand finale consists of a replica-though not quite to full scale-of Canada's Niagara Falls.Īlso located on Sun Island is the Siberian Tiger Park. The ice artists have chosen themes ranging from Western fairytale characters and classical masterpieces to Buddha statues and life-size houses. Now that you're somewhat acclimatized, continue to the snow sculpture park in Sun Island Park (taiyangdao gongyuan), where you'll find more than 2,000 sculptures, built from roughly 20,000 cubic meters of ice and 8,000 cubic meters of artificial snow. Indeed, they swear by its positive effects on their health. Taking a dive and crossing a roughly 20-meter pool with water temperatures at 4C (40 F) might instantly kill the inexperienced-either from heart attack or exposure-but the well-trained Harbin swimmers (including one 77-year-old woman) seem to genuinely enjoy their icy hobby. If you fly in on a Friday night, you might want to start your first day in the city by watching brave Harbin residents enjoying a 10am ice-swim at the winter swimming pool near Songhua River bridge (enter through the icebound boat). The Festival, held annually since 1963, attracts visitors from around the globe. With those numbers in mind, pack all the warm clothes you own so you can enjoy in comfort a weekend trip to the famous Harbin Snow Sculpture and Ice Lantern Festival. Granted, the self-proclaimed 'city of ice' seems to be having a 'warm' winter this year there is, surprisingly, no snow on the ground, though temperatures still range from a brisk -15 to -17 Celsius (3-5 Fahrenheit) at daytime, to below -20C (-4 F) during the night. If you want to experience real frosty conditions, there's no better place than Harbin, in China's most northeasterly province of Heilongjiang. Either you flee to sunnier parts and sip Mai Tais on the beach, or you embrace the cold and make it your own. There are two ways to escape the dreary Shanghai winter.