Three days in Harbin: they cut the river into blocks and build a city out of it
Two nights in winter: the Russian cathedral and the cobbled main street on arrival, snow sculpture by day and an ice city after dark, and a hard museum before the train.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Harbin
- Places
- 6 across 3 days
Harbin was built by Russians. The Chinese Eastern Railway needed a town in 1898, and within twenty years there were Orthodox churches, a Jewish community twenty thousand strong, and a main street of art nouveau shopfronts a long way from anywhere that had them.
It is also the coldest major city in China. January averages around minus eighteen and regularly goes past minus thirty, and rather than complaining about it the city cuts the Songhua river into blocks and builds a floodlit metropolis out of them.
That festival is why to come, and it means coming between late December and late February. The rest of the year Harbin is a pleasant, leafy, slightly Russian provincial capital with far less to say for itself.
Highlights
- Ice and Snow World after dark, full sized buildings cut from river ice and lit from inside
- The snow carvings across the river, on a scale that has to be walked around rather than photographed
- St Sophia, a Russian Orthodox cathedral in dark brick with an onion dome, in the middle of a Chinese city
- Ice lollies eaten outdoors at minus twenty on Zhongyang Dajie, which is a local point of pride
- The synagogue and the Jewish quarter, from a community that had two synagogues, a school and a hospital by the 1920s
Where to stay
Harbin, two nights
Stay around Zhongyang Dajie, the old Russian high street, which puts the cathedral, the river and the restaurants within a short walk and means you are not in a taxi every time you go out.
The area near Harbin West station is convenient for trains and a long way from the old town. In festival season, being able to walk home is worth paying for.
Day by day
Day 1 in Harbin
A Russian cathedral, a Russian high street, and an ice lolly
Zhongyang Dajie runs a kilometre and a half down to the river on cobbles laid in 1924, lined with baroque, byzantine and art nouveau facades that Russian and Jewish merchants put up before the revolution. It is the best surviving European street in China.
St Sophia stands a couple of blocks east: dark brick, green onion dome, put up for a Russian regiment in 1907 and rebuilt on a much larger scale in the 1920s. It is a museum of city photographs now rather than a working church, and the interior is worth the ticket for the space alone.
Then buy an ice lolly and eat it outside in the cold, which sounds like a joke and is a genuine Harbin institution with a queue at any temperature.
Finish on the river. In deep winter the Songhua freezes solid enough to drive on, and the ice is covered with sledges, horses and people falling over.
- 14:30
St. Sophia Cathedral
VisitA Russian Orthodox cathedral of 1907, rebuilt in brick in the 1920s, with a green onion dome above a square in the middle of the city. Now the municipal architecture museum, with a good collection of photographs of Harbin before the war.
- 16:30
Zhongyang Dajie
VisitA kilometre and a half of cobbles running down to the river, lined with European facades from the 1900s and 1920s. Pedestrian, lit up at night, and the one street in Harbin nobody should miss.
- 19:00
Modern Ice Lolly
EatThe hundred year old shop on the main street that sells the ice lolly Harbin is sentimental about. Eat it standing outside in the cold with everybody else. Only the original branch counts.
With more time: The flood control monument at the bottom of the street marks the point where the Songhua reached in 1957, and from there you can walk out onto the frozen river.
Day 2 in Harbin
Snow by day, ice after dark
The two big festival sites work best in that order, because snow sculpture reads well in daylight and ice only comes alive when it is lit from inside.
Start with the synagogue in the morning while it is still warm indoors. Harbin's Jewish community reached about twenty thousand in the 1920s, mostly refugees from pogroms and then from the revolution, and the restored new synagogue tells that story properly.
Cross to Sun Island in the afternoon for the snow sculptures, packed and cut from snow rather than ice, some of them fifty metres from end to end.
Then Ice and Snow World, which is the reason people come to Harbin. Several hundred thousand cubic metres of river ice cut into blocks and built into towers, castles and slides, with coloured light inside every block. Get there for dusk and stay three hours.
Eat before you go in. Food inside is expensive and cold, and you will not want to take your gloves off.
- 09:30
Harbin Jewish New Synagogue
CultureThe restored new synagogue, with an exhibition on the twenty thousand Jews who lived in Harbin in the 1920s. The old synagogue and the Jewish school are a few doors up the same street and are worth the ten minute walk.
- 13:30
Sun Island International Snow Sculpture Art Fair
VisitSnow sculpture on Sun Island, carved from compacted snow rather than ice, with pieces up to fifty metres long. Best in daylight, which is why it goes before the ice park. Two hours is enough.
- 16:30
Ice and Snow World
ArchitectureA city built from blocks cut out of the frozen Songhua, floodlit from within, with towers you can climb and ice slides several storeys high. Opens in the afternoon and is worth arriving at dusk. Dress for three hours outdoors at minus twenty five.
With more time: Zhaolin Park, back in the centre, holds a smaller and free-standing display of ice lanterns that is the original version of the festival, and it takes half an hour on the way home.
Day 3 in Harbin
Unit 731
Twenty minutes southwest of the centre, on the site of the buildings themselves, is the museum of what Japan's wartime biological warfare division did here between 1935 and 1945.
Thousands of prisoners, Chinese, Korean, Soviet and allied, were used in experiments involving plague, frostbite and vivisection. The unit's commanders were given immunity by the United States after the war in exchange for their data.
The museum is a low black concrete building and the display is thorough, documented and completely unsparing. It is free and it needs about two hours, and you will not want to do anything immediately afterwards.
The metro runs back to the centre in twenty five minutes, and Harbin West is on the same line.
- 09:00
Unit 731 Museum
HistoricThe site of the Japanese army's biological warfare unit, where thousands of prisoners were experimented on between 1935 and 1945. Free, thoroughly documented and very hard going. Allow two hours and leave a gap afterwards.
With more time: If you would rather end on something else, Sun Island in its summer form is a large riverside park, and in winter the gondola across the Songhua gives you the whole frozen river from above.
Before you go
The cold
This is not ordinary cold. Minus twenty five is a normal January evening and the ice festival is outdoors for four hours. Proper insulated boots, thermal layers, a down coat, a hat that covers the ears and glove liners under mittens are the minimum.
Phone batteries die in minutes in that temperature. Keep the phone inside your coat and take a power bank. Camera lenses fog badly when you go back indoors, so bag the camera before you do.
Everything indoors is heated to the point of discomfort, so dress in layers you can shed. Buy the cheap fleece-lined trousers sold everywhere locally; they are better than whatever you brought.
Getting there and around
High speed trains from Beijing take about four and a half hours to Harbin West. There are flights from most Chinese cities and a few international ones.
The metro and taxis cover the city. Taxis are cheap and in festival season they are also scarce in the evening, so book through an app.
The ice festival sites are on the north bank of the river and are separate ticketed parks a few kilometres apart. Do not try to do more than two in a day.
When to come
The ice festival opens around the fifth of January and the sites are usually built and open from late December, running until late February when the sculptures start to melt.
Outside those months there is no festival at all. In summer Harbin is warm, green and pleasant, and the ice parks are empty fields.
Prices for hotels roughly double for January and the festival opening weekend books out months ahead.
Harbin's answer to being the coldest city in China was not to build shopping malls and stay indoors. It was to saw the river into blocks every December and put up a floodlit town made of them, and then let it melt in March and do it again.
That, plus a Russian high street and a Jewish quarter that nobody expects to find in Manchuria, is a strange and very good three days.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- When is the Harbin ice festival?
- The main sites are usually open from late December, the festival formally opens around 5 January, and everything runs until late February when the sculptures start to go. January is the reliable month and also the coldest, which is the trade.
- How cold does it actually get?
- January averages around minus eighteen and minus thirty happens most winters. The ice park is four hours outdoors in that. Insulated boots, a down coat, thermal base layers, mittens over glove liners and a hat that covers the ears are not optional, and locally bought fleece-lined trousers are better than anything you will have packed.
- Is Harbin worth visiting outside winter?
- It is pleasant and it is not the same trip. Summer is green and mild, the Russian street and the churches are still there, and the ice parks are empty ground. If the festival is what you want, the visit only makes sense between late December and February.
- Which ice sites should I choose?
- Ice and Snow World is the essential one and takes an evening. The Sun Island snow sculptures are a different medium and work in daylight. Zhaolin Park is small, central and free-standing and does the job in half an hour if you only want a taste.
- Can I change this plan?
- Yes. Copy it into the planner, add a night if you want the Siberian tiger park as well, or drop the last morning if the museum is not for you.