Heilongjiang offers new routes to explore winter wonderland

Visitors take a hot spring bath in Daqing. [Photo provided to China Daily]

(Well, many of them are monuments－or at least ice replicas of them that are close if not to scale. They're just more stunning rendered in ice with colorful lights shimmering from within.)

And there are, of course, mazes and slides fashioned from ice.

(Wee!)

The festival officially starts on Jan 5 and lasts a month, but sculptures stay until spring ultimately delivers Harbin's ice world's annual apocalypse. That can take a while in northernmost China.

Meng Yongning, a resident of Guangzhou, capital of southern China's steamy Guangdong province, took her 6-year-old to Harbin for five days this January.

"I wanted my girl to see the ice and snow," she says.

The child hadn't seen them with her own eyes.

They skied and rode horses on the frozen Songhua River. They wandered among ice sculptures and ice lanterns, and slid down ice chutes at the Harbin Ice and Snow Amusement World.

Meng also enjoyed Central Street, also known as Zhongyang Street. She was impressed by European-style architecture that dates as far back as the 15th century, and especially the Saint Sophia Cathedral.

She plans to visit again this winter.