China's annual Ice and Snow Festival, with its fairy-tale ice sculptures, opened late last week, attracting throngs of tourists who shuffled carefully over the slippy ice and snow and dragged their children in sledges around the park.
This year the ice park spans 810,000 square meters with 250,000 cubic meters of sculptured ice, harvested from the nearby frozen Songhua River, and lit up at night with colorful lights.
The sculptures, some a few-stories-high, featured Chinese-style buildings and bridges, fairy-tale castles, towers and one fashioned after Beijing's Temple of Heaven. Several ice slides were built for children and adults around the park.