Our first venture in Harbin was to Sun Island to see the snow sculptures. This is definitely a day time thing with balmy maximum temperatures of -17C. (We thought we’d start by easing ourselves in with the cold… not sure how well that worked.) But luckily there were lots of tiny shops waiting to take your money in exchange for a hot drink (usually some sort of sweet tea) and giving you a few minutes respite from the cold.

After buying tickets, (passports not required but we always carried them with us anyway as we could get stopped at anytime apparently) we ventured over the bridge, guarded by rows of life sized snow people on either side. These became a common sight around the park, often with random emoji expressions and sometimes food…

The snow sculptures ranged from human sized to building sized and the largest ones were often accompanied by a sign in Chinese and English to explain a bit about them.

We were surprised at the lack of people here, perhaps Sunday is isn’t a popular day for this? While it is great not to be battling crowds for pictures (& hot drinks) it is good to have some people in your photos for some perspective to show the size of some of these things.

There were also some free rides scattered about including being spun around under a giant chicken while sitting on inner tubes. Obviously we needed to give this a go! No action pics as you did need to hold on as you went around 😁

We also learnt that this park is a lovely place for picnicking… presumably during the summer months: