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HARBIN - ICE might seem a tough sell in Harbin, one of China's coldest cities, but it has pulled it off with a spectacular annual festival that for many is far more tempting than a warm beach holiday.
Featuring hundreds of massive sculptures carved out of ice, the Ice and Snow Festival in Harbin has become a huge draw for visitors, turning northern China's often forbidding temperatures into a competitive advantage.
On average, about 800,000 people visit the Harbin festival every year, 90 per cent of them Chinese.
'This is much better than I thought it would be. The carvings are really elaborate. I would have expected them to be much cruder,' said 23-year-old Harbin Industrial University student Hao Zhifu, one of the visitors.
'Other cities in north China have opened ice festivals. But they aren't as favoured by geography as we are,' said Mr Liu Ruiqiang, president of Harbin Modern Group, a tourism and hotel business.
His competition includes the Jilin Rime Festival in Jilin city of north-east Jilin province, the Shenyang International Ice and Snow Festival in Liaoning province, and the Longqing Gorge Ice and Snow Festival in Beijing.
Mr Liu is also director of the festival's main attraction, the 'Harbin Ice and Snow Big World', a theme park featuring dazzlingly lit sculptures of Chinese palaces, Russian churches and French cathedrals.
The attraction has benefited from its close proximity to the Songhua River.
Ice blocks are cut from the river's frozen surface for the sculptures. It takes 15,000 workers 16 days to complete the sculptures, using 120,000 cu m of ice.
The speed and efficiency reflect the city's efforts to modernise.
The capital of Heilongjiang, China's northernmost province, Harbin was a bleak, industrial powerbase for communist China back in the early 1960s.
The average winter temperature in the city is -16 deg C.
Although the Harbin festival attracts visitors from all over Asia such as Japan and Singapore, Mr Liu said the focus remains on the domestic market.
The festival is not cheap by Chinese standards. Entrance into the 'Big World' is 150 yuan (S$30).
Still, organisers are finding it hard to make money.
Mr Liu said he expected 60 million yuan in revenue from 'Big World', roughly equal to the cost.
'Basically, we're just breaking even...But it's OK, we're still in the process of building up a brand,' he said.
In another sign that ice is money in Harbin, the 'Big World' features exhibits of products from international brands, including life-size replicas of Porsche cars and a giant Coca-Cola bottle.
While some visitors like university student Mr Hao think the festival is becoming overly commercialised, others like Mr Li Zhi, 25, from Changchun city, do not seem to mind.
He sells commemorative coins from a booth inside the 'Big World', one of an army of souvenir sellers here.
'I heard there was good money to be made here, and it's true,' he said.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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