Each year for a month in early January to early February, the North Eastern Chinese city of Harbin hosts the spectacular Ice Festival.

During this time, the city is full of cool, impressive and artistic ice and snow sculptures, carvings, and buildings in parks and on frozen rivers.

World famous monuments like some grand cathedrals, pyramids, Potala Palace and the Great Wall are all carved out of ice, in spectacularly giant sizes!  Some of them, embedded with colored lights, are designed for nighttime observation.

The Harbin festival is one of the world’s four largest ice and snow festivals, along with Japan’s Sapporo Snow Festival, Canada’s Quebec City Winter Carnival, and Norway’s Ski Festival. This year it is being held January 5, 2008 - February 5, 2008.

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