Apologies this update, too, comes late; I had to move rooms due to not having hot water, and acquired a new roommate from Japan the same day. The end result is that I misplaced my connector cord from my laptop to my camera for a few days.

And, well, I went to Harbin. It's a colder city to the northeast of Beijing, and a big metropolis in its own right. In addition, it's incredibly famous for...

Ice sculptures. Harbin (or as the Chinese call it, Haerbin) has an ice sculpture festival every year. It's really incredibly impressive. This update will be very image-heavy; my apologies for this, but it's really the sanest method to do this all.

Bats!

A fish. This picture wasn't too clear, but the crowds were thick and it was cold (-10 to -15 degrees Celsius?), so...

Celebrating the Chinese New Year - Year of the Rat, we had this statue present. This is how it's commonly depicted - more of a Jerry-like mouse than anything else.

Praying mantis.

These divided the sections of the display. I actually don't think I ever saw what was behind this one, oddly... there were some that blocked off pay-to-see sections, so I didn't go those ways.

Faces and masks! I loved how intricate these were; simply awesome to see, especially with the light.

More abstract sculptures. Some of them are pretty cool, some which I avoided weren't as interesting.

And some animalistic ones.

And then there was the octopus grabbing random things. I found, and still find, this one undefinably hilarious to see. I believe the subtext was related to Atlantis.

Finally, humanistic statues. Please note that I only got about half, primarily the ones I considered deeply impressive.

A slight side note before I continue; Harbin is about the same temperature during the winter as Kalamazoo, Michigan, but is often far less windy. So while the temperature often dives down to -10 degrees Celsius, you can, since there usually isn't much wind, get away without hat/gloves that would be essential in Kalamazoo. Of course, if you come during a snowstorm or towards the spring end of their winter (when the northeastern winds begin to pick up), you really want the gloves and hat. I wore them all the time, anyway; Beijing's gotten me used to nice spring-like temperatures.

Little igloos!

Bigger igloos! About 50 people were in this at one point; I had to wait until most of them came out before I could go in and get a good picture.

And, for you winter enthusiasts...

They had slides carved out of ice. Two sets, in fact; the first two pictures were this really windy road that looked somewhat dangerous due to all the bends, and the second one was the traditional sledding type hill.

To wrap this up, I'm just going to let some of the buildings speak for themselves here. Yes, full buildings and ships made out of ice.

Sorry for so many pictures, but seeing all this was just... awesome. Next time will probably be pictures I took around Harbin itself, though on my main walk I didn't have batteries for my camera, irritably. There will also be some more talk on the Chinese New Year, which is supposed to be over but which I'm still hearing fireworks from five days after the fact.