This archive report was first published on 6 January 2020.
On a chilly Sunday evening, fireworks lit up the sky in Harbin, China, marking the opening of the city's annual ice festival. The event, which has drawn millions of visitors over the years, features glittering palaces and fantastical scenes sculpted out of ice.
Earlier in the day, 43 brides in lace wedding gowns and down jackets waited in line with their grooms to take part in a 'mass ice and snow wedding.' The ceremony was a unique twist on traditional weddings, with the couples exchanging vows in the midst of a winter wonderland.
But the Harbin festival is not just about romance. Brave swimmers also took to the frozen Songhua River, plunging into a pool carved from the ice. Temperatures stayed below minus seven degrees Celsius (19 Fahrenheit) even in the afternoon, making the feat all the more impressive.
Behind the scenes, over 100 workers toiled for hours each day, harvesting 170,000 cubic meters (six million cubic feet) of ice from the Songhua River. The ice was then cut into thousands of pieces, which were used to create the festival's elaborate displays.
As China prepares to host the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, the country is ramping up its promotion of snow and ice tourism. An expressway is under construction linking Beijing and Zhangjiakou, a city in northern Hebei province that will co-host the Olympics. A high-speed railway line connecting the two cities also opened on December 30.
According to the official Xinhua news agency, China expects 340 million people to visit snow and ice attractions in the 2021-2022 winter season, up from 224 million in the 2018-2019 season.
