The frozen ‘Ice City’ home to the most likeable people on Earth

Every winter Sunday in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, a local swimming group called the Bondi Icebergs comes together for a sacred dip. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Rain, hail or shine, at the dawn of each new week, its members embrace the elements and renew their pact with that famous ocean pool. For health. For community. For the thrill of the chill.

Roughly 9000 kilometres north, at the edge of Siberia in China’s Heilongjiang Province, the swimmers of the Dongyong Association are bound by a similar pledge. But where their Bondi counterparts might endure icy midwinter conditions, here, under six hours’ drive from both the Russian and North Korean borders, these Icebergs are contending with actual ice; their swimming pool a rectangular void cut from a river otherwise frozen solid. One by one, they make their way to the diving platform, smile and wave to a handful of frostbitten well-wishers, and disappear below the dark glass of the Songhua River. Similar thrill, very different chill.

I’m in the snow-capped megacity of Harbin, where the mercury is preparing to make its own daily plunge. It’ll settle at a cool -25 degrees overnight, but make no mistake: this is peak tourist season. It might seem counterintuitive, but despite the freeze, almost everything in China’s “Ice City” happens outside. Lamplit avenues rich with European-inspired architecture buzz with winter revellers. Backstreets thrum with outdoor street food stalls; the Hongzhuan Morning Market, a living museum of north-eastern breakfast foods, opens before first light.

Suffice to say, Harbin is a chillseeker’s paradise, and it’s been quietly mounting its case as east Asia’s cold-climate capital for some time. Here, where temperatures keep low for months on end, winter isn’t just endured: it’s a full-throttle celebration of all things cold, led by a people known as much for their staunchness as their warmth. They are the indomitable spirits of Dongbei, the local term for China’s harsh north-east. Their optimism is infectious, their hospitality famous, and they were my favourite part of the four years I spent living in China. Between their wicked sense of humour and appetite for a good time, I’m yet to meet a more likeable people anywhere on Earth.

Harbin’s tourism miracle is a two-parter. There are history heads who come here specifically for the Russian grandeur: the Byzantine Orthodox churches, the baroque promenades, the strength of its symphony orchestra. But far more are here for the long-running Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival: a frenzied celebration of all things frigid conducted at a scale only China could deliver.

The bulk of the festival action occurs west of the city’s cobblestone heart at the Ice and Snow World: a winter theme park decorated with ice sculptures of extraordinary size and detail. Entry for adults is 328RMB ($67), and just about everything in the park is carved from gigantic blocks of ice hauled out of the Songhua River and dispersed over an area of 1.2 million square metres.

According to the state-published People’s Daily, the 2024-25 edition drew an estimated 3.56 million visitors over its 68-day run. A mind-boggling 90 million travellers made for Harbin over that same winter. I will join the throngs just as soon as I finish my Maidie’er ice-cream; a Russian-borne Harbin icon enjoyed just as gaily in subzero conditions as during the city’s dreamy summers.

Both the ice sculptures and the festival itself are the largest in the world, and inside the park, you’ll see frozen interpolations of some of Harbin’s most legendary buildings among storybook ice castles replete with ice slides. In the mellow afternoon light, I’m struck by their diamond-like purity; they almost look thirst-quenching. By night, however, things get Dongbei wild; each sculpture is lit in neon so furious they become visible from the sky lobby of the Ritz-Carlton several kilometres away.

The larger sculptures double as stages. You’ll see colourful Russian folk dancing. You’ll see fashion parades soundtracked by Russian hardbass: a branch of techno born in ’90s Saint Petersburg. There are fireworks. There are dodgem cars on ice. There is ice-skating and ice-fishing and ice-karting and ice hockey and, naturally, ice-cream. This is pure winter maximalism. It’s manic, it’s euphoric, and it’s supercharged by the bracing cold.

The winter cheer continues along the downtown stretch of the Songhua River, right in front of Stalin Park at the Ice and Snow Carnival. Entry here is free and pay-to-play activities dot the river’s frozen surface. You can ride in a hovercraft. You can ride in a horse-drawn sleigh. At a kilometre wide, the whole scene, blanketed in snow and backdropped by a city of 10 million people, looks like a sci-fi moon colony – with one key difference.

The river’s surface is stable enough to drive a car across, and people are doing just that – with wild abandon. For 198RMB per head, you can hop in a car and drift your way across the ice, rally car-style, your driver throwing shrouds of snow into the air with each manoeuvre. I’ve never seen anything like it. Further west along the river, locals meet in more tranquil circumstances at the Workers’ Ice and Snow Park to play curling and bingga: the mindful Dongbei practice of whipping a spinning top across the ice. “Ha! This foreigner is no good at whipping!” offers one elderly gentleman in a thick Dongbei growl.

There are plenty of other ways to experience the Harbin winter party, the calmer International Snow Sculpture Art Expo of nearby Sun Island being one of them. But for the more traditional snow enthusiast, it’s worth noting that the country’s most developed ski fields are just an hour east by bullet train.

Skiing is hardly China’s strongest soft-power asset, but there is snow to be carved. Yabuli Ski Resort, considered the premier skiing destination in this corner of the country, is split into two discrete areas: a government-run section most commonly referred to as the Yabuli New Sports Committee Ski Resort, and the more established Sun Mountain Ski Resort. The former is the cheaper, smaller option, where most of the more challenging runs are reserved solely for developing future champions. Still, if you’re here to learn, three hours’ skiing, including gear hire, will set you back a modest 260RMB. Important: this is a zero-frills set-up. There is little in the way of apres ski, save for a lone convenience store roasting the odd red sausage. (More on them later; they are delicious.)

There are a couple of basic hotels here, but for the real village experience, head to trip.com and book a homestay down the hill in Yabuli Town. Starting at 200RMB, you can spend a cosy night on a kang: a mattress-topped stove bed warmed by a wood fire your host will light underneath you earlier in the evening. Homestays generally include pick-up from the train station and a lift to the slopes and back.

If money is of less concern, you’ll head directly to Sun Mountain Ski Resort. With 16 runs, a Club Med, a string of huts serving hot Dongbei street foods, plus a very remote outpost of hotpot chain Haidilao, Sun Mountain corrals the happy chaos of Dongbei into a much more skiable package. A day on the slopes here, including gear and lift pass, starts at 680RMB.

An all-inclusive night’s stay at Club Med Yabuli, meanwhile, comes in at anywhere from 3000RMB per head, and includes your lift pass, gear hire, three meals, unlimited bar (excluding the top shelf), a group skiing lesson conducted in English, and front-row seats to the hotel’s nightly performances. The experience might be less glamorous than in some neighbouring countries, and often more congested, but it’s nothing if not authentic – and who doesn’t want to smash a fistful of cumin-laced lamb skewers after a day’s shredding?

In defence of Dongbei food

China’s culinary landscape is decorated with some of the world’s most lauded cuisines. Sichuan, Guangdong, Yunnan. Dongbei? Not so much. The region’s rib-sticking fare is rarely mentioned without a jab at its perceived lack of subtlety. But anyone whose teeth have felt the clean snap of a hongchang, a Russian-born red sausage of Lithuanian provenance, will know there’s plenty to love in these wilds. Smoky, garlicky, fatty, the hongchang has been a Harbin icon for more than a century. Subtle it is not, but you’re not here for subtlety – you’re here for the thrill of the chill, and with a hongchang in your pocket, you are impervious to the cold.

Any trip without a tieguodun, or iron-pot stew, is also incomplete. At the centre of the table, a burnt-orange melange of pickled white cabbage, potatoes and protein – preferably goose with its skin on – bubbles away in a sunken pot, its heady perfume tracing the restaurant in thick plumes. Corn cakes steam away at the edge of the pot, and the whole set-up should only set you back about 160RMB. It’ll comfortably feed four.

In the shadow of the brooding Saint Sophia Cathedral, the Daoli Vegetable Market offers a delicious survey of Dongbei things you might munch on the run. The pumpkin buns are outstanding. An army of aunties churns enormous pumpkins with sugar and flour into a blindingly fragrant puree, and bakes it inside sweet, fluffy buns. They’re the best use of 1RMB (20¢) I can think of.

Harbin’s bread culture is another unique byproduct of its enduring closeness with Russia, and while that means excellent, huge loaves of sourdough called dalieba, it also means excellent, locally brewed gewasi, or kvass: a soft drink that tastes like toast because it’s made from bread. Drink it straight from the keg at Daoli Market. The rainbow of preserved goods on offer at the market’s North Korean pickle shop mustn’t be skipped, either. A Harbin resident for six years, the woman who runs it sings her hometown songs in a gravelly tenor while bagging you some of the finest kimchi you’ll ever eat.

A winter trip to Harbin is a singular pleasure, and nowhere else in China will you experience the breakneck pace of a second-tier megacity set to such a poignant Russian backbeat. The 20th-century Chinese academic Hu Shih got most of it. “Once arriving in Harbin,” he said, “I made a great discovery: I discovered the junction of Eastern and Western civilisation.” My great discovery? There is a stirring warmth to this frozen fantasy, and you can call that the Dongbei spirit.

THE DETAILS

VISIT
A day pass for Harbin Ice and Snow World costs 328RMB ($67) for adults and 240RMB for children. A day’s skiing at Sun Mountain Ski Resort starts at 680RMB for adults and includes lift pass and gear hire.

FLY
Juneyao Air operates multiple weekly flights between Melbourne and Sydney to Harbin via Shanghai. See global.juneyaoair.com for details.

STAY
Prices rise sharply during winter in Harbin. The Ritz-Carlton comes with sky-high views of the city and its snow sculptures, and rooms start at about 1960RMB ($412) during January (see ritzcarlton.com). Mansion 1903 Hotel offers all the gilded maximalism a Sino-Russophile could ever hope for (search “Mansion 1903 Hotel” at trip.com for rates).

Club Med Yabuli is the most comfortable option for skiers. Each night’s accommodation is inclusive of three meals, drinks, daily lift passes, an English-language group skiing lesson and nightly performances from about 3000RMB ($615) per head, per night; see clubmed.com.au/r/yabuli. Homestays at the base of the mountain start about 200RMB per person, per night, and are easily arranged by searching “Yabuli” through booking.com.

The writer travelled at his own expense.