The Snow Festival

Michael Hitchcock, Professor in Cultural Policy and Tourism, attended the Harbin Snow and Ice Festival in January this year as part of his role as the cultural tourism consultant on the

UNWTO‘s tourism master-plan for Heilongjiang. The festival is one of the largest of its kind in the world and comprises two large sites.

The snow festival is visited during the day and has huge and elaborately carved snow sculptures.

The Ice Festival

The Ice Festival is usually visited in the evening and has massive ice sculptures that are lit up from the inside. The ice sculptures are made from blocks of ice cut from the nearby frozen river. Temperatures can fall to minus 40 degrees in this northern part of China, but this January temperatures fluctuated between minus 10 and minus 25.

Professor Michael Hitchcock

In April Michael will be travelling north again to Finland where he will be a keynote speaker at the Souvenirs 2020 conference.