Making art and fun from the ice, snow and freezing cold in Harbin, China

HARBIN, China (AP) - People are making the best of the freezing weather in northeast China: Sculptors have finely chiseled ice into elaborate structures resembling landmark castles and temples, and visitors are appreciating the artwork and the excitement of ice slides and other attractions at the annual Harbin Ice and Snow World.

The ice sculpture festival is a major tourist draw for the former industrial center that still boasts of its proximity to Russia with Tsarist-era architecture found nowhere else in China.

The riverside site features dozens of giant artworks like the Taj Mahal of India, the Osaka Castle of Japan, and Beijing's own Temple of Heaven, all carved from clear blocks of ice.

"The ice sculpture looks exactly the same (as the Temple of the Heaven), said Jin Yiting, who was visiting with her parents from Shanghai to enjoy the wintry contrast with central and southern China. "I touched the ice cube and its texture is very good. It's translucent. It looks elegant when the sunlight passes through."

Another visitor, Song Shukun, who was pushing his girlfriend in a doughnut-shaped sled, said the ice blocks offered insights into how such structures are assembled.

"We can see the internal structure of the ice. The way they are arrayed and the way they touch remind me of the bricks of the Great Wall (of China)," Song said.

The main festival covers 1 square kilometer (.6 square miles) of the city, with the sculptures using 13,000 cubic meters (460,000 cubic feet) of ice blocks cut mainly from the adjacent Songhua River. There are satellite parks elsewhere in Harbin.

"When I come here seeing all the ice sculptures and snow, it's just so wow," said Gu Junyan of Henan province which sees little snow.

Ice slides, with the longest ones reaching 521 meters (1,710 feet), are a key attraction, with visitors waiting almost an hour to get their chance. "At the beginning it was kind of steady. When I slipped off the slope, the wind was strong and I felt cold. It was very exciting," said Gong Caiyun, who just came down from the slides.

While carved features include famous architecture and figures from Western and Chinese mythology, carvers prefer to keep things simple for maximum effect, said artist Andreu Aleas.

"We don't want to do a lot of details, but just to play with the size, and these lines, very clean, plain. Because (with) the snow, sometimes it's difficult to appreciate the details. Because everything is white. So we decided to do this kind of fine artwork with just some lines and planes and some curves," Aleas said.