CBN Friday Special丨Harbin's not so frozen this winter: Behind the heat of Ch（Frozen City）

It all started with a furore, when the Harbin Ice and Snow World was overcrowded by incoming visitors on its opening day. Many had to spend much longer than expected time waiting to get on some of the popular amusement facilities. Angry customers asked the park for ticket refunds.

That may have, like many other similar cases, turned into a complete PR disaster, damaging the park and even the city’s reputation. Then things took a U-turn.

The Ice and Snow World issued a public apology and swiftly initiated refunds for dissatisfied customers, while local officials with the tourism bureau went supervising rectification in the park and apologized. Those only took them one night, and it all went from frowny faces to applauses.

This perfect case study of crisis management turns into another case study of tourism promotion for the city, and you can almost sense the striking resemblance of Harbin, China’s famed “icy city” in northeastern Heilongjiang Province, with Zibo, eastern Shandong Province, which went from little known to viral for its barbecue culture in the summer last year.

And there’s more. This winter wonderland is in sharp contrast with the city's longtime image as a heavy industrial city in China's "rust belt." Sounds familiar? Because that’s another reason why Zibo stood out as a new fanbase for youngsters who are looking for something new in an old industrial city.

Surely this time, the advent of social media has also served to heighten the popularity of the Harbin winter extravaganza.

Video footages of tourists in puffer hats and gloves dancing to music in Harbin online got nearly 100 million views on Sina Weibo as of Saturday afternoon.

Many of the tourists come from the southern regions, such as Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian provinces. Often clad in orange or yellow down-jackets, they are even nicknamed “tangerines” or “potatoes”, grabbing much attention on social media.

At the end of the three-day New Year weekend, the city reported a record 3 million visitors who spent a record 5.9 billion yuan. Prodded by social media hype, tourists flooded in to marvel at the magnificent frozen sculptures at the world's largest ice festival.

Trip.com, an online travel platform, reported that tour orders for a trip to Harbin this season increased 158 percent from the same period last year.

According to data from Meituan.com, bookings for hospitality and tickets in the city of Qiqihar in Heilongjiang via the platform surged by 160.2 percent year-on-year during the New Year Day holidays, while entertainment income jumped by 866.5 percent year-on-year.

Harbin's success has also thrilled investors, with A-shares related to the revitalization of Northeast China reporting a rapid climb in prices.

As the top attraction most visitors are there to experience, the Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival grew out of the traditional ice lantern show that began in 1963. It has now been an annual event since 1985.

Artists from around the world come to carve more than 250,000 cubic meters of ice into nearly 1,000 ice and snow sculptures and installations. The ice is hauled to the site from the city's frozen Songhua River.

And the activities don't end there. The festival offers a snowflake Ferris wheel, icy super slides, skating, snowmobiling and winter swimming! There are also fireworks, folk performances and for those who prefer more traditional sightseeing, Harbin's Russian heritage buildings are popular venues.

The festival normally lasts for about two months into late February. There is no closing date. It all depends on the thaw.

Apart from the city's unique tourism offering, the newfound fame of Harbin lies in what’s in its core: heartwarming hospitality. Harbin locals go all out in extending hospitality to visitors.

Arriving in Harbin, tourists were welcomed with live performances at the airport, and temporary dressing rooms lined up for them to change into warmer clothing. In addition, many local residents voluntarily offer free car ride for arriving tourists, while local vendors offer free samples of special local products like Wuchang rice for free.

The municipal government even opted to make the opening day of the International Ice and Snow Festival a public holiday to boost the festival atmosphere.

Many warm-hearted local residents volunteered to help visitors fend off the freezing cold. Pampering tourists, they believe, will encourage them to spend more.

According to Dai Bin, President of the China Tourism Academy, the spillover effect of ice and snow tourism consumption can serve as an important catalyst for local catering, retail, performance and other service industries. This, in turn, promotes investments in scenic spots, resorts and shopping areas, as well as research and development involving equipment and gear, thereby, boosting the local economy, Dai stated.

Amid such unfettered exuberance, the local government is sounding a cautionary note.

The Harbin Daily reported on January 3 that during the first two days of 2024, hotel operators were called into meetings to urge them to improve tourism services and keep prices reasonable.

Harbin, of course, would like to extend its tourism beyond winter. To diversify, it wants to parlay its rich history, traditional cuisine, folk customs and artistic performances into the rest of the year.

But Harbin seems to have even more ambitious goals.

Northeast China witnessed the birth of the country's first bucket of molten steel, the first-generation jet fighter and the country's first car.

With its solid industrial foundation, the region also produced many of the key components used for rockets, satellites and many other large-scale machines like hydropower generators. China's first domestically-built aircraft carrier set out from the region too.

At the same time, vast and fertile farmland there provides strong support for China’s food security, which is better known as the country’s “grant breadbasket”.

However, with the marketization of China's economy since 1978, Harbin suffered from significant decline as its economy was dominated by the restructuring of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs).

In 2021, the annual GDP of Harbin was only 535 billion yuan, the smallest among all 15 sub-provincial cities and only 30 percent of Wuhan’s. No Global Fortune 500 company is founded in Harbin. And Harbin became the first provincial capital in the country to have less then 10 million permanent residents by the end of 2021.

Both the local government and the citizens are keen to restore the city to its former glory and construct a new collective identity. The integrated development of tourism in Northeast China will have a demonstration effect on the integrated development of other industries in the region.

In 2023, the three provinces in China's northeastern region stepped up efforts to boost high-quality development and sustained revitalization. In the first three quarters, Northeast China's Jilin Province saw its GDP grow by 5.8 percent on a yearly basis, whereas Liaoning Province's GDP up by 5.3 percent year-on-year.

Last year, a number of foreign-funded projects embarked on business exploration in Northeast China. A mega China-Saudi Arabia chemical project with total investment of 83.7 billion yuan commenced construction in Panjin, Liaoning in March 2023. In China's automobile hub of Changchun, Jilin Province, German auto giant Audi and Chinese automaker FAW's new energy vehicle project is making steady progress, local media reported.

Harbin’s municipal officials have also been busy receiving foreign delegations in recent days. A number of official and semi-official foreign delegations paid visits to the city during the past week.

French Tourism Minister Olivia Grégoire visited the city on Friday and inaugurated the China-France Year of Culture and Tourism. A delegation of the Russian-Chinese Business Park in St. Petersburg visited Harbin's municipal commerce bureau recently. Last Friday, Harbin Mayor Zhang Qixiang told a visiting delegation headed by the mayor of Chiang Mai, Thailand, that he hoped the two sides could expand the scope of economic and trade cooperation as the city is building itself into an upper land of opening-up to the north.

Multiple signs have demonstrated a strong momentum of the revitalization of Northeast China - a national strategy that has been in place for years.

Revitalization of Northeast China is never a slogan, but down-to-earth efforts are making it become true. And that’s Harbin’s true mission.