Sapporo or Harbin Ice Festivals Feb 2019

[Matt_01]

Hello,

Just looking for a bit of advice on the snow festivals in Japan and China. Has anyone been to the Sapporo or Harbin Ice Festivals or possibly both. At this stage I am planning to go to both.

Would be interested to know is one is better than the other and if so which would be the better order to visit. I am guessing I would only need 3 -4 days in each location.

 

[Hvr]

Have been to both and suggest you do the same.

They're different and therefore difficult to compare. I did Harbin Ice Festival first and then Sapporo Snow and Ice Festival. Why? Because Harbin is open for a much longer period than Sapporo.

Harbin at least 4-5 days, there are many different locations and they are well spread out. A guide would probably be worthwhile if you don't speak the language. Not much English is spoken in this part of China.

Sapporo could be done easily in 3-4 days.

 

[Matt_01]

Hvr, thanks that is the order I was looking at mainly as the flight routing AU-China-Japan-AU seemed easier.

Did you do it in 1 trip or 2 separate trips

 

[Hvr]

Did you do it in 1 trip or 2 separate trips

I did it as one trip. I took the train from Beijing to Harbin. Harbin has a rich history as a transit point on the route from Moscow to Beijing and there is a large Russian influence. When I was there I had a bright red beard and was frequently addressed in Russian.

As the heart of Manchuria there is also a tragic place to visit. Unit 731 was where the Japanese built a 'research centre' to conduct horrible and evil experiments on the Chinese and other peoples. You can feel the sadness and oppression.

I flew from PEK-NRT-CTS and having my heavy winter gear used in several places on the journey meant it was worth doing check in luggage.

 

[kpc]

following with interest as I too would like to do both

 

[Pug1]

Hi matt_01. We did Sapporo last February and it was great. Haven't been to Harbin but from other reports it's much busier. Easier to walk around Sapporo festival during the day but the lighting at night is spectacular but very crowded. We stayed at Hotel Okura a short walk from Odori park, very nice hotel. Bring some ices spikes or buy them there as we saw lots of people take a tumble. Our tour was with Destination Managemen/Tours Gallery from Brisbane and they have just finished this years winter festivals tour to Sapporo/Hokkaido. If you search for them on Facebook there are lots of photos from this months tour. We also visited smaller winter festivals at Asahikawa and Sounkyo Gorge on Hokkaido. Hope this helps.

 

[boomy]

Looks like an interesting trip. Heard a lot about Harbin ice festival, always wanted to go there. Combining with a trip to Sapporo sounds like a good idea. Some potentially valuable miles redemption options on these routes.

 

[Matt_01]

Thanks for the feedback. I have been thinking of this trip for a couple of weeks and had to wait until seats were released. We have been to both countries before and a few festivals in Japan so we know what to expect in way of crowds. This will be the first visit to the ice festivals. Anyhow this little adventure is underway, just booked J redemptions for MrsM and MissM ADL-SYD-PVG-HRB, QF tax around $600 for the pair.

That is the outbound leg sorted, next week will sort out the return leg. Now I have to sit back and wait for an Asia Sale to book my flights. At some point I will book the HRB-CTS leg separately.

 

[ermen]

whats the best way to Harbin on OW (probably can't eh?)
maybe CX to PEK then CA to HRB

 

[jastel]

Done the Sapporo one after a weeks skiing one year.
One whole day was enough I thought, though you need to see it lit up at night as well.
I didnt have any extra time so just saw the festival and the city area.

 

[seanpodge]

I live in Harbin and so have lived through a few Ice festivals now, including the current one. There are three main places that are worth seeing. One is Ice and Snow World (which is the one that most often pops up in the media). The others are the Snow Scuputres on Sun Island and a smaller Ice Lantern display in Zhaolin Park. If you were really disiplined, you could see them all in two days, but I'm not sure I'd recommend that. Three or four days at least would be better. Lots of businesses and govenrment departments/parks, etc will also commission pieces out the front of their buildings.

The obvious place to stay would be around Zhongyang Dajie/Street. It's a nice area with plenty of shops and restaurants along with a fair few restored colonial Russian buildings. It's also near Zhaolin Park and St Sophia Church, which is worth seeing (it's not an active church now, but it has lots of photos showing Harbin from when the Russians came to WWII).

Sun Island is only open during daytime, while Ice and Snow World is open day and night, so you could do them both at once since they are quite close to each other. However, they are both on islands in the middle of the river and can get quite windy and extremely cold. There's also not much in the way of shelter to escape from the elements (besides overpriced restaurants). Sun Island is a fun park/camping ground in summer while the island for Ice and Snow World has next to nothing once the festival is over. So I'd probably do them on seperate days (they're pretty big too).

Looks like you've booked your tickets, but just to warn ye that the crowds get bigger during the Chinese New Year golden week (4-10 Feb 2019). Also, if the weather gets too warm (i.e. near 0 C) and affects the ice, the parks will get shut down. Last year that was at the very end of February and this year it might even go into March (quite cold this year!).

 

[seanpodge]

whats the best way to Harbin on OW (probably can't eh?)
maybe CX to PEK then CA to HRB

No OW airline serves HRB. Probably the best way is, as you say, to either get to PEK or PVG and then connect to HRB. Both PEK and PVG have 15 - 20 daily flights each to HRB, so there's plenty of options.

HRB does have non stop flights to and from Japan, so JL is an option, although they're not very frequent.

 

[Matt_01]

I started creating a tip report for this little adventure 2019 Harbin and Sapporo Snow Festival. Have not done one before so I will see how that goes.

@seanpodge thanks for your advice. Your post above #12 reminds me that I was not going mad when trying to get HRB-JP. At some point in time I do recall seeing a direct JL flight from HRB to either HND or NRT but it seems to have vanished or not operating when I am travelling. If you would like to catch up when we are in Harbin more than happy to met an AFFer who lives there.

Chinese New Year, thanks for the heads up. I do not seem to have a good track record in picking dates in China, we were in Beijing in the first week of October this year during PRC National Holidays.