Snow town in NE China celebrates the New Year

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Northeast China is now filled with an intoxicating festive mood and a fairyland featuring thick, abundant snow this time of the year. Traditional rice cooking, joyful family bonding and hundreds of guesthouses covered in snow – this is Chinese New Year at the China Snow Town in Heilongjiang Province.

Liu Yuanyuan, a local who has run a guesthouse there for two decades, is looking forward to the upcoming festival.

"All the rooms are booked for the days after Lunar New Year’s Eve. That means it will be hectic for us again. This means getting up at 5 [in the morning] and making breakfast for guests, doing all the cleaning, and staying up late past midnight," she said.

CGTN Photo

Liu says the biggest difference she sees in the town compared with 30 years ago is that the snow is not nearly as heavy as before. It used to be impossible to even get her foot out of the door because of the deep snow outdoors.

Less snow has actually drawn more tourists. Nowadays the "Homeland of Snow in China" draws thousands of visitors every day. Different from other snowy areas, the snow here is known for its high density caused by the interaction between warm currents and cold fronts.

China Snow Town. /CGTN Photo

Tourist Fang Lisheng said: "Coming from Beijing, it was quite an ordeal to travel here, but we were so drawn by the snow here, which looks like ice cream. Very pretty, and very thick, unlike other places we've been to."

Pure and white as the snow is, the reputation of this town was tainted by a WeChat post that went viral online last month, in which a tourist complained about being overcharged and treated rudely by one of the guesthouse owners.

That scandal, however, did not seem to have dissuaded all the tourists, at least not Wang Xin. "My boyfriend and I were worried about this trip because of the scam we heard from the news. But so far, everything is very transparent. The guesthouse charged us the exact amount as we booked. Food and [other] stuff are pretty reasonably priced here."

China Snow Town. /CGTN Photo

Putting the scandal aside, one of the coolest ways to experience winter here is to go on a dog sled trip, and what makes it perfectly festive is that we are approaching the Year of the Dog.

At night, the bonfire party is usually the highlight of the day as people sing and dance around the fire. The float parade, and fireworks and the big red lanterns hanged up in front of each house brighten the snow at night, making the China Snow Town a colorful wonderland.