Harbin (-15F anyone?)

Eli had to push Up his Shanghai trip to this week - originally he was going to spend three weeks here spanning the Chinese new year week. Because of that, we also pushed up our trip to Harbin. Now, why Harbin? "China's tenth largest city and known as "Ice City" for its long and cold winter" quotes Wikipedia. They have the world's largest ice festival (ice sculptures, buildings, etc.) and so why not take advantage of the cold weather and go where it's even colder? I was envisioning something like the Ice World of "Die Another Day" but as you can see from the photos, this was so much cooler! (no pun intended) From Singapore's 85+ degree weather to -15 below, I feel like I am really testing my temperature limits. We first went to the Siberian Tiger park where there are over 800 tigers, and we could feed them through a fence. (San Francisco zoo should take note!) Below is a picture of a liger- a tiger/lion hybrid. Also, we went to a Snow park where they had huge snow sculptures; Eli and I went tubing down one too. You can see below how they make them- using plywood to form a huge box, they shovel snow in it and people stand/jump on top, making the snow dense enough to carve. There was also a pretty ho hum "Disney" themed park that was slightly over-marketed as well.
However, the second day we went to the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival- the grandaddy of them all. Pretty amazing. They embedded neon tubes in the ice and there were replicas of Tienanmen Square, the Birds Nest, Pagodas and the Great wall. There were skating shows, slides, bikes, etc... even camels and fuzzy white dogs? All for an entrance fee of ~$20. Only in China! I can't believe how long it must have taken to make all this. It'd be fun to watch it all melt in slowmo.
The third day we left in the afternoon, but not before we walked around town, and took a "ski lift" across the Harbin river. It was so cold that the river had frozen over so we decided to walk on it on the way back. There were people ice fishing and some horse drawn sleds as well. We heard a couple of gunshot like booms and decided to hurry up our leisurely pace!!