Heilongjiang

Heilongjiang is China's northernmost province. Bordering Russia, its capital city, Harbin, has a six-month long winter with the lowest temperatures reaching minus 38 degrees Celsius. Winter is brightened by the Ice Sculpture Festival, ice skating and skiing. The Ice Sculpture Festival lasts over 2 months from Jan. 5 to Feb. 25. Full of ice pagodas, bridges, lanterns, human figures and palaces. It brings visitors into a magical land with its twinkling lights. You can see a lot of tsarist and Japanese architecture and cobblestones left from Russian and Japanese occupation. China's biggest bird sanctuary, the 210,000-hectare Zhalong Nature Preserve is 280 km away from Harbin. Its cranes, storks, swans, geese, herons are best seen from April to September.

From Heihe, a town at the Russian border, you can make a day trip to Siberia. Heilongjiang also has China's biggest oil field, the Daqing.