Ice Festival at Long Qing Gorge

This is one of our fun adventures during winter. We went to see the Ice Festival at Long Qing Gorge which is actually replica of the Ice Festival in Harbin City. Now people on this side of China wouldn't need to travel far to Harbin to experience it. It's just as good as the original. Anyway, we only want to have our photos taken with it.

The Ice Festival at the Long Qing Gorge is only open during January and February during winter. Why only during those months? Because the ravine (gorge) is actually a water dam during the rest of the year. In fact, there's a cruise boat there to enjoy the view of the ravine from April to November. I think they close the place in December to drain the water out and in April to put back water in it.

How we got there:
From Shangri-La Hotel Beijing, we paid RMB15 for the taxi to get to the Beijing North Railway Station. Took a train to Yanqing, paid RMB23 each. When we got to Yanqing station, there were lots of private cars for hire. We were able to bargain RMB30 for a one-way trip to the gorge. We booked the same private car to fetch us at a specified time since there are no taxis available there. We took a horse ride for 10 minutes and got ripped off for RMB50 each. Boo.

The entrance ticket for the Ice Festival was RMB100 each. We were fetched by the same driver and took us back to the train station, paid him RMB50 because we're happy with him. Then we bought tickets at RMB23 each and took the train back to Beijing North Railway Station. Taxi was around RMB13.

All in all, we spent RMB500 (around US$ 75) for this trip. And it was really all worth it (except for the horse ride).

Check out the some of our photos:

Now here's our fun adventure to Long Qing Gorge on video: