Harbin Ranks High on Summer Resort List of China

The city of Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province, came in at second place on a recently published survey from late last year of Chinese tourist cities with cool, pleasant summer resorts, done by the China Tourism Academy and China Meteorological Administration.

The compilation, which was based on their climate in summer, landscape, tourist satisfaction and possible risks, such as heat emergencies, rainstorms and disease, had Kunming in Yunnan province sitting at the top, just ahead of Harbin. The 2nd-place city had tourism revenues of 78.67 billion yuan ($12.69 billion) for 2014, an increase of more than 20 percent since the start of the 12th Five-year Plan in 2011, and accounting for over 10 percent of its GDP, with the number of visitors reaching 60 million.

Harbin has a combination of history, culture, architecture, art, fashion, ice, snow, ecology and food that are all good for its tourism brand and more than 100 well-planned itineraries for visitors.

Others on the Top 10 list were Changchun in Jilin province and Dalian in Liaoning, both in the Northeast; Guiyang, in Guizhou province in the South; Hohhot in Inner Mongolia on the North; Datong in Shanxi province and Yan’an in Shaanxi province in the north-central area; Chengde in Hebei province just to the north of Beijing and the largest royal summer resort of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911); and Qingdao in coastal Shandong province to the southeast a bit.