Chinese ice festival opens

Brave swimmers plunged into freezing waters while other visitors gazed at frozen palaces ahead of the opening ceremony for China's spectacular Harbin Ice and Snow Festival on Tuesday. The annual festival in the capital of the northeastern province of Heilongjiang is expected to draw more than one million visitors to admire castles and cathedrals sculpted out of ice and lit up at night in ethereal colours. This year's display is the largest in the festival's decades-long history, filling a park the size of more than 100 sports fields and using a record amount of ice and snow. The festival's schedule includes ice and snow sculpture contests, as well as performances and musical events.  Local authorities hope that the festival can bring much needed tourist dollars to the region, historically one of China's industrial bases, now hit by an economic slowdown.