CHINA TRAVEL

The Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival is the largest of its kind in the world. It held its official opening ceremony on Saturday. Here are some of the highlights from the festival, which runs through the end of February in Harbin, northeastern China.

The scenery in the mountaneous city of Zhangjiajie in central China is so otherworldly that it’s said to have inspired the alien moon Pandora in James Cameron’s Avatar. The city's Wulingyuan Scenic Area is a Unesco world heritage site and a source of pride for the Chinese government. Visit on a misty day, and you'll see the more than 3,000 sandstone pillars and peaks that resemble floating islands. But would you spend half of your monthly paycheck to see it? Us neither. A tour of the three main sights in the Zhangjiajie park currently costs more than $95. That’s about half the average monthly disposable income for a local resident. It’s a lot – Pandora or not. The high cost involved in seei