Saint Nicholas Cathedral wasn't quite so lucky: it was destroyed by the Red Guards in 1966. A rich businessman, Wang Fu Xiang, decided to build a replica of the church in Volga Manor, a resort about an hour and a half away from the city.

Volga Manor offers a Russian experience from the traditional welcome that greets guests on arrival to the 30 buildings scattered all over the compound, including a replica of the Pavlov Castle.

One of the biggest programmes in Harbin is the ongoing restoration of the Chinese Baroque Block. The project, which covers 10 zones, features the unique Baroque facade that hides the two to three storey-structures inside and a backyard resembling Beijing courtyard houses. The redevelopment is costing 1.3 billion yuan (S$262 million) and the buildings are being earmarked for arts, tourism and movie studios.

Harbin also has something to offer for nature lovers like the Binjiang Wetland, which opened in June. It covers an area of 104 square kilometres and has hundreds of rare species of birds and fish such as grey cranes and white cranes.

The guides are former farmers who used to grow rice and wheat on the land. According to the government, it will take at least three years to fully develop the wetland into a full-fledged ecological and leisure development zone.

Sun Island Park on the north shore of the Songhua river, is also worth a visit. It offers many attractions like the Squirrel Island, Deer Park, Swan Lake and Flower Park.

There is also a Russian village that offers visitors an idea on how Russians lived in Harbin. The highlights include life-sized Matryoshka dolls painted to look like leaders Vladimir Putin, Boris Yeltsin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Stalin and Lenin.

Across the river, an opera house is being built that promises to be much grander than the one in Sydney. The river is frozen during the winter months and it is here where Harbin's world-renowned ice and snow festival is held. In September, however, it's just water and sand.

At the entrance to the park is a giant structure of the sun, surrounded by nine smaller suns. According to Chinese myth, during the Chou dynasty (1027-221 BC), 10 suns would take turns appearing in the sky. Each day, they would travel with their mother, the goddess Xi He, to the lake where she would wash her children and put them to dry on the branches of an enormous mulberry tree.

From the tree, one sun would move off into the sky for a journey of one day, to reach the mount Yen-Tzu in the Far West. Then, one day, the suns decided to appear together. But the combined heat of the 10 suns made life on the Earth unbearable. Emperor Yao asked Di Jun, the father of the 10 suns, to persuade his children to appear one at a time. The suns refused not listen. Di Jun sent the archer Yi armed with a magic bow and 10 arrows to frighten the disobedient suns. Yi was able to shoot nine suns but the emperor had sent one of his couriers to steal an arrow from the archer. So one sun remains today.

"This is how the sun looks like in Chinese myth," says our guide, pointing to the giant sculpture that has three legs and a bird on top of its head.

Proof, as if it were needed, that Harbin is not all about snow. A hot sun shines there too.