Snow flurries were seen in the commercial hub of Shanghai on Monday.
In Beijing, Monday morning temperatures dropped to minus 15.5 degrees Celsius – near the 1952 historic low of minus 15.2 degrees Celsius for Dec 19 and minus -17.7 degrees Celsius for Dec. 20 that year. The lowest recorded December temperature was minus 18.3 degrees Celsius.
TRAPPED TOURISTS
Low temperatures will prevail until Thursday, the national forecaster warned, with northern areas, Inner Mongolia and some areas around the Yangtze river to be 7 degrees Celsius lower than is typical.
On Monday, the city of Hohhot in Inner Mongolia, is expected to experience a low of minus 22 degrees Celsius while the mercury will sink to minus 5 degrees Celsius in Zhengzhou, in the central province of Henan.
Rain and snow could lash the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze and its south, including parts of Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces as well as Shanghai. Local heavy snow can be expected, the forecaster added.
Taking advantage of the early sub-freezing weather, Harbin, a city in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, will host its largest-ever ice sculpture festival in a park sprawling across 810,000 sq m.
More than 1,000 ice and snow features landscapes in the park have been fashioned from about 250,000 cubic metres of ice and snow harvested from the frozen Songhua river.
But efforts to cash in on the cold weather led to a downside for more than 50 tourists trapped for over two hours on Saturday in cable cars ascending a mountain in eastern Zhejiang province, after windy weather triggered a halt for safety reasons.
All were unharmed despite freezing conditions in the cable cars, media said.