Olympics prompts skiing boom

Nearly 21 million people have visited the large scale ski park in China

Chengdu: Weaving down a steep slope, snowboarder Zhang Xu skid gracefully to a halt in a shower of white powder — one of a new generation of Chinese people learning winter sports in brand new indoor facilities.

“I fell in love with the sport. Skiing used to be a relatively small sport (in China) but now it’s more popular, and the credit for that is down to the Winter Olympics,” said 25-year-old Zhang, who started coming to the Sunac Snow Centre in Chengdu in July, the same month it opened.

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The 2022 Beijing Winter Games have inspired a boom in construction of snow resorts; their numbers have rocketed nearly fourfold, fuelled by demand from China’s swelling middle class.
A decade ago, there were only just over 200 ski resorts in China — at the end of last year, that figure had jumped to 770, according to real estate group JLL.

China has previously said it wants to put 10 percent of the world’s most populous nation on skis ahead of the 2022 Games.In provinces such as southwestern Sichuan, there are plenty of mountains but little snow, so the best way for locals to learn to ski is inside.

“We are the first indoor ski resort in southwest China,” said Liu Jia, manager of the centre, which has three ski slopes, one for every level.The vast hangar-like space boasts ski lifts and escalators, as well as neon-lit igloos and an artificial grove of pink-blossomed trees for selfie taking.

The snow park is the largest of its kind in the world — though one in Shanghai, slated to open in the next 18 months, could eclipse that.