Mountain ski resort in Chongqing builds prosperous business thanks to snow sports craze

Photo shows the Nantianhu International Ski Resort in Fengdu county, southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality. (Photo/Yang Zhiyi)

When Wang Song came up with a plan to build a ski resort in Chongqing, which is in southwest China, he was not sure whether he would be able to find an ideal location for it because Chongqing is not as cold as other places in northern China and the snow season there is much shorter.

He also thought that if they attempted to make artificial snow for the ski resort, the resort would need to be located at an elevation of 1,800 meters and with the temperature there having to be no higher than minus 3 degrees Celsius during the nighttime in the winter season, conditions that are rather challenging to pull off in southern China.

Jiang Zongxiang, an official with the tourism development and construction management committee of Fengdu county, Chongqing, thought that southern China would have greater advantages in promoting ice and snow sports because the local residents there long for the chance to experience the joys of ice and snow, which are rarely encountered there.

In 2018, the Nantianhu International Ski Resort was opened in Fengdu. During a trial operation of the ski resort before it was officially opened, the site received 2,300 tourists on a single day on the weekend. According to Wang, the number of tourist arrivals has continued rising, with more than 80,000 people having visited the ski resort in 2020.

To extend the skiing season, Wang adopted the use of artificial snow surfaces, having also rolled out cross-country skiing and snowmobile driving, among other activities, to attract tourists.

Liu Xiangnan is head of the training center at the ski resort. Over the past three years since she started working here, the center has trained about 2,000 ski enthusiasts. Liu, from northeast China’s Jilin Province, said unlike in her hometown where most people learned to ski at a very young age, here in Chongqing, a lot of her students didn’t even know how to wear snow boots at the beginning. She said that the first lesson she had to teach them was how to fall properly so as to keep themselves safe.

Liu was impressed by people’s enthusiasm for skiing in Chongqing, saying that the current 50 ski instructors at the ski resort are unable to keep up with the demand among those interested in learning skiing, so this year, they initiated plans to recruit an additional 10 ski instructors.

In recent years, Fengdu county invested 1 billion yuan to boost infrastructure, laying a solid foundation for developing ice and snow sports and boosting local tourism. Dai Xiaoli is a catering director at the ski resort and her husband runs a noodle restaurant outside the ski resort. In 2020, the couple earned more than 100,000 yuan.