SHANGHAI (AFP) – The world’s largest indoor ski resort officially opened in Shanghai on Friday after years of delays, the latest megaproject catering to China’s growing love affair with winter sports.
Huge government support and the interest of an expanding middle class have seen the ski industry coast to new heights in China, particularly after Beijing hosted the 2022 Winter Olympics.
China leads the world when it comes to indoor ski resort building, boasting half of the world’s top ten based on snow area, according to Daxue Consulting.
On Friday, the Shanghai L*SNOW Indoor Skiing Theme Resort was officially certified by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s largest, overtaking the previous record-holder — also in China, in northern Harbin.
At 9am local time, temperatures hovered around 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) in the electric-blue faux-Alpine square where the opening ceremony took place — but inside the cavernous atrium, the mercury plummeted to well below zero.
Modelled like a glacier, the 90,000-square metre snow world towers over coastal Lingan, about an hour and a half away from Shanghai’s city centre.
Its completion had been pushed back several times — industry media reported its original planned opening date to be 2019.
Its soft opening period has not been wholly smooth either.
The resort said it would add more safety measures after a viral social media post claiming to be from a visitor described an accident in which a finger was severed, state media reported Wednesday.
