Fake snow and true ambitions
The students at Nanshan Ski Village stood before their instructor in helmets and rented turquoise jackets, wearing the expression of a platoon preparing for war.
A strip of fake snow amid northern Beijing’s low mud-brown mountains, Nanshan serves as a training ground for China’s new national ambitions.
The parking lot fills daily with BMWs and school buses and snow machines. These visitors are embracing a government crusade to create a nation of skiers by Beijing’s 2022 Olympics and build a winter sports culture from scratch.
China aims to draw 300 million people into winter sports by then with at least 800 ski resorts, nearly double the current number. A high-speed train will soon shuttle Beijing’s more ambitious skiers 152 kilometres north to Chongli, where most of the event’s snow sports will take place. It’s the centrepiece of a campaign to satisfy evolving tastes and ensure billions funneled into Olympic projects don’t go to waste.
The success of this national effort rides on an adventurous, expanding middle class that could redefine the global ski industry.
“It’s the only market with such tremendous potential,” said Laurent Vanat, a Swiss ski consultant, who spoke recently at a winter sports expo in Beijing that featured exhibitors from around the world selling gondolas and thermal underwear.
The government laid out a national plan that called for ski education in primary schools and the training of thousands of coaches. Companies rushed to oblige.
China sees the upcoming South Korea Winter Olympics as its dry run. Beijing won100 medals when it hosted its only Olympics, the 2008 Summer Games. It would like to duplicate that success in 2022.
Beyond nationalist pride lies practicality. Leaders hope to avoid the fate of the 2008 Olympic facilities, which often sit empty. President Xi Jinping is pushing winter sports as a thoughtful development approach and a lifestyle goal, part of a “new era” in which economic progress no longer trumps concerns about polluted air and smart growth.
Just 20,000 visitors showed up at the ski village during its first year in 2001. Now, it sees 300,000 annually. More than 5,000 people arrive on Saturdays to line up for its 25 runs.
The increased demand presents one problem: When most everyone is starting fresh, who trains the skiers?
“It’s the biggest challenge for the market because we don’t have enough ski instructors that offer services to beginners,” said Benny Wu, chief strategy officer for skiing at Vanke, a real-estate developer.
That lack of experience leads to injuries for older Chinese, who view the experience as an experiment.
Zhang Yan, among a new breed of ski enthusiasts turned entrepreneurs, hopes to avoid such mishaps by training a younger generation.
Wu estimates about 12 million Chinese skied last year, slightly more than the 11.8 million Americans who participated in downhill skiing, according to the trade group SnowSports Industries America.
“It used to be that parents saw skiing as really dangerous, and then the government pushed the program,” Zhang said. “Now, if by 2022 their kids can’t ski, they think their child will be left behind.”