Ski resort sees its business snowball

LANZHOU - While taking a selfie with a cellphone and stepping on her snowboard, 26-year-old Guo Qianjia opened the live broadcast application to memorize her first snow event this winter.

Guo, who lives in Baiyin city in Northwest China's Gansu province, was snowboarding at the resort of the Gansu Baiyin national snow sports training base. After the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, more people in Northwest China are attracted by diverse winter sports.

"I started to learn to ski in 2021.The amazing Beijing Winter Olympics made me love skiing more," says Guo, adding that she even has upgraded from an amateur to an elite in both snowboarding and skiing after two years of practice.

Like Guo, more ski lovers began to flock to the resort in the early morning. All instructors felt a significant increase in sports intensity.

"I can guide eight tourists to learn to ski in a day on the weekends. Instructors are expected to be busier after the Spring Festival holiday," says Zhou Jingtao, an instructor of the resort, adding that nearly all instructors of the resort have no time to grab a bite when they are busy.

The resort of the training base covers an area of over 110,000 square meters, including the playing area, dining hall, two 200-meter tracks for amateurs, two runs with a length of 170 meters for advanced skiers and a 100-meter elite piste.

"The total number of tourists received by the resort has exceeded 270,000 since its establishment. The maximum number of tourists received on weekends and holidays was nearly 2,500 per day," says He Xiaobin, deputy manager of the sports department of the training base.

In the dining hall that could accommodate nearly 400 people, there were not many seats available at noon.

This national training base was built in late 2019, containing a skiing service center with over 100 rooms, a 75,000-square-meter ski resort, an indoor training hall and a biathlon field.

"The base has become one of China's important fulcrums of winter sports," says He, adding that the Chinese Paralympic cross-country skiing and biathlon teams had gathered at the base to prepare for the 2022 Winter Paralympic Games in Beijing last January.

Various types of winter sport events have been carried out in Gansu, Qinghai and other northwestern provinces this winter.

"The National Biathlon Championships will be held at the training base in February," says He, adding that the track-making, medical care and other work have been finished by now.

Recent statistics released by China Ice and Snow Tourism Development Forum showed that the predicted number of tourists will exceed 300 million during the 2022-2023 season.

The consumption potential of winter sports has been continuously released in Northwest China these years.

"After the bid for the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, winter sports in Gansu province have become the new favorite of local people," says Wang Xiangchen, director of Gansu sports bureau.

Xinhua