On the slopes of the world’s biggest indoor ski resort

Although it is 30C outside, you can already feel the cold as you approach the L+Snow resort. In part this is psychological, because the early arrivals by the main entrance are fully dressed in ski gear. But in part it is real: the sheer force of the industrial-grade refrigeration system has generated a slight breeze.

Located about 90 minutes outside China’s biggest city, Shanghai’s L+Snow resort opened last month, anointed by the Guinness Book of Records as the largest indoor ski centre in the world. It edged out the previous biggest, in the northern Chinese province of Harbin, which is in turn closely followed by one in Guangdong, and another in Sichuan.

In Shanghai, the advent of 90,000 sq metres where temperatures are maintained at minus 3C to minus 5C has a commercial appeal even before skiing enters the equation. The city has just experienced one of its hottest summers on record, with temperatures hitting or surpassing 37 degrees for 12 consecutive days. Like the indoor Ski Dubai centre, which opened in 2005, L+Snow is an exercise in contrasts; the electricity alone costs about Rmb80,000-100,000 per day ($11,000-$14,000). A representative for the new centre said the total costs of the project were not public, though Chinese media reports suggest a budget of about Rmb7bn ($1bn).

But across China, which hosted the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022, the aim is not merely to defy the seasons. President Xi Jinping has set a target of creating 300mn skiers by 2030 and spearheaded a wave of winter sports investment. Hundreds of new ski resorts have been established across the country, compared with fewer than a dozen in the 1990s. It is not only the indoor variety that have raised environmental concerns; the National Alpine Skiing Centre in Yanqing used in the Olympics was controversial for its use of artificial snow, though that complaint has been raised at multiple different games.

In China, the sport counts itself among a long list of consumer and leisure activities associated with a youthful urban middle class. Lu Yue, a 22-year-old student from Shanghai and one of the early arrivals queueing outside, says he has visited the centre several times, though it’s only been open a week. The sport has become “very popular” in the past three years, he adds. He is joined by a friend wearing a Balenciaga T-shirt and plans to spend the winter season in Xinjiang.

“Our parents can’t ski,” Lu says, “but they’ll pay for us to come.”

Inside, it’s clear this is as much a winter fantasy as a sports facility. Before the slopes, there is a kind of town square, the houses more mock-Disney than mock-Tudor, an architectural style that crops up across mainland China and blurs together European influences in a way that is almost, but not quite, American. There’s a church with a cross on the top, several Narnia-style lamp posts, various mounted clocks and a small smattering of what initially seem to be Christmas trees but on closer inspection are revealed to simply be pine trees, decorated only by light dustings of snow. If it is never night in a casino, it is never summer here.

There are three main slopes, the hardest of which, designated a black, is 340m long. The other two, including a 460m-long blue slope, curve around a turreted, cod-medieval building, an as yet unopened hotel that will allow guests in 17 rooms to ski directly on to the slopes in what a representative claims as a first for any indoor ski centre. A train track winds up the side of the piste, though the train (pulled by a pretend steam engine that is actually electric) is not running on the day I visit.

Skiers can also climb to the top in a chairlift — the queues for which never last more than a minute during my time on the pistes — and, unusually for an indoor slope, a gondola, which shields its passengers from the machine-generated snowflakes that occasionally fall from the ceiling. Despite local media reports of a severed finger shortly after the resort opened, I see few, if any, crashes. There’s a clear focus on safety: helmets are compulsory, and when a failed training manoeuvre results in my pole being slightly bent, its fate is meticulously documented in a handwritten logbook before it can be replaced.

There’s also a surprising lack of snow-ploughing novices. “Quite a lot of them can ski,” says one of two largely inactive rescue staff stationed at the top of the chairlift. In contrast to the Disney aesthetic, the clientele instead embodies the kind of high-fashion chic that dominates Shanghai’s many shopping malls.

One group of 20, taking a photograph nearby, are part of a skiing club that has 1,000 members. “Before, everyone loved going to bars,” said Azhu, 34, who was inspired to start skiing after watching a video on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, in 2022. Social activities in China are shifting towards sports and what he called “skills”. This winter, he expects to head to an outdoor resort but, in contrast to its status elsewhere, he doesn’t necessarily see skiing as an expensive sport.

At L+Snow, a ski pass costs Rmb410 ($58) for the day. As well as Rossignol skis, boots and helmet, the price includes hire of a jacket and trousers, both of which are sufficiently warm but which only have one, unzipped, pocket between them. Gloves are not available, though they can be bought nearby from one of several stores.

The slopes seem far from full, perhaps to be expected on a weekday September morning shortly after the end of the summer holidays. At the town square, there is scarcely anyone to watch a troop of dancers, whose costumes, like the architecture, give a sense of the entire Disney catalogue being melted down into a single cauldron. At lunchtime, the restaurants on the fourth and fifth floors, which serve a reasonable half-chicken and potatoes as well as tea of a quality rarely associated with skiing, are close to empty.

Mihai Chidean, a Danish businessman who has dropped in on a work trip to China, says the resort is a “great idea” but at times lacks that “little touch”. He has briefly been stranded after his ski pass fell out of his zip-free jacket pocket, because, in an example of bureaucratic processes that can be difficult to decipher, he needed to hand it in to return his rented skiwear and leave.

He is, though, struck by the scale. “I hope there’s going to be many more people here,” he says. In China, “you see that everything is oversized, because one day there’s going to be a holiday, and then you’ll have a hundred-thousand people in front of the place,” he adds. “I think [it’s] one of those projects where there’s no budget.”

After just a few minutes standing in the light snowfall of the town square, the power of the refrigeration becomes apparent. Li Bingrui, who is in charge of the site, says that many “energy-saving measures” have been taken. The roof is covered in solar panels and the heat generated from the cooling system is redeployed into workers’ dormitories, he says.

In summer, its effects are not to be taken lightly. Some of the guests are wearing goggles, though this may be more for stylistic than practical reasons. The slopes are just about survivable without gloves, assuming there’s no direct contact with the snow. It takes me, an almost-intermediate skier, just over one minute to descend from top to bottom. An advanced skier able to turn more often might be able to drag slightly more seconds out of it.

The resort’s quietness, from its restaurants to its Frozen-esque town square, may simply be a function of its recent opening, even in spite of a blitz of domestic media. But it nonetheless reflects the wider mood of Lin Gang, the development zone in which it is based and the site of various other large-scale projects, including a huge artificial lake on which construction is not yet complete.

As I leave, it proves impossible to actually exit the gates, though not in this case because of any unreturned clothing. Instead, I have simply stayed too long; the day pass only covers four hours. The overtime incurs an additional charge of Rmb160 ($23), even if the overall cost of creating the experience remains uncertain, and almost impossible to comprehend, like a winter’s day in the dead of summer.

Thomas Hale is the FT’s Shanghai correspondent. Additional reporting by Wang Xueqiao 

Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life & Art wherever you listen