Shanghai L+SNOW Indoor Skiing Theme Resort, the world's largest indoor ski resort, has captivated visitors and ski lovers across the world with novelty experience since its opening in September this year.
Due to different weather conditions, China's winter sports used to take place in the northern part of the country where the weather is colder in winter. However, in recent years, the increase in ice-and-snow facilities in China's southern region has attracted more people there to fall in love with these sports.
Spanning about 350,000 square meters, the indoor ski resort in Shanghai incorporates dining, accommodation, entertainment, and shopping with a Nordic inspired design.
Its indoor ice-and-snow theme park alone covers more than 90,000 square meters, making it the world's largest indoor ski facility. The park features a vertical drop of nearly 60 meters indoors, which allows skiers to have an alpine skiing-like experience.
"It is probably the only indoor ski resort in China that features cable cars. When coming down, the speed of the cable car in the resort is faster than that of a regular cable chair, enabling quicker transport of skiers," said Huang Jianchen, a ski lover.
In addition to professional ski slopes for beginners, intermediate-level and advanced skiers, the park features over 20 snow-based entertainment programs for non-skiers, including China's first indoor snow train to take people on ice and snow journey. Snow gliders and ice bikes can offer loads of fun for visitors.
"My husband and I met through skiing, and we have one son and one daughter. In the past, it was difficult to take our children to outdoor ski resorts, but now we can enjoy skiing while they play in the children's entertainment area, which makes things much more convenient for us," said visitor Huang Jiani when she was on the snowfield train.
The park also boasts three hotels, with one of them allowing guests in 17 rooms to directly access to the slopes.
Since beginning construction in 2019, the resort has been hailed as a new landmark commercial complex in Shanghai and a popular tourist attraction for ski enthusiasts from home and abroad.
"Singaporeans actually travel (abroad) to go for the ski experience. It is pretty amazing. We've really enjoyed it. It's a very fun place for the kids and adults", said a tourist from Singapore.
World's largest indoor ski resort offers novelty experience for visitors
China has made new progress in the high-quality development of its marine economy, with the ocean increasingly serving as a new driver of growth, Minister of Natural Resources Guan Zhi'ou said in Beijing on Thursday.
Guan briefed the media on China's new achievements in marine development, utilization and protection in a ministerial interview after the closing meeting of the fourth session of the 14th National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, in Beijing.
"In 2025, the gross ocean product exceeded 11 trillion yuan (about 1.60 trillion U.S. dollars), accounting for 7.9 percent of GDP. Industries such as shipbuilding and offshore engineering equipment, offshore wind power, and marine fisheries rank among the top in the world. Marine drugs independently developed by China accounted for 28 percent of the global market share, while output value from marine energy and seawater desalination continued to expand. In order to make our ocean more beautiful and better protect the marine environment, we have always been committed to strictly controlling new land reclamation from the sea, with the retention rate of natural coastline exceeding 35 percent. The mangrove area has reached 4.75 million mu (about 316,666.67 hectares), maintaining a continuous growth momentum. We established the Huangyan Dao national nature reserve to strengthen the protection and restoration of important ecosystems such as coral reefs," he said.
Guan said China's blue circle of friends continues to expand. The country has become one of the first signatories to the agreement on marine biodiversity conservation, and has signed blue economy cooperation agreements with more than 50 countries and international organizations, while also conducting joint polar and ocean scientific expeditions with multiple countries.
Those achievements demonstrate not only industrial expansion, but also a stronger emphasis on ecological stewardship and openness to international cooperation, and the next stage will focus on consolidating existing gains while aligning with the goals and tasks set out in the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), the minister said.
"On the basis of consolidating the above achievements, we will, in accordance with the goals and tasks set out in the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), accelerate the high-quality development of the marine economy. In practice, we will place greater emphasis on innovation-driven growth by launching and implementing major national science and technology programs to comprehensively enhance deep-sea sensing, exploration and development capabilities. We will pay more attention to efficient coordination by further optimizing the spatial layout of major bays through integrated land-sea planning and building new growth poles. Industrial upgrading will be stepped up by vigorously developing emerging sectors such as deep-sea equipment and the blue medicine bank and fostering new engines of growth," Guan said.
"We will also place more emphasis on harmony between people and the sea, carefully safeguard blue sea and silver beaches, and make cruise travel and sea fishing new trends in cultural tourism consumption. More attention will be paid to win-win cooperation by expanding marine cultural exchanges to build a community with a shared future for the ocean," he said.
China continues to advance high-quality development of marine economy: minister
