City envy: World's largest indoor ski resort to open in Shanghai

Image: Majid Al Futtaim

Of course it is... 

With the Winter Olympics coming to Beijing in 2022, it seems that China's getting heavily into winter sports – it's not a phase mom, I just love curling now. So it's not that much of a surprise that the world's largest indoor ski resort is going to be built in Shanghai. That's right: the world's largest planetarium and now this...

Admittedly, this isn't actually the first time our friends to the south have been promised 'the world's largest indoor ski park' in Shanghai, with reports emerging way back when in 2015 that Shanghai would become home to such a resort by 2019... But that's the past, and this is now, and maybe this time it'll actually happen.

According to CNN, Wintastar Shanghai will now be the work of Dubai-based retail company Majid Al Futtaim, the people responsible for the Middle East's first-ever indoor ski slope, no less. The facility is expected to be nearly one million square feet in size and will dethrone Harbin's Wanda Indoor Ski and Winter Sports Resort as the world's biggest. Take that, Harbin!

Stay at the hotel in Ski Dubai for a view like none other in the Middle East. Image: Majid Al Futtaim.

It looks like it's gonna be built in Pudong's Lingang area, near Disney and the soon-to-open Shanghai Haichang Ocean Park, as well as the expected big-ass planetarium, which will further aid what appears to be the city's aim to turn the middle of nowhere into an attractive tourist destination.

The resort will feature three slopes, one of which will be of Olympic standard, as well as 25 non-skiing activities, according to the New York Post. However, everything except skiing qualifies as a non-skiing activity so we aren't quite sure what that means at the moment. You could let your mind wander, but be careful, you could end up going off-piste and it's a slippery slope...

As well as the Winter Olympics, this news may also come due to the government's efforts to get more Chinese citizens into skiing and 300 million people involved in winter sports by 2025, after a report in 2017 found that less than one percent of the country's population has ever skied. For the record, that's still 12.1 million people...

Image: Majid Al Futtaim

There is no official completion date for Wintastar Shanghai's construction, so we guess you'll have to just wait patiently before you can finally join the Shanghaiers and strap on some skis down south.

To get your winter sports fix right here in Beijing, hit 'Read more'.

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