Travelers turn to northern, indoor places to cool off

Travelers have flocked to indoor snow and ski venues, as well as a host of locations in northern parts of China to escape the intense, prolonged heat wave this summer.

Since July 20, the National Meteorological Center has issued 29 warnings for high temperatures. The southwest metropolis of Chongqing, for example, saw the mercury hit a record high of 45 C on Thursday.

In such conditions, people are looking for places to go to beat the heat, with water parks, ski resorts and anywhere with a mild climate proving popular.

Online travel platform Fliggy said that so far this month, bookings for indoor skiing facilities have increased by 15 percent compared to July.

Destinations in the north and northeast, such as Hulunbuir in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and the Changbai Mountains in Jilin province, have been popular recently, according to Fliggy.

For the past two months, tourism bookings in Jilin, which has escaped most of the extreme temperatures this summer, rose by over 30 percent compared to the same period last year.

Dalian, a coastal city in Liaoning province, has also experienced a travel boom in part due to its clement summer weather.

According to figures from the Dalian bureau of culture and tourism, the city had 9.3 million visits in July, up 80 percent year-on-year and tourism-related revenues reached 10.8 billion yuan ($1.59 billion) for the month, a year-on-year rise of 93.5 percent.

"Dalian is a fancy destination for me. It's not very far from Beijing, where I live and work, and it has coastal views and delicious seafood. But what's most important is that the temperature here is rather pleasant, around 25 C," said Chen Yili, who spent many of her weekends in Dalian this summer.

"This summer has been really hot in eastern provinces like Jiangsu and Zhejiang, so more people are choosing to spend their time skiing indoors," said Ma Yinping, marketing manager of Qiaobo Ice World in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province.