Snow sports get warm reception

Beijing drums up interest in the lead up to 2022 Winter Olympic Games

Attendees to the recent World Winter Sports (Beijing) Expo experienced the thrills and spills of competitive snowboarding with the help of virtual reality headsets. The event held in the national capital from Oct 17 to 20 aimed to promote ice and snow sports ahead of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games.

This year's expo showcased the unique qualities of ice and snow sports with a record number of exhibitors.

More than 600 brands from China and abroad displayed their latest technologies and product offerings in a 30,000-square-meter exhibition area during the expo, also known as the WWSE, the highest exhibitor number in its history. The four-day event attracted an estimated 160,000 visitors, another record high, according to organizers.

"The WWSE provides a platform for exchanges and cooperation," Gao Yunchao, deputy secretary-general of the Beijing Olympic City Development Association, told The Beijing News newspaper. The association is a co-organizer of the annual event.

The 2019 WWSE featured broad international participation, with roughly 90 percent of winter sports heavyweights worldwide having a presence, including Finland, Norway, the United States and Canada, according to organizers.

"We wish to promote the development of ice and snow sports and related industries in China, enabling more people to learn about and fall in love with winter sports," Gao said.

The Winter Olympic pavilion was among the highlights of this year's exhibition.

Visitors could learn about the progress so far in preparing the 2022 Games, its tech-equipped venues and competition events at the pavilion.

Beijing's Yanqing district, where some of the Olympic venues will be located, and Shougang Industrial Park, which evolved from an abandoned production site of steelmaker Shougang Group and is home to the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, as well as Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, which will serve as a co-host of the 2022 Games, told their stories in preparation of the Olympics.

At the invitation of the Chinese Olympic Committee, Li Jiajun, China's first world champion in men's short-track speed skating, shared his experiences with audiences.

Mascots for the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games - a panda in ice armor named Bing Dwen Dwen and a personification of a red lantern called Shuey Rhon Rhon - were an easy favorite among visitors, attracting crowds to take pictures with them.

Activities held on ice rinks, including skating and curling, as well as skiing experiences using a VR simulator, gave participants real thrills, bringing them closer to the Winter Olympics, organizers said.

"At the expo, I can build a snowman and play with snow balls together with my friends, and try my hands at some sports that I had little chance of being involved with before," QQ Sports, a news portal, quoted an anonymous visitor as saying. "That is the unique charm of ice and snow sports."

Gao from the Beijing Olympic City Development Association said more China-developed technologies and equipment were on display this year than ever, a representation of the competitiveness of the domestic ice and snow industry.

Carving Ski, one of China's leading ski resort service specialists, displayed its latest automated snowmaker.

"With the improvement of people's living standards, skiing has gradually become popular not just among athletes but also among ordinary families," said Yu Yang, vice-president of the company. "Although the European industry has a history of 100 years - we have only 20 years - but it doesn't affect our pace of catching up.

"Now China's ice and snow market is huge and the cost of imported equipment is high, so we increased independent research and development and reduced costs to help more Chinese people to afford ice and snow sports," she added.

Carving Ski is one of the many Chinese companies that have cashed in on China's huge demand for winter sports, as the country enters the "Olympic cycle" and deploys a plan to localize.

In addition to sports equipment, winter travel destinations, including Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces in Northeast China and Altay, Uygur autonomous region in the northwest of the country, have wowed visitors with their rich ice and snow tourism resources.

Complementary to the exhibition, more than 20 forums and symposiums discussed hot issues in the industry, such as Olympic cities' development, ice and snow tourism and culture, training and service management. A series of business-matching events helped to foster high-value investment projects and facilitated industrial cooperation, organizers said.

Since 2016 when the WWSE debuted, the ice and snow sports industry has experienced rapid growth, which has been reflected in the annual expo, Xu Zhou, president of International Data Group's Asian operations, a co-organizer of the event, told The Beijing News.

In the first year when the expo was held, winter sports were unfamiliar to many of Chinese people. They even had no idea of what were listed as Winter Olympic events, she recalled.

"The WWSE enables easier access to winter sports," Xu said. A growing number of visitors are attracted to the event and have become ice and snow sports enthusiasts, she added.

China Daily - Xinhua

(China Daily 10/29/2019 page7)