At L+Snow, a ski pass costs Rmb410 (US$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.”
