Ready, Set, Ski! In China, Snow Sports are the Next Big Thing
滑雪，下一波席卷中国的运动热潮？

When winter came to Beijing, it arrived as it often does, as a snarling Siberian wind. The cold howled through the hutongs and around the ring roads. It weaseled under the doors and through the seams of your shirt. It was early December. “Da xue” season had arrived, the time for “major snow.”

冬天像往常一样随着咆哮的西伯利亚寒风降临北京。寒流呼啸着穿过胡同和环城公路，钻进你家门缝，钻进你的衣衫。那是12月初。名为“大雪”的节气已经来临，到了该下大雪的时候。

But there would be no snow, there almost never is in Beijing. The waning days of 2018 had been crisp and clear, with flecks of starlight pricking the orange dome of the city at night. Snow didn’t matter. What mattered was the cold and now that it was here the people could make it.

It was Saturday, opening day at Nanshan, one of about 10 ski areas within an hour’s drive of Beijing. The resort was packed. For the past four days Nanshan’s 32 snow cannons had been firing fool-you-fluffy crystals that workers then pushed around to cover a few of the slopes. Loudspeakers urged beginners not to take the intermediate runs. Couples lounged on sun decks wearing bright blue rental ski jackets. Steam boiled from kitchens serving bowls of hot and numbing soups.

那是周六，南山滑雪场开张了。它是距北京一小时车程的10个滑雪场之一。滑雪场里挤满了人。在过去的四天，这里的32门雪炮一直在发射着可以乱真的蓬松晶体，工人们推着它们覆盖了几座山坡。扩音器敦促初学者不要上中级滑道。情侣们穿着租来的亮蓝色滑雪服，懒洋洋地躺在阳光露台上。厨房里水汽蒸腾，送出一碗又一碗麻辣滚烫的汤。

“Man this season was a little bit late,” said Huang Xue Feng, or Marco to his English-speaking friends. He was in his early 40s and stocky with a scar over his eye from a snowboarding accident some time ago. As the head shaper for a Nanshan-based company called Mellow Parks, he’d spent the morning building small jumps and positioning a picnic table just right so skiers and snowboarders could play on them. “It’d been so warm, man,” he said, in his office. “A week ago, there was nothing here. I mean dirt.”

“老兄，这个季节有点晚了，”英文名叫Marco的黄雪峰说。他40出头，身体结实，前不久因为一次滑雪事故，眼睛上留了一道伤疤。作为南山麦罗单板公园(Mellow Parks)公司的主要缔造者，他花了整个上午的时间来搭建小跳台，把野餐桌摆放得恰到好处，好让双板和单板玩家可以在上面玩。“太暖和了，伙计，”他在办公室里说。“一星期之前，这儿一点都看不到。我是说土。”

Real snow falls across this part of China only once or twice a season, if that, and it is often just a dusting. But the 2022 Winter Olympics are coming and neither weather nor trade war can stop the world’s most populous nation from cultivating the greatest snow sports boom the world has ever seen. Multibillion dollar resorts are popping up in record time with gondolas offering views of all the snow-making. Groups hold school assemblies to preach the joys of sliding on snow. It’s all part of the People’s Party plan to create 300 million Chinese “winter sports enthusiasts” by the time the Games roll around. That’s the entire population of France, Germany and Switzerland combined, and then doubled.

在中国的这个地区，一个季节只下一两次真雪，而且通常只是一点雪尘。但是2022年冬奥会即将到来，无论是天气还是贸易战都无法阻止这个世界上人口最多的国家培育出人类有史以来最大的雪上运动热潮。数十亿美元的滑雪胜地以创纪录的速度纷纷涌现，坐在缆车上可以看到所有造雪景观。许多团体举办集体培训，宣扬雪地滑行的乐趣。这是党计划中的一部分：要在冬奥会开幕前培养3亿“冬季运动爱好者”。这个数字是法国、德国和瑞士人口总和的两倍。

Most of the excitement is happening in Chongli, an even colder district in the Dama Mountains, about 150 miles to the northwest. Some ski and snowboarding events will unfold there, where at least six new resorts now rise over repurposed potato fields. For Olympics viewers around the world, their first impressions of skiing in China will be from Chongli. Few will pay attention to Nanshan.

这些热闹场面主要发生在崇礼，大马群山中一个格外寒冷的地方，位于北京西北大约150英里（约合240公里）处。那里将举办一些滑雪项目，至少有6个新的滑雪场在被征用的土豆田上拔地而起。对于世界各地的奥运观众来说，他们对中国滑雪的第一印象将来自崇礼。很少有人会关注南山。

And yet a friend and I have flown 13 hours from the Pacific Northwest to witness something far more exciting than the Olympics: a south-facing bump of a mountain where the summit elevation doesn’t top 900 feet. On this day, opening day, more than 4,500 skiers and snowboarders will slide down the bottom half of that mountain, a mere 300 vertical feet, on portions of snow-covered slopes so short that runs last but seconds. On the busiest holidays, more than 9,000 people will squeeze onto Nanshan, and the rental shops will run out of gear.

然而，我和一个朋友从太平洋西北地区飞了13个小时，看到了比奥运会更令人兴奋的事情：一座向南的山峰，山顶高度不到270米。开幕当天，4500多名双板和单板滑雪板者将沿着一个个雪坡滑到这座山的半山腰，只有90米的垂直高度。雪坡很短，滑行只能持续几秒钟。在最繁忙的节假日，超过9000人会挤进南山，装备出租店也会被租空。

“What’s happening with the Olympics, it’s big for China with more resorts and more events, and that’s great, but what we’re doing here is just so different,” Marco said. He gestured out the window where lines were forming to go off his jumps. “We’re trying to show people that snow sports are not sports. You don’t need to train, you don’t need to be serious. This is just shredding with your friends.”

“奥运会对中国来说意义重大，会有更多滑雪场地和更多赛事，这很好，但我们在这里做的事情太不一样了，”马可说。他朝窗外做了个手势，那里正在用线标记他要跳下去的地方。“我们想告诉人们，雪上运动不是运动。用不着训练，用不着严肃。就是和朋友一起滑。”

Off to China, ski-bum-style

滑雪小子去中国

John Ostendorff and I have skied together most weekends for the past nine winters at Mount Bachelor, our home ski area in Oregon. Our plan was to go to Beijing for a week in early December. There are companies willing to arrange everything, but doing it ourselves felt like the better adventure. Besides, I hoped that traveling ski-bum-style might offer the best chances of meeting people who share a passion for slipping on snow. We’d take public buses and trains and pick our way around Chinese travel apps like Baidu and DiDi and post our pictures on WeChat, the Chinese social media app.

过去9个冬天，约翰·奥斯坦多夫(John Ostendorff)和我大部分周末都在我们俄勒冈州家乡的滑雪区巴彻勒山滑雪。我们计划12月初去北京一周。有些公司愿意帮你安排一切，但是自己动手感觉更好。除此之外，我还希望滑雪小子式的旅行能提供最好的机会，让我们遇到其他滑雪爱好者。我们会乘坐公共汽车和火车，使用百度和滴滴这样的中国出行应用，并在中国社交媒体应用微信上发布我们的照片。

“I’m in,” John said.

“我加入，”约翰说。

Our first full day in Beijing dawned at 13 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind that hit like flying sheet metal. Electric motorbikes with drivers tucked behind quilts wove around a cart filled with giant leeks. John joined some locals playing jianzi, a Hacky Sack-like game featuring a feathery shuttle cock. Later, we’d hear the eerie, ethereal moan of pigeons trained to fly in circles with whistles on their tails. The dying art of pigeon whistling, or “geling,” was still alive in the hutong.

我们在北京的第一个完整的一天，清早的温度只有零下10度，风像飞起的金属板一样袭来。骑电动摩托车的人们身前裹着被子，绕过满载大葱的大车。约翰和一些本地人一起玩毽子，这是一种和踢沙包差不多的游戏，被踢来踢去的是带羽毛的毽子。后来，我们看到一群经过绕圈飞行训练的鸽子，它们尾巴上挂的哨子发出奇异空灵的呼啸。这种名叫“鸽铃”的艺术已经快消亡，但在胡同里仍然存在。

John and I set our sites quickly on Shijinglong, the first ski area to open near the city, in 1999, in Yanqing, a rural clutch of drab high rises and farms about 50 miles northwest of downtown Beijing. Back then China had maybe 20 ski areas, versus more than 700 today, and what a marvel Shijinglong was. It had 10 ski trails up to a kilometer long on 50 acres with a 1,000-vertical-foot drop. You could ski facing the sun while squinting over the North China Plain. Cars clogged the streets as people came up to see. From then on, da xue didn’t matter: Shijinglong had the country’s first artificial snow-making system.

我和约翰在石京龙匆匆布置好场地，这是北京第一个在市区附近开放的滑雪场，它于1999年开放，位于延庆，北京市区西北约80公里处一群单调乏味的高楼和农田之中。当时中国大概有20个滑雪场，今天有700多个，而石京龙真是个奇迹。它有10条长达一公里的滑雪道，占地20公顷，有200米的垂直落差。在中国北方的平原上，你可以面朝太阳滑雪。随着人们纷纷前来，街道开始拥堵。从那时起，大雪就已经不重要了：石京龙拥有全国第一个人工造雪系统。

To get to the ski area the poor man’s way today, you must first get to inner Beijing’s ancient Deshengmen archery tower, a hulking brown rectangle of a building with upturned eaves that sits atop a 500-year-old barbican on the Second Ring Road. Centuries ago, the emperor’s armies would return from war through this gate. Today, it’s a bustling bus depot.

如今，要想以穷人的方式到达滑雪区，你得先去北京古老的德胜门箭楼，这是一座有上翘屋檐的建筑，一个棕色长方形庞然大物，坐落在二环路边一座有500年历史的城楼上。几个世纪以前，皇帝的军队征战归来，就是从这道门入城。今天，它成了一个繁忙的公共汽车站。

We bungled our way onto the packed 919 express, shoehorning ourselves into the last two seats, thankful that we’d decided not to bring our cumbersome skis. Apartment blocks gave way to scruffy brown hillsides. The bus shot through a tunnel under the Great Wall.

我们笨拙地挤上了拥挤的919路车，抢到了最后两个座位，庆幸我们没有带上笨重的滑雪板。一幢幢公寓楼消失在身后，眼前出现了凋敝的棕色山坡。公共汽车飞快地穿过长城下的隧道。

We changed buses, got lost, and, three hours and about $3 later, trotted up to the foot of Daqingshan mountain and the entrance to Shijinglong. “I see skiers!” John boomed. There was one run open, a creamy tongue splitting a face of Van Dyke brown.

倒车后我们迷了路，在花了三个小时和大约3美元后，我们一路小跑着来到大青山脚下的石京龙入口。“我看到滑雪的人了！”约翰兴奋起来。一条宽敞的雪道像一条奶油色的舌头，劈开了凡戴克棕色的山麓。

When the Olympics arrive, you’ll hear a lot about Yanqing, but probably not Shijinglong. That’s because the ski-racing events, as well as sports like bobsled and skeleton, will happen elsewhere in Yanqing, at a new national alpine ski and sliding center called Xiaohaituo, about five miles away. Vanke, the company that’s positioned to run Xiaohaituo after the Olympics, has been dumping money into Shijinglong, too. The small collection of shops, a ski center and outside areas were all pleasingly refurbished. Snapshots of people goofing off hung on a wall near the ski school. Rows of enormous new condos had been carved out of the mountain.

当奥运会到来的时候，你会听到很多关于延庆的故事，但可能不会听说石京龙。这是因为滑雪比赛、雪橇和冰橇等运动项目都将在延庆的其他地方举行，地点在五英里外全新的国家高山滑雪滑道中心小海坨。准备在奥运会后运营小海坨的万科公司也一直在向石京龙投资。在这里，一堆小商店、一个滑雪中心和外面的区域都得到了妥善的修整。滑雪学校附近的墙上挂着人们闲逛的照片。一排排巨大的新公寓楼从山上拔地而起。

Many ski areas in China let you rent gear and buy lift tickets by the hour. The trick to getting a discount is to buy everything in advance over WeChat, which has a payment function that we couldn’t use. After much Google translating and faffing about, we got a ticket with ridiculously short skis and poles for about 130 renminbi, or less than $19. “Here we go!” John said as we got on the lift, and soon we were floating over bare earth.

在中国的许多滑雪场可以租装备，按小时购买缆车票。获得折扣的窍门是提前在微信上购买所有东西，但我们无法使用微信的支付功能。经过一番谷歌翻译和手忙脚乱，我们得到了门票，其中包含短得离谱的滑雪板和滑雪杖，价格大约是130元人民币，不到19美元。“咱们走吧！”约翰说，我们上了缆车，很快就掠过了光秃秃的地面。

We took a few runs from midway up the mountain, the highest you could go until they made more snow. The skis’ edges hissed as I drove them deep into a surface that felt silky and fast. Orange fences lined the run and between them were mostly beginner skiers feeling out the awkward mechanics of the snowplow. On peak days about 1,500 people will come here.

我们从半山腰滑了几趟，那是能滑雪的最大高度，直到他们降下更多的雪。我滑上一个感觉光滑顺畅的表面时，滑雪板的边缘发出嘶嘶声。滑道两旁是橙色的栅栏，中间大多是初学滑雪的人，他们对扫雪机的笨拙姿态很感兴趣。在高峰期，这里大约会有1500人。

“Where are you guys from?” asked a guy at the top of the run. Jin Wentao, or Daniel to his English-speaking friends, had studied English in the south of China before moving north to ski. Already a capable skier himself, he was now serving on the front lines of the government push to create those 300 million enthusiasts. School children come up a couple of afternoons every week to take basic lessons from him.

“你们是哪国人？”滑道顶上的人问道。金文涛（音）的英文名是Daniel，来北方滑雪之前，他曾在中国南方学习英语。他已是一个出色的滑雪者，如今他身在政府创造3亿滑雪爱好者工程的前沿。每周有几个下午，学校的孩子们会来听他讲基本课程。

“Do you like it?” I asked.

“你喜欢吗？”我问。

“I love it,” he said. He didn’t mind being 29 and sharing a dorm room with three other dudes to live the dream. “Skiing makes you free.”

“太喜欢了，”他说。为了实现梦想，他不介意自己29岁还和另外三个人合住宿舍。“滑雪让你自由。”

By bus to Nanshan

乘大巴去南山

Saturday morning back in Beijing broke the coldest yet, 11 degrees that felt like 50 below. John and I pulled on our ski gear, which for me included two down jackets. We filled a small backpack with a change of clothes and a toothbrush and headed to a frigid “business hotel” near Nanshan in a district called Miyun. It was opening weekend, and for the first time, Nanshan would be offering night skiing. I hadn’t done that in 30 years.

周六早晨，在从北京乘大巴去南山的路上，气温打破了迄今最冷的记录，零下11度，感觉像零下45度。约翰和我穿上了滑雪装备，我穿了两件羽绒服。我们背了一个小背包，里面装着换洗的衣服和一把牙刷，前往密云南山附近一家感觉冷冰冰的“商务酒店”。这是滑雪场开张的周末，南山将首次提供夜间滑雪。我已经有30年没这么做了。

A charter bus on weekends makes a direct run from Beijing to Nanshan from the corner of South Shuguang Street and Fenghuang Ring Road, about eight miles northeast of the Forbidden City. And, thanks to WeChat friends of WeChat friends, we’d found someone willing to reserve us seats.

周末有一辆专车从北京直达南山，在紫禁城东北方向大约8英里处的曙光南路和凤凰环路路口出发。靠着微信上的朋友的帮忙，我们找到人替我们订了座位。

The buses were already idling when John and I arrived shortly after 7 a.m., but with time to spare, we ducked into a nearby dumpling shop. I nearly gasped. It was filled with skiers and snowboarders. They were slurping soups with helmets clasped to their backpacks. You could hear the swish of their synthetics as they got up to get the chile sauce.

上午7点刚过，约翰和我到达时，公共汽车已经启动待发，但还有些时间，我们便钻进了附近一家包子店。我吓了一跳。里面全是双板和单板玩家。他们喝着汤，头盔绑在了背包上。你可以听到他们起身拿辣椒酱时，合成材料发出的嗖嗖声。

“Our people,” I said.

“我们的人，”我说。

“Our people,” John replied.

“我们的人，”约翰回答。

We ordered 20 dumplings and soup and fry bread, and then begged our people to pay for it all using WeChat. The business had gone cashless but it wasn’t a problem. “Twenty-two kuai,” said a young woman, about $4. She pocketed it, scanned a QR code to transfer the money, and raced out to the bus.

我们点了20个包子、汤和油饼，然后求我们的人帮忙用微信买单。买卖如今已不用现金，但这不是问题。“22块，”一个年轻女人说，约合4美元。她把钱装进口袋，扫描二维码转了账，然后跑向大巴。

An hour later, we found Nanshan buzzing with the energy you feel at the start of any ski season anywhere. Ski instructors lined up waiting for their charges. People flowed in and out of changing rooms. You could buy $2.75 beer on a sun deck or sit inside a fancy restaurant for fish soup in a bamboo bucket. People were already starting to hit the Mellow Park jumps, while beginners stuck to the magic carpets. Every now and then an attendant standing mid-slope would blow a whistle and a snowmobile would race out to assist an unfortunate enthusiast crumpled on the slope.

一小时后，我们发现南山到处洋溢着你在任何地方的滑雪季开始时感受到的那种活力。滑雪教练们排着队等待学员到来。人们在更衣室里进进出出。你可以在露台上买2.75美元一瓶的啤酒，也可以坐在高档餐厅里喝竹筒鱼汤。人们已经开始在麦罗单板公园往下跳了，而初学者还停留在魔毯上。站在斜坡中间的服务员会时不时吹哨，一辆雪地车便会冲出来，帮助一个不幸倒在斜坡上的爱好者。

John and I had our tickets and gear reserved this time — $38! — which made everything go smoothly, even if the skis were still much too short. We headed up by lift to a midpoint, drifting under the rows of stadium lights that would allow us to do some night skiing later. There, a skier coming off the ramp behind me couldn’t stop, plowed into me and then carried on without a word, as if it were all part of the game. Some wore pillow-size stuffed animal turtles around their rumps to protect their tailbones in a fall.

约翰和我这次预定了票和装备——38美元！——这样一来一切都很顺畅，即使滑雪板仍然太短。我们乘缆车上山，来到一个中点，在一排排体育场灯光下飘过，这些灯让我们可以晚点去夜间滑雪。这时候一个滑雪者从我身后的坡道上滑下，停不下来，撞到我身上，然后什么也没说就继续滑行了，仿佛这都是游戏的一部分。一些人在臀部周围戴着枕头大小的毛绒玩具龟，以保护他们的尾骨。

We pushed off in the silky man-made snow where snowboarders arced gorgeous turns, surfer-style. A team in red matching suits linked tight figure 8s behind each other. It took 30 seconds to get down and four minutes to ride back up. We chatted with others.

我们在柔滑的人造雪中出发，单板玩家在做华丽的转弯，像冲浪一样。一组穿着相同红色队服的队员在彼此身后连起紧实的8字形。向下滑要30秒，向上则要4分钟。我们还和其他人聊了聊。

“Yes, I like snowboarding,” a teen said.

“是的，我喜欢滑单板，”一个少年说。

“This is my daughter’s second time,” a mom said.

“这是我女儿第二次滑，”一位母亲说。

“Oregon? I love Oregon!” a woman said.

“俄勒冈州吗？我爱俄勒冈州！”一个女人说。

Skiing can be a wild or highly manicured experience. Nanshan is the latter, a mini theme park, with zones and features plucked from some of the skiing world’s more famous places. Off the top of Nanshan you’ll find a steep pitch dubbed the Christmas Chute, a famous expert-only run at Alyeska Resort near Anchorage. Near the bottom, you can find a mini glade with a mini Japanese chalet, both of which are odes to tree skiing in Hokkaido. The sun deck and chairs could have come from Val d’Isère. The toilet shack by the lift could have come from Finland.

滑雪可以很狂野，也可以是精心修饰的体验。南山是后者，一个迷你主题公园，其中一些区域和特色是从世界上一些更著名的滑雪胜地照搬来的。在南山的山顶，你会看到一个被称为“圣诞滑道”的陡峭斜坡，那是安克雷奇附近的阿利阿斯卡雪场一个只限高手的著名滑道。在底部附近，你可以找到一个有迷你日式小木屋的迷你林间空地，两个地方都是致敬北海道的树木滑雪。阳光露台和椅子可能是来自伊塞谷。缆车旁的厕所棚可能来自芬兰。

“It did come from Finland,” Lu Jian the founder of Nanshan told me later over glasses of hot water. A former futures trader, Dr. Lu, 65, had opened Nanshan in 2001 after starting the country’s first destination ski resort in remote northeast China, an effort that earned him the nickname as the father of the Chinese snow sports industry. That was in the mid-1990s and it didn’t work. He got out, and started a new ski area, Nanshan, this time closer to Beijing. He spent a decade traveling around the world to ski — Sweden, India, Argentina, New Zealand, Japan, 100 days and 20 resorts in the United States — plucking ideas to recreate at Nanshan in miniature.

“确实来自芬兰，”南山创始人卢建后来边喝着热水边告诉我。现年65岁的卢建曾是一名期货交易员。于2001年开设南山滑雪场前，他在中国偏远的东北地区创办中国首个滑雪目的地，随后得到了“中国滑雪之父”的称号，那是在20世纪90年代中期，项目最后失败了。他得以脱身，然后开办了新的南山滑雪场，这次离北京更近。他花了10年时间周游世界各地去滑雪——瑞典、印度、阿根廷、新西兰、日本，在美国的100天去了20个滑雪场，一路收集创意以在南山重现一个缩微版。

“Nanshan might not be big, but it is good for Beijingers who will quickly cultivate the Chinese ski population,” Dr. Lu said. “Mainly people just come here for the sake of a good mood.”

“南山可能不大，但对北京人有好处，他们很快就能培养出中国的滑雪人口，”卢建说。“人们来这里主要是为了一个好心情。”

That’s the thing, isn’t it? The Olympics will come and go but this good mood, the great spinoff of the great Happiness Snow Ice Dream as the People’s party calls it, will hopefully linger and bloom — trade war or no.

这就是关键所在，不是吗？奥运会来了又走，但这种好心情，如人民的党所说，伟大“幸福冰雪之梦”的伟大副产品将有希望继续存留和开花——无论是否有贸易战。

“Wait one generation and it’ll be in their blood,” Steve Zdarsky, who comanages Mellow Parks with Marco, told me later.

“等上一代人，这会融入他们的血液，”史蒂夫·扎达斯基(Steve Zdarsky)后来告诉我，他和马可一起管理麦罗单板公园。

On our final night, exhausted after hours of night skiing, John and I rallied for a walk down the broad soulless streets of Miyun. Tomorrow we’d hit the Great Wall for a few hours, but for now we were happy to stumble upon a glorious site: a bar with ski goggles for a logo and “Snowman Ski Club” written by the door. “Bingo,” John said.

最后一个晚上，在夜滑了几小时后，我和约翰精疲力尽，在密云宽阔而了无生气的街道上走了走。次日我们会去长城玩上几个小时，但现在我们很高兴偶然发现了一个很棒的地方：一个用滑雪镜做标志的酒吧，门口写着“雪人滑雪俱乐部”。“中奖了,”约翰说。

We sat down at a booth and ordered beers. American ski movies flickered on the TV. Snapshots of skiers hung on the walls. Two skiers sat in another booth. They came by our table to cheer us, their bottles dropping lower than ours as a gesture of respect.

我们在一个卡座坐下，点了啤酒。美国滑雪电影在电视上闪烁。墙上挂着滑雪者的照片。两个滑雪者坐在另一个卡座里。他们过来跟我们打招呼，他们的酒瓶比我们的低，以示尊重。

“Why are you here?” one of them, Mi Le, asked.

“你们怎么在这里？”其中一个叫米乐（音）的问道。

“To ski!” John said. Out came phones, pictures and rounds of baijiu, a sorghum-based spirit. More friends wandered in, like Hai Rui and Little Fatty. None had been skiing for more than a few years, yet all were proud members of the Snowman Ski Club, an informal group that gathers on WeChat to joke and make plans. They’d spent the day roaring around Yunfoshan, another ski area in Miyun. This was their après hangout, and we should stay.

“来滑雪！”约翰说。随之而来的有电话、照片和一轮又一轮白酒——一种高粮酿的烈酒。更多的朋友进来了，比如海瑞（音）和小胖（音）。他们都没滑过几年雪，但都是自豪的雪人滑雪俱乐部成员，这是个非正式团体，聚在微信上开开玩笑，制定计划。他们花了一天时间，在密云的另一个滑雪场云佛山呼啸着四处滑行。这是他们的事后聚集地，我们应该留下来。

“Welcome to the group, my friends,” Mi Le said. “Now when are we going to ski?”