May 2024 - Skiing in Guangzhou

We just had a public holiday in Hong Kong and while the winter season just ended, I was in need to ski a bit more. I wanted to give indoor skiing with artificial snow a try and we are gifted with options in both Shenzhen and Guangzhou. My goal was to make this a day trip and thanks to the introduction of visa free entry to mainland China for many passport holders earlier this year it is easily possible.

Given that the facility in Guangzhou is larger and offers more runs and the train from West Kowloon to Guangzhou South is just about an hour, I chose Guangzhou as my first destination. I ended up buying the train tickets on trip.com, an unlimited ski entry to the Sunac Snow World on klook.com and after exploring roaming options with my local provider bought an eSIM with 2GB of data and a day of validity on trip.com.

I was already using DiDi and AliPay HK in Hong Kong and they turned out to be super useful. AliPay HK can be used for the Guangzhou metro after an initial set-up and I could use it for payments as local merchants didn't seem to accept credit cards. I also used DiDi for the last mile back and forth to the facility. I ended up installing BaiDu maps for better transport integration. Using the English destination name in Didi and BaiDu can give mixed results but luckily a search for Guangzhou (廣州) and snow (雪) yielded  广州融创雪世界 (Guangzhou Rongchuangxue World) which I could put both into DiDi and Baidu.

The travel to Guangzhou south was smooth and on time. The train ticket was associated with my passport and I didn't need to pick up a physical ticket or such. The confirmation email included the coach, row and seat number. The train has five seats per row with three seats on one side and two on the other. In West Kowloon I had to go through the assisted lane, leave the Hong Kong side of the border, fill out the arrival card for China, leave all my fingerprints. Boarding the train is done by going through a gate but unfortunately none of these gates recognized my passport.

Arriving in Guangzhou South, I left the train station and headed to the metro. Getting to the facility required to take three separate lines. First line #2 followed by line #3 and then line #9 and just to arrive at the Guangzhou North train station. The waiting time for line #9 was longer than for the others and it took quite some time on the line itself. From Guangzhou North I called myself a car. DiDi in Hong Kong always shows me "Payment failed" but seems to have worked and I had the same in Guangzhou. Wondering whether to just get out of the car or not.

Rental ski and boot

The Sunac Snow World is part of a large shopping mall and I had a quick lunch there before using my voucher and exchanging it for the entry card. I managed to just enter behind a large group of school children. The facility is large and organized well. One had to queue for the boots, winter gear and then got a card for the locker. The equipment is decent but not much time is put into finding the best fitting boot. Also the longest ski was only 163cm. After I changed into my boots I queued somewhere to get a helmet and then entered the lock into the actual Snow World. I managed to grab my ski and poles and could start.

Rental and changing area

I used the magic carpet next to the beginner area, followed by two more magic carpets to get up to the intermediate run and had a warm up run. Then I moved to the area with the lift that has access to two more difficult runs. The nice thing about indoor skiing is that the condition of the snow doesn't change throughout the day. There is plenty of things to do. The kids area looked fun with tub slides, a long zipline, there are two lanes with moguls and trick areas for advanced and beginners. I used the runs to focus on my technique.

After a few hours of skiing I was ready to head back home. I had a stroll in the shopping mall and both the associated waterpark and the entertainment area look interesting. I decided to skip line #9 completely and took a car back to line #3. There are restaurant and convenience stores on the upper floor of the Guangzhou South station after having entered the departure area. The return was as smooth as the departure and I arrived in Hong Kong in no time.

Snowboard bindings at a shop

I am likely heading back in the future. Next time I will try to get a train to Guangzhou North either by changing in Shenzhen or within Guangzhou. I will bring my own jacket in addition to the ski pants as the one provided didn't feature a pocket on the left side. This required me to get my ski pass out of the pants on every lift ride as the facial recognition wasn't set-up or didn't work. And last I will try to arrive closer to 10am.