With the coming of spring, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province is bidding farewell to a booming ski season mixed with both joy and worry.
Statistics show the province attracted some 2 million tourists with its newly developed ski industry and did business totaling 1.1 billion yuan in the winter period of 2003.
More than 1.5 million of the tourists were taking to the slopes for the first time.
According to Tian Younian, secretary of the China Skiing Association, with the development of the sports industry, skiing is no longer considered the sport of the rich, but has been finding increasing popularity among common people.
Information from the association shows that by 2002, there were more than 150 ski grounds in more than 13 provinces and municipalities throughout the country.
To embrace nature and taste the adventure of sport by going skiing with family and friends has become a popular choice of entertainment in winter holidays.
This represents a sharp contrast from just six or seven years ago when there was not even one public skiing ground and the cost of a complete skiing outfit and other necessities was far too expensive in Chinese people's eyes.
For the past four consecutive years, Heilongjiang Province, China's prime place for winter sports, has hosted international skiing festivals, receiving more than 300,000 skiers from both home and abroad.
Those visitors, coming from countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Austria, were not only skiers, but also investors, ski equipment producers, and business developers.
Currently, almost all businesses in the province's tertiary sector are linked with the skiing industry.
At one ski ground in the suburbs, men can be seen driving sleds, housewives are busy preparing food, older children act as guides on the snow, and even their houses have been turned into temporary restaurants.
The ski industry has brought the rural area out of its past dormancy into a bustling scene of happiness and joy.
However, not all the news is good as problems have arisen out of the development of the industry.
Probably the most outstanding one is the blind construction of too many skiing grounds, often small, in a short period of time without clear-cut planning.
Heilongjiang Province now has 57 skiing grounds, and except for one with 12 ski trails, all are small with less than 70 ski trails in total.
Repetition of this type of construction disperses investment, which experts believe makes it difficult to build large-scale ski grounds with complete service facilities and a bigger attraction.
These grounds also bring an expensive environmental cost, as for each skiing field, even the small ones, at least one hillside of trees is torn down.
Complaints also arise from a low service level. In one typical example, a man surnamed Li from Jiangxi Province had to go three times, in his heavy ski boots, to change his skis during a two-hour ski session, only to be scolded by the local manager.
When an another tourist asked for help after finding something wrong with her ski, the answer she got was "why don't you go and borrow a screwdriver to fix it yourself".
Similar service complaints, as well as the limited sporting space and incomplete equipment, has cast a shadow over the blossoming snow world.
(People's Daily March 11, 2003)
