As you fly into Beijing you can look out the window of the aeroplane and — as long as there is a strong wind to blow away the smog — see little strips of white, like Band-Aids stuck on to the brown, desolate rump of northern China. These little ribbons of man-made snow are what pass for ski fields in the place that has just won the right to host the 2022 Winter Olympics.
I have been skiing and snowboarding in China since I first arrived in the country in 2000 but the news that Beijing will host the games in seven years’ time left me, and many people I know, a bit conflicted. There is the question of China’s awful human rights record, which prompted campaign groups to denounce the International Olympic Committee’s decision to make Beijing the first city ever to host both the summer and winter Games. Environmentalists are also outraged, since most of the snow in 2022 will be man-made, with snow-making predicted to consume more than 1 per cent of the water supply of Beijing, which already suffers from drought.
The lack of precipitation, despite temperatures that are below freezing, presents the biggest practical problem for the Games. Chinese Communist party officials in charge of the city’s Olympic bid have proudly proclaimed that the mountains outside Beijing where outdoor events will be held received a grand total snowfall of 20-70cm during the last ski season. The 2010 Vancouver Olympics were criticised for their lack of snow even though Whistler mountain, where most outdoor events were held, gets more than 11 metres in an average winter — almost 16 times the total for Beijing’s mountains.