Nan Shan 南山

Nan Shan, also meaning south mountain in chinese. Nan Shan is a skiing park about 1h outside Beijing by car. The whole skiing resort resembles something from from southern Finland where the slopes are pretty short and you can come down in 2 minutes. I haven't been downhill skiing for around 2 years but still had the skills :)

Because I don't have my own skies or anything else with me here in China I had to rent the whole set. Renting was cheap because they eventually forgot to charge me for it (should have been 2 euros). Getting the shoes was kinda funny, the guy behind the counter asked me how big size and i said 46. First he gave me 42 which surprisingly was TOO small, then i got another pair of 44, also surprisingly too small. After a while he came with something that looked pretty unused and new and they were 51, fit like a glove!

Then the skies: first pair of skies were broken, they kept falling off because of the lock didn't work. The guy behind the counter was like "Nono, i show" but then he also noticed that it was busted and gave me new ones...In Finland this kind of thing would never happen when you rent skies. There is always somebody helping you to fasten the boot to the ski and see that it holds and fits, not something you have to do yourself. I mean if it was my first time to go downhill skiing and somebody just gave me boots and skies I would have no idea what to do and how to fasten them.

Before we came to Nan Shan I didn't know how well chinese people could ski because Beijing isn't really a skiing or winter sport city.

Was it gonna be a life threatening slope where people could barely stand on their skies shouting WATCH OUT BELOW!!!...To my surprise most of the people there were pretty good skiers and boarders. There was only this one kid who obviously didn't know how to break and almost crashed right into me. That kid actually fell 10 meter ahead of me and the snow just flew everywhere but he was alright.

There was one "Black slope" for professionals on the top of the hill and of course I HAD to go and try it. It looked kinda slim from below and when I came up on the top of the hill it was REALLY slim. Just a few meters wide and covered with ice, nice! But i got down without breaking any legs or arms. This whole thing just cost about 25 euros and you could ski for 4 hours including all the equipment, not bad.