Changbai Mountain Snow·Meet at Winter Universiade
Southeast Asia Winter Resort Column (Episode 6)
As the 2026–2027 new snow season arrives, what ice-snow festivals and events will Jilin Province of China—situated on the world's golden latitude belt for ice and snow—host to energize ice-snow consumption and ensure safety? This has drawn widespread attention.
Reporters learned from a recent dedicated press conference held in Jilin Province that, to enrich ice-snow festival activities and create a province-wide carnival atmosphere, various localities across Jilin will host more than 400 cultural and tourism themed events during the new snow season, including the 10th Snow Expo, the New Snow Season Opening Ceremony, the Changchun Ice and Snow Festival, the Changchun Jingyuetan Vasaloppet International Ski Festival, the Jilin Rime Ice and Snow Festival, the Chagan Lake Ice and Snow Fishing and Hunting Cultural Tourism Festival, and the Changbai Mountain Powder Snow Festival. Through the deep integration of ice-snow sports and folk experiences, visitors can immerse themselves in the charm of Jilin's ice and snow. Among them, the 10th Snow Expo will adopt the "Jilin Snow Street" model to form an exhibition layout of "five major ski resorts plus four ski areas," and will be held concurrently with the opening of the new snow season and the 32nd Rime Ice and Snow Festival, empowering each other. Changchun's "Enjoy the Universiade Ice-Snow Season" themed event focuses on building a province-wide, all-season ice-snow activity system. The 25th Chagan Lake Ice and Snow Fishing and Hunting Cultural Tourism Festival will innovatively launch immersive new offerings such as night tours on the frozen lake, snowfield performances and outdoor experiences, driving quality and efficiency improvements across the entire industry chain. After becoming the first in China to implement a snow holiday for primary and secondary school students last year, Jilin Province is now further optimizing the snow holiday implementation plan, comprehensively promoting and implementing the policy of free skiing, skating and visits to A-level scenic areas for compulsory education students during the snow holiday, advocating that employees take paid leave and encouraging staggered travel with family, unlocking family travel potential so that more people benefit from the ice-snow dividend. Changchun has launched "Jilin-Guangdong" and "Changchun Metropolitan Area" ice-snow joint tickets, introduced scenic area combo tickets and subsidized performances, and joined forces with commercial districts to carry out ice-snow themed promotions and extend business hours. Jilin City has enriched its Ula cuisine and ice-snow banquet offerings, launched "Rime Snow Lodging" themed room types with rime wake-up call services, and increased the frequency of intra-city tourist bus routes for the convenience of out-of-town visitors traveling around the city.
To ensure visitors can tour Jilin Province with peace of mind and comfort, the province has upgraded the "One Phone Tours Jilin" mini-program, providing inbound tourists with multilingual, one-click smart itinerary generation services. It has also joined with transport departments to carry out a special tourism transport escort campaign and strengthened communications support at ski resorts and scenic areas. Making visitors happy first requires making them feel safe. Jilin Province has urged all ski resorts and ice-snow tourism operators to assign fixed posts and responsibilities, routinely carry out cableway fault response and on-site first-aid drills, join with health departments to conduct emergency rescue training for frontline ski resort staff, and improve the medical treatment system for skiing accidents. At the same time, it has strengthened joint market law enforcement, conducting inspections against a "single checklist," strictly enforcing the "five no-rent" rule for travel agency vehicles, tightening food safety supervision, and cracking down on illegal acts such as ticket scalping and soliciting, illegal equipment operation and unlicensed private instructors, so as to maintain a sound ice-snow tourism market order. Meanwhile, key ice-snow scenic areas such as Changbai Mountain, Chagan Lake, Jingyuetan, Lianhuashan and Tiandingshan have continued to improve supporting facilities including visitor centers, parking lots, tourist toilets and signage, comprehensively enhancing the visitor experience.
The new snow season coincides with the 33rd FISU World University Winter Games being held in Jilin Province. To meet the needs of spectators, Changchun has built 5 major visitor reception centers, 6 service stations and 10 cultural and tourism characteristic sites, cultivated 80 distinctive cultural and tourism businesses and 200 ice-snow experience hotels, and set up mobile cultural and tourism markets. Jilin City has opened 3 hydrogen-powered bus sightseeing routes, created a matrix of 6 categories of rime products, and set up 58 city-side volunteer service stations related to cultural tourism, showcasing Jilin's ice and snow to the world. It is worth noting that although the Universiade competition venues and public ski areas operate in separate zones, they open simultaneously. All Universiade competition venues are set up based on existing ski resorts, and the resorts will not be closed during the Games; event operations and public skiing proceed in parallel, with only necessary temporary controls applied to competition areas during competition hours, while other runs, cableways and supporting services remain open to the public as normal. Reporters learned that the competition runs, built and polished to high standards for the Universiade, will be open to ski enthusiasts both during the pre-event preparation stage and after the Games conclude, allowing them to personally experience the high-quality runs of international event standard and share in the hardware upgrade dividend brought by event construction.
In addition, focusing on the two major themes of "Tour Jilin with the Universiade" and "Snow Across Changbai, Meet in Jilin," Jilin Province has deeply integrated distinctive elements such as intangible cultural heritage, family activities, folk customs and cuisine, rolling out 10 boutique tourism routes in batches, continuously enriching the ice-snow product matrix and bringing visitors more refined, comfortable, diverse and multi-dimensional travel experiences. To better welcome tourists from Southeast Asian countries, Jilin Province has opened 32 ice-snow tourism direct bus routes and will operate 388 customized passenger transport routes during the snow season, with seamless connections between roads, civil aviation and railways and the province's key ski resorts and ice-snow scenic areas. Every city can provide ample, high-quality accommodation and local cuisine with rich distinctive flavors. (Contributed by Hong Kong Commercial Daily correspondent)
Changchun Ice and Snow World / Photo by Feng Jiannan
