Where to buy lift tickets in China, what apps accept a foreign passport, how to handle a request for a Chinese ID, and what 2026-27 prices look like.
Four channels sell lift tickets at a Chinese ski resort in 2026-27: the official ticket office at the base, the resort's own mini-program inside WeChat or Alipay, third-party platforms led by Trip.com, and sometimes the ski school's app. Each works; they take foreign cards in different places; and they ask for identity in different ways.
Every resort has a ticket window. It is the most boring option, but it works without a Chinese ID and without an app. You show your passport, pick your pass (adult 1-day, half day, 4-hour or 2-day) and pay. On holiday weekends the line moves slowly; on weekdays you are often straight through. Window prices are the rack rates published by the resort. In Chongli, published rack rates have ranged from about 120 yuan at Cuiyunshan on an early-season weekday (2024-25) to 800 yuan for a Wanlong day ticket on a holiday (2025-26). Half-day tickets, sold for about 4 hours, have cost roughly 70 to 75% of the day rate.
Most big resorts run a WeChat mini-program, and many also have one inside Alipay. To enter them, scan the resort's QR code or search by its Chinese name: 云顶 for Genting, 太舞 for Thaiwoo, 万龙 for Wanlong, 富龙 for Fulong, 翠云山 for Cuiyunshan. These mini-programs are the cheapest channel. Discount-official rates during the 2025-26 holiday weeks were typically 30 to 50% off the rack rate at Chongli resorts; Genting's discounted day rate ran 288 to 468 yuan against a rack rate of 580 to 710 yuan.
The catch: most mini-programs assume you have a Chinese mobile number for the SMS code and a Chinese ID number for the ID field. With a foreign passport, some ID fields accept a passport number and some do not, and the SMS step often expects a mainland Chinese number.
Trip.com (international), Tongcheng (同程) and Meituan all sell lift tickets on behalf of the resort. Trip.com is the easiest for foreign cards and accepts passports without a Chinese number. It may add a small service fee and is useful when you want to lock in a date before you arrive, especially for the kind of moving discount range we saw across Genting in 2025-26. For trips where the language barrier matters (long Chongli weekends, Altay half-day night sessions when office hours are tight), Trip.com is the most reliable third-party option.
This is the most common snag. Several flows inside Alipay, WeChat and sometimes Trip.com ask for an 身份证 number (an 18-digit Chinese ID) and refuse a passport. Three workarounds in practice:
For app-only deals, the safer move is to book on Trip.com and pick up the voucher at the resort ticket desk by showing your passport.
We could not confirm that resort ticket offices accept foreign Visa or Mastercard cards, so plan to pay at the window with Alipay or WeChat Pay linked to your card, or in cash. Cash yuan works: the central bank's rules against refusing cash took full effect on 1 February 2026. Large hotels do take foreign credit cards. Inside Alipay and WeChat, foreign cards pay 3% on transactions over 200 yuan, so for a rack-rate ticket of 300 to 800 yuan the card fee adds 9 to 24 yuan. When you also rent gear, expect a deposit; Thaiwoo listed 2,000 yuan for ski rental in 2025-26. The deposit is refunded when gear is returned in good condition.
| Resort | Adult weekday 1-day (2024-25) | 2-day ticket | Night ticket | Deposit (rental) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thaiwoo | 299 yuan | 449 yuan | — | 2,000 yuan |
| Wanlong | 399 yuan (no rental) | 669 yuan | 179 yuan, 18:30–21:30 | varies |
| Genting | 319 yuan | 476 yuan | 165 yuan, 18:30–21:30 | varies |
| Fulong | 237 yuan (low season) | 428 yuan | — | varies |
| Cuiyunshan | 120 yuan (early-season weekday) | — | — | varies |
Prices change every season. Confirm 2026-27 on the resort's own channel before you pay.
The big shifts for 2026-27 are the visa-free status check before you book (see China travel essentials) and the gap between discounted and rack prices at Chongli, where official-channel prices were often about half the rack rate in 2025-26. For an overview of where to ride in each region, see the best ski resorts in China page and our Chongli guide.