Visitors play at Chimelong Water Park in Guangzhou, Guangdong province. Photo provided to China Daily

 

Happy Magic Water Cube

The Olympian among China's water parks is in Beijing's National Aquatics Stadium, the bubble-wrapped cuboid conjured for the 2008 Games. The competition venue celebrated the event's two-year anniversary by opening a water park occupying half its space.

It's a place where rides take such names as Serpentine Speed Slide, Deep-Water Tornado and Bullet Bowl－and mean it.

The Cube claims its Ride House's 12 waterslides are the most of any recreational structure in the world.

Chimelong Water Park

Chimelong's torrent pool is meant to simulate flash floods.

It claims the world's largest artificial drift-surfing wave-pool with 3-meter-high crests enabling up to 3,000 swimmers to simultaneously ride the tide.

Aside from replicating natural disasters, the 180-hectare park in Guangdong's provincial capital Guangzhou, also hosts annual bikini contests and a surfing festival, and is a TV shooting site.

Playa Maya Water Park

Again with the Maya motif－this time in Shanghai, rather than Dubai－replete with a Mayan Water Dump God and scuba diving among facsimile South American ruins.

Slither down one of the eight colorful tentacles of a nearly 18-meter-high octopus. Or, swirl 123 meters through the Beast Bowl, where visitors raft through looping tunnels until they're shot into a giant horn, said to be the largest of its kind in Asia.

Then ride Orange Trumpet Friend, Magic Carpet and Affable Blue Python for their names if not the adventures they describe.

There are also man-made bat caves and water-curtain laser shows. Its 20,000-square-meter wave pool's 3.5-meter-high waves are reportedly the world's highest.

Paradise Island Ocean Park

This park is set in what claims to be the world's largest building－a structure four times the size of Vatican City.

Its 8,500 square meters of artificial ocean is bound by over 300 meters of beachfront under a massive glass dome. That's not to mention its half-kilometer waterslide and huge horn.

The idea behind this water world seems to be: Go big, or go home.

Chen Yuxi and Valerie Osipov contributed to the story.

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