Lasting fever for winter sports in China's northernmost province

HARBIN, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- Xin Yi, who calls herself a "little butterfly," dreams of moving freely in the icy world like her cartoon idol Elsa the Snow Queen from Frozen.

Born in 2017, Xin lives in the city of Harbin, known as the "ice city" in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. At the age of three and a half, she started snowboarding with her father and has been addicted ever since.

Every winter, Xin and her parents are frequent visitors at the renowned Yabuli Ski Resort, about three hours' drive from Harbin. They would go to an indoor venue in downtown Harbin when the weather got warmer almost daily.

The indoor venue has eight ski trails with different slopes, with a maximum vertical drop of 80 meters. It can accommodate over a thousand people and is often fully packed, even in summer.

At first, it took Xin 40 minutes to finish a 3.2-km slope. Now the time has been cut to ten minutes thanks to continuous practice.

"We are improving and growing up with each other," said Liang Weijie, Xin's mother. Liang overcame her fear and learned snowboarding from scratch to accompany her daughter.

With the Beijing Winter Olympics, the little girl has a role model in reality -- Gu Ailing, who has won two gold medals and a silver in the Games for China.

Heilongjiang, the northernmost province of China with long winters and abundant snow, has pioneered the country in ice and snow sports development.

The first National Ice Sports Games took place in Harbin in 1953, which created the first batch of speed skating records in China.

Heilongjiang has also hosted seven National Winter Games, a record among all provincial-level regions in China.

Before the Beijing Winter Olympics, Chinese athletes had won 13 gold medals in the previous Winter Games. Nine of these went to athletes from Heilongjiang or trained in the province.

Young athletes are determined to carry on with the glory. Fu Liangyu, born in 2005 in Daqing, Heilongjiang, is one of the youngest skiers in the Heilongjiang snow sports training center. He won second place in the youth-group freestyle ski cross at the provincial sports games in January.

Instead of reuniting with his family during the past Spring Festival, Fu chose to stay in the center to keep regular training.

Having watched the Beijing Winter Games with his teammates, the young man has set the goal of becoming an Olympic champion.

Getting injured is ordinary for skiers. In his worst case, Fu recuperated for more than three months. His family had tried to persuade him several times to give up skiing, but Fu insisted on pursuing his sports dream.

"I like the feeling of flying above the snow. The faster I ski, the more excited I get," said Fu.

As of October 2021, over 346 million people, almost a quarter of China's population, have participated in ice and snow sports after the country's successful bid to host the Winter Olympics in 2015, according to a survey commissioned by the General Administration of Sport of China and conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Zhang Erlin, 59, is one of them. In 2015, Zhang and his friends formed an "elderly ice hockey team" -- as they call it -- in Daqing, with 15 people and an average age of 58.

Most of the team members have excelled at speed skating since a young age. Turning to ice hockey allow these old pals to get together often and compete as one.

The team used to sometimes practice on frozen lakes in the suburbs due to a shortage of standard fields. But this has been history as China has stepped up the construction of winter sports infrastructure over the years, and Heilongjiang has made winter sports venues accessible within 30 minutes of transportation in all cities.

With regular training every week, the team also participates in amateur matches. They don't care about the results as much as what the sport has given them.

"I wish my kids and grandchildren could all join this sport because it strengthens both your body and willpower," said Zhang.