“Grandpa Xi has big hands, after he shook hands with me, I wanted to hit my elbow with him, an etiquette in ice hockey game,” elementary school student and ice hockey player Guan Zizhao said after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Xi paid an inspection visit last Friday to the venue that will host the ice hockey games during the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

Xi watched a game between young ice hockey players, praised their professionalism and encouraged them to pursue further progress in the future. He said China should further promote winter games by seizing the opportunity of hosting the Winter Olympics.

In a country where winter sports are not traditionally popular, the scene is changing quickly after China’s capital and its neighboring city of Zhangjiakou won the bid in 2015 to host the Winter Games in 2022.

White sports have seen a surge of 30 percent in the number of players during the past two consecutive years, and the number is expected to reach 300 million people during the next ten years. 

According to national plans, at least 650 skating rinks and 800 ski resorts will be built across China by 2022. At the same time, winter sports market is expected to total one trillion yuan (144.5 billion US dollars) worth of value by 2025.

It is reported that the number of people playing ice hockey increased to 3,000 in China last year, and in Beijing alone, there are more than ten ice hockey clubs. All students take ice sports courses at the Experimental School Affiliated with Beijing No.20 High School, where winter festivities are held every now and then, including snow soccer, snow tug-of-war, and snow rope skipping.

While in Beijing Zhongguancun’s No.2 Primary School, sports teachers wrote textbooks for floorball, which has become a compulsory course for all students. It is also the first school in the city to build an 800-square-meter ice-like stadium. Furthermore, the school even invited three Chinese world champions last June as after-school counselors: Zhang Dan for figure skating, Liu qiuhong and Kongxue for short-track speeding skating.

During the just-concluded 2017 Asian Winter Games in Sapporo, the Chinese delegation took part in all 64 of the Games' events, ranking third behind Japan and South Korea, with 12 gold, 14 silver and nine bronze medals.