PE lessons boost students' strength and character

In midafternoon, a group of students from Yanqing No 2 Primary School in Beijing went to a nearby ice rink. With a professional coach, the children, after changing into light-blue figure skating suits, began doing warmup activities and practiced skating.

Among them, Wu in her fourth grade caught the audience's eyes for her deft moves on the ice.

"My daughter loves skating," her mother Yang Yan told Xinhua News Agency. "It has been two and a half years since she started going to an ice rink for practice about four times a week, either in a program organized by her school or a private coaching lesson that she signed up to by herself."

At the school in Yanqing district on the outskirts of Beijing, students begin to learn skating in second grade and skiing in fourth grade, according to Wu Xiaoli, deputy principal of the school.

The school has cooperated with an ice rink and a ski resort to give their students hands-on experience and enjoy the excitement of ice and snow sports on-site, Wu told the news agency.

"We hope that every graduate from our school will be able to master at least one ice and snow sport,"Wu said.

At Beijing Guangqumen Middle School in Dongcheng district, one of the city's central areas, floor hockey is in the curriculum.

Li Jiaxi, who is in her second year in the high school division of Guangqumen Middle School, said she became interested in floor hockey in her second year at the junior middle-school division.

"We were given a lot of opportunities for practicing in classes and our school has also offered optional courses, including skating and skiing. Thus I've gained a better understanding of ice and snow sports," Li said.

Liu Xiaoming, deputy director of the Beijing Education Commission, said at a recent news conference that the commission has held a series of promotional events citywide since 2017, encouraging ice and snow sports into campuses.

To date, primary and secondary school students from across the city's 16 districts made 2.1 million visits to ice rinks and ski resorts.

Data from the commission show that Beijing is home to 200 schools featuring ice and snow sports and 200 Olympic education demonstration schools.

Liu cited the citywide primary and middle-school winter sports games, the largest of its kind in Beijing, as the calling card of the city's campus winter sports competitions.

The number of the annual event's participants has grown from some 500 before to more than 1,700, and the period has extended from one month to nearly two months.

Back in the early days of the event, students without professional coaches could just do fun exercise programs, Liu recalled.

But nowadays, they can compete in professional sports events including figure skating, curling, ice hockey and snowboarding, he noted.

Promoting ice and snow sports at school helps students to build their strength and develop a strong character, encouraging healthy physical and psychological growth, he said.

One such example is an award-winning ice hockey team from the Changping campus of Tsinghua University Primary School. It is the first girls' ice hockey group founded by a Beijing-based school.

"We take ice hockey training as a key means of improving students' personal character and building their strong will," Liu Baize, a games teacher at the school, told China Education News.

As one of the students' favorite classes, the sport helps the school register a year-on-year reduction in myopia and obesity rates among its students, according to the school.

Capitalizing on China's hosting of the 2022 Winter Olympics, the Beijing Education Commission will enhance cooperation with other sectors to improve physical education, enabling students to have more fun.