Students practice roller skiing at the school. ZOU HONG/CHINA DAILY

Xu trained for about half an hour a day, and when she was old enough to participate in the winter sports lessons at school, she took two classes a week.

"I would really like to become a cross-country skier, but at the moment, I can only practice on roller skis and I'm not sure when I'll have the chance to learn to ski on snow," she said.

Lyu Mingyue, Xu's roller ski coach, said the young girl was physically fit and is a fast roller skier, faster even than the male students her age. "By practicing different sports, the students' health has improved, and their physical fitness test scores are much higher than a few years ago," Lyu said.

Liu Xiaoming, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Education Commission, said in a news conference earlier that nearly 2.1 million elementary and middle school students in the capital have taken skating or skiing lessons since 2017.

On Jan 11, the city's education commission released a list of the first group of 65 winter sports schools in Beijing, including Yangfangdian Central Primary School.