China has reportedly reached and passed a goal it set seven years ago to see more than 300 million people try winter sports before it hosted the 2022 Beijing games.
According to the country's winter sports governing body, the number to have tried ice or snow sports has reached 346 million – about one in four Chinese people and probably more than the rest of the world combined.
The challenge, laid out in 2015 by President Xi Jinping, includes ice skating as well as downhill and cross-country skiing.
China now has towards 1,000 places to ski, most of which have opened in the past five years.
In hitting the participation target a crucial element of the challenge was that the bulk of China's vast population live in the hot, flat plains to the south of the country that rarely, if ever, see snow. The country has solved this issue by building more than 30 indoor snow resorts including the world's four largest and over 100 dry ski slopes or installed conveyor slopes in shopping malls.