Feature: Winter Olympics spark ski craze in N. China

Clad in neon-green from head to toe, Wu Jinjing is part of a growing group of middle-class ski enthusiasts in China, a country with little tradition of winter sports but that will host the Winter Olympics in 2022.

The 32-year-old escapes her office job in the Chinese capital for the skiing mecca of Chongli, nestled in mountains near the Great Wall which will stage skiing events of the 2022 Winter Games.

"I bought an apartment in Chongli in 2010, so it's very convenient for my family to enjoy skiing in winter," said Wu. "I usually spend one or two months living here every ski season."

Wu and her seven-year-old daughter spent more than five hours in the nearby ski resort on holidays.

"Ski helps build my daughter's physique as well as her mentality," she said.

Another ski lover Guo Fang, a 34-year-old housewife, also owns a house in Chongli.

"As the living standard rises, more and more Chinese people want to take part in sports such as ski," said Guo. "But Chongli's hotels are often full on holidays during the ski season, so I decided to buy a house."

Unlike Wu and Guo, more ski lovers take a three-hour bus ride from Beijing to the ski resorts in Chongli. According to official figures, Chongli, which has four ski resorts in operation and several others in construction, received about 1.67 million ski visitors last year and the figure is expected to reach two million in 2015.

Work has already begun on a high-speed rail line that will reduce travel time from Beijing's northern suburbs to just 50 minutes.

"We are looking forward to better transportation system and urban construction, appealing more people to engage in winter sports," Liu Yanlin, deputy director of Chongli sports bureau. Endi