Winter swimmers troubled with difficulty to find proper swimming venues

Now is the perfect time for winter swimming. However, the more than 10,000 winter swimming lovers in Beijing have to play a game of hide-and-seek with Chengguan, the Beijing water administration and other law enforcement departments, because related rules stipulate that swimming in public places is prohibited, and additionally, most outdoor swimming pools are not open in the winter.

Winter swimmers troubled with difficulty to find proper swimming venues

The number of winter swimming lovers exceeds 10,000

Every morning in the winter, winter swimming lovers will gather in Bayi Lake, Shicha Lake, Yuyuantan, the Summer Palace and other parks and lakes. They like jumping into the icy water to change their skin color to pink because of the cold, and then make blood vessels contract and dilate in the cold water to strengthen the elasticity of their blood vessels as well as remove the fat and cholesterol particles in the blood vessels.

"I swim for a while at the southern entrance of the Summer Palace every morning." 46-year-old Li Lin, director of the Beijing Winter Swimming Association, said that many of the people who have to work every day prefer swimming at 5:00 am or 6:00 am, and then run.

Winter swimming began in Beijing in the early 1960s, and by now, more than 40 years have passed. Li said that two or three years ago, the association already had more than 3,000 members and 200 to 300 people were recruited every year. These members were divided into more than 30 teams by the places where they live and the companies they work for, and the teams swim at different places every day.

The reporter learned that currently, there are more than 10,000 winter swimming lovers in Beijing, including the ones who are not members of the winter swimming association. Among them, some are well-educated people, and some are businessmen, white-collar workers, common workers, retired people, teachers and students, and they cover a wide range of ages from teenagers all the way to the middle-aged and the elderly.