YINCHUAN, China, Aug. 11 (Xinhua) -- When people gradually left the brightly lit shopping mall on a summer night, the ice rink began to embrace 64-year-old skating coach Liu Wei and his troupe of young students.

"After people leave the mall, the rent of this ice rink is lower, and this is why we always train until midnight," said Liu, whose speed on the ice belies his greying temples.

The ice rink for commercial purpose is located in Yinchuan, capital of China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, a drought-stricken and comparatively underdeveloped part of the country. There are few ice rinks here, but Liu dreams to cultivate a champion team for the region.

"In terms of skating, balance and strength are the key," Liu said. The team, constituting of over 20 children, is the best in Ningxia, despite an average age of no more than 14. Apart from training on ice, Liu also takes children to open spaces to practise roller skating and running.

"It's my daughter's honor to have Liu as her coach, and she has made an amazing progress in the last six months," said Wang Chao, her eyes following her daughter as she skates by.

Born in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, where ice and snow sports are popular due to the long winters, Liu has been skating since childhood, and his father was a professional skating coach.

However, ice and snow sports could not offer much reward as a profession back then, and Liu gave up being a professional athlete, turning to another field of work.

At the beginning of the 1990s, Liu left his hometown for Yinchuan for better work opportunities, but still kept up his interest. Ningxia had no ice rink then, so Liu skated on a frozen lake in the park, and his performance attracted many fans.

People's enthusiasm rekindled Liu's passion for the sport, and he decided to bring skating to the city. In 1993, he established the Association of Skating & Roller Skating of Ningxia, taking in about 500 members.

But his determination to establish a professional skating team was triggered by a national-level roller skating competition held in Yinchuan near his home almost two decades ago.

"I went to see how the Yinchuan players performed, only to find they just finished one-fifth of the competition," Liu recalled. "So I decided to resign and become a coach, cultivating talents for this city."

Liu has coached around 3,000 children, but most of them left his tutelage after entering middle school. The eldest member of his team is 19-year-old Ma Zhao, who has been following him for ten years and won a golden medal at the Nanjing Youth Olympic Games.

"Ma Zhao used to have a stronger competitor who finally left. It's a pity. The two boys could make progress together if he was still here," Liu sighed.

The good thing is that parents begin to support their children learning skating thanks to the country's commitment to engage more than 300 million people in winter sports. The team is now sponsored by the Ningxia Sports Bureau.

As a coach, Liu keeps learning new skills for short track speed skating through watching elite-level competitions on TV regardless of his age. "If I don't learn, how is it possible for my children to step on the stage of the Olympic Games?"

Liu feels his age. The pains in his muscles and joints that used to be cured by a good night's sleep now keep torturing him. He is seizing both the day and the night to cultivate his team and successor.

He has also been invited to teach at Ningxia Vocational College of Physical Education. Students there from the once poverty-stricken Xihaigu region used to have no idea of skating, but many of them have changed their majors to learn skating with Liu thanks to the county's poverty-alleviation campaign and emphasis on ice and snow sports.

"I believe the place will have a lot of skating talents in the near future," said Liu, "And this is my dream." Enditem