Taiwan ice hockey coach achieves goal in Wuhan

This year's Spring Festival was the second that Huang Wei-hung, an ice hockey coach from Taiwan, spent in Wuhan, Hubei province, where he is avidly following the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics on TV with his students, cheering for the Chinese athletes.

Huang, 42, arrived in Wuhan in 2020 to try his luck as an ice hockey coach. His decision to move to the city has certainly paid off, as it came as local schools were opening related courses and more children were getting involved in the sport. He now has around 70 students and a growing business.

Ice hockey, which remains a niche sport on the mainland, is a winter team game played on ice skates with the object of propelling a vulcanized rubber disk, the puck, into the net. The sport is immensely popular in Canada, where it is the national winter sport.

"It requires speed, strength, coordination, agility and brains,"Huang said, as many skills are involved, including skating and moving the puck with a hockey stick, in a game involving a high degree of physicality and high speeds.

The frequent physical contact makes the sport very exciting as players in protective gear sometimes crash into each other and fights can erupt due to disputes, further heightening the audience's excitement, he said.

A sports lover and a proficient sportsman since an early age, Huang started learning ice hockey in the late 1990s out of sheer curiosity when the sport was being promoted on the island, where it is also a niche pursuit. The college where he was studying also formed Taiwan's first collegiate ice hockey team.

He explained that playing the sport as a student also gave him the opportunity to brush up his English skills, as most of those engaging in the sport in Taiwan at the time were almost exclusively from North America. "Over time, I also spoke fluent English," Huang said.

He participated in many ice hockey tournaments both on the island and elsewhere, and after his graduation he ran an ice hockey club.

The island has few ice rinks, as Taiwan's hot climate means they would run up high maintenance costs. Instead, roller hockey, which is played on a dry surface using roller skates, is the preferred version of the sport among islanders, Huang said.

"It's similar to skating on ice and they use similar gestures," he said, adding that it is also suitable to be adopted in the warm south of the mainland as the authorities seek to promote ice-related sports.

Expecting the Winter Olympics to bring more opportunities to the ice sports industry on the mainland, he arrived in Wuhan in July 2020, just three months after the city ended its 76-day lockdown due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

"The first few months were quite stressful. I had nothing in the city except for the two suitcases I brought," he said. Huang initially gave free lessons to children at a local rink and gradually some students started learning from him, due to his lively and encouraging teaching method.

"Because this sport is not common here, children feel curious, especially when they see the puck, a small rubber disc that is used instead of a ball," he said.

Huang teaches in both Chinese and English, and his students learn English expressions related to the game while they are playing.

As more schools are promoting winter sports, he has launched roller hockey courses at some international schools in Wuhan, including Wuhan Australian International School and Wuhan Foreign Languages School Meiga Academy.

"It's fun and encourages children to exercise. Because they often fall, it's helpful to develop their ability to deal with frustration and failure," he said, adding that some parents plan to send their children to study abroad in the future and playing the sport will be helpful to their applications and making local friends.

In August, he started a company in Wuhan providing ice and roller hockey training services and obtained a 20-square-meter office for free, benefiting from a local preferential policy which assists startups from Taiwan.

His company currently has seven employees and the expansion of his business means that he is now training several coaches who are sports major graduates from local universities. He has held three ice hockey exchange matches in Wuhan, hoping to bring together fans of the sport.

"I like Wuhan as it's a nice place to live and I feel at home," he said. He also met his girlfriend in the city and plans to take her to visit his parents in Taiwan.

Liu Kun contributed to this story.