Sharon Zhang is one of the best rock climbers in Beijing and has the calluses to prove it. Shaking her hand is like rubbing sandpaper and she sports some of the most impressive deltoids in the city. Like most local climbers, she is also a relative newcomer to the sport and completely self-taught.

While most people were holed up last May, Sharon decided to revisit a sport she first tried as an outdoor leadership trainer. For two weeks she lugged herself up Ritan Park's climbing wall as often as she could and was quickly hooked. Zhang is now a local fixture in the emerging climbing scene and one of the 300-deep pool of regulars.

"It's amazing how climbing has changed me," Zhang says. "I was never an outdoors-person, but now I feel like the day has been worthless if I'm not sweating litres. Climbing has made me connect to little moments in life. It's about balance, about holding all of your mind in synch with one or two fingers."

Rock climbing in Beijing is experiencing an accelerated adolescence. Most of the clan is under 25, almost all are self-taught and the sport is still awkwardly finding its footing. In 1995 a group of college mountaineers stumbled across the idea of indoor bouldering as a means of cross training in the winter. Having little technical skill but truckloads of enthusiasm, college students Mao Mao and Zhong Kai took to the walls in their cloth shoes and monkeyed around long enough to ditch their mountaineering and commit to the sport.

Limited access to local resources led them to scope climbing websites and foreign climbing videos, from which they learned to mimic westerners hanging off of wicked cliffs. When Zhong went to New York to study, he brought back climbing articles and translated them for his friends.

In 1998, they single-handedly started the first wave of Beijing climbing, baptising their mountaineering friends and connecting the newly formed student climbing groups. June of 2000 saw construction of the Shouti Capital Gymnasium in Haidian, a complex designed by the China National Mountaineering team and the first venue open to the public. Now, five years later, the sport is growing like bamboo - Zhong Kai and Mao Mao are ranked in the top five competitive climbers in the country, a cottage industry has sprung up to capitalise on the trend, and thousands of climbers saddle up for the first time every year.

Despite its short history, China's climbers are making up for lost time. The climbing scene may be decades behind most other countries, but Beijing's booming economy and constant influx of foreigners have helped propel development, and the exposure has made the city a gathering point for the climbing community. While Yangshuo, in Guilin Province, easily has the most high-profile climbs and competitions in China, most climbers live in Beijing because of access to training and resources. The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Parks has stepped up efforts to provide enthusiasts with more places to play - at present, Beijing proper is home to seven climbing walls and the outlying hills have some of the country's most developed training facilities. The X-Games, an international extreme sports competition, has inspired flocks of 12 and 13 year olds to get into the sport, and the upcoming Olympics has the Chinese government doing more to raise awareness.

In the meantime, Sharon Zhang will get out and hit the rocks and continue to bring along those with little skill but lots of enthusiasm. If not for anything else, Zhang has a reputation to maintain. "I used to be a girly girl," Zhang says. "Now if my hands start to get too soft, I have to get back on the rocks."

http://www.ebeijing.gov.cn/Tour/TravelBeijing/t20040616_138955.htm