Team China for the upcoming 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympics was officially founded on Feb 21.

Among the 217 members of the national team are three Zhejiang-raised athletes, namely Wang Xinyu and Yang Jian from Ningbo and Li Panpan from Hangzhou.

They will be the first Zhejiang athletes to attend the Winter Paraympics, as winter sports are much less popular in the country's subtropical southern provinces like Zhejiang than they are in Northeast China, which usually account for the bulk of Team China at the Winter Paraympics.

Wang Xinyu. [Photo/zj.zjol.com.cn]

Wang, born in August 2001, is a female snowboarder. She had to have her left calve amputated due to an accident at the age of six.

Wang joined the national snowboarding team in 2018 and won a gold medal for Team Zhejiang at the 10th National Games for Persons with Disabilities a year later, which was the first gold claimed by Zhejiang at winter sport contests in the games. She also bagged one silver and one bronze at the 11th National Games for Persons with Disabilities in 2021.