SHANGHAI has a subtropical climate, but weather is no longer a controlling factor in sports once reserved for wintry weather. Witness the Nigerian women’s bobsled team that recently qualified for the 2018 Winter Olympics, the indoor ski slopes in Dubai and a Florida-based team in North America’s National Hockey League.

So it should come as no surprise that 400 Shanghai students from 30 schools met at Pudong’s Feiyang Skating Center last month to compete on the ice. The two-day event featured ice hockey, short track speed skating and figure skating.

Thirteen-year-old Wei Yining and her twin sister Wang Yiyuan — one took father’s surname and the other, her mother’s — were part of a synchronized skating team. The seventh-graders from Shanghai East Experimental School have been taking weekend figure skating lessons for four years.