Two tragic deaths of skiers in Beijing-area resorts over the past three days have called attention to safety on local slopes.

According to Chinese news reports, a 10-year-old Beijing boy died on Wednesday (January 18) afternoon at the Thaiwoo Ski Resort in Chongli, about a 4-hour drive drive from Beijing.

The boy was found by the Thaiwoo ski patrol but was pronounced dead on arrival at the emergency room, according to Renmin Hospital in Chongli. According to one witness at the hospital, the boy’s father said he has been skiing for three or four years and was familiar with the slope he was found on. The cause of the accident is unknown and the resort has asked anyone who may have witnessed the accident to contact the resort.

The accident comes less than 48 hours after another deadly accident on the slopes of Chongli.

On January 16, a Peking University graduate student was killed in an accident at Wanlong Ski Resort. Witnesses said the accident was severe, and a social media picture of the alleged scene of the accident seems to indicate the student veered off the slopes to hit a tree.

The accidents come at a time when many are considering trips to the slopes for the Chinese New Year holiday.

Skiing is witnessing a boom in Beijing and in China overall, where the number of resorts has increased dramatically over the past decade. Additionally, Beijing’s selection as host of the 2022 Winter Olympics has also sparked widespread interest in the sport.

However, safety sometimes takes a back seat to unbridled enthusiasm among skiers and profit among resorts, resulting in occasional overcrowding on the slopes.

A child at Thaiwoo gets ready for a lesson

“What worries me about a lot of these places is they get crowded, and oftentimes the skiers are under-skilled and over-ambitious,” said one former organizer of ski trips in Beijing. “Even if you don’t take risks yourself, you’re always at risk from an out-of-control skier who has ended up coming barreling down a slope they have no business coming down.”

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Meanwhile Sam Goodman, a parent who frequently goes skiing with his family, said several precautions need to be taken on Beijing’s slopes such as always wearing a helmet, ensuring you use quality equipment, and sticking to the hills that are appropriate for your level.

Whenever Goodman hits the slopes with his daughter, who is also ten years old, he tries to snowboard behind her so that he can keep an eye on how she is doing and watch out for the other people navigating the hill around them. He said: “It’s like driving in a car. You can try to be as safe as you can, but if these idiots around you who can’t control themselves slam right into you from behind, then there’s only so much you can do. So I ask my daughter to not only watch where she’s going, but to also be aware of her surroundings.

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Eyee Hsu, an expat parent and CCTV news anchor and host, is an avid snowboarder who had both her son and daughter on the slopes when they were mere toddlers. However, she and her husband are reconsidering whether to take family trips to local ski resorts this winter, explaining: “Even though our kids know how to control themselves, we’re worried about going because of the people around them. At Chinese resorts there are so many adults that go, rent equipment, and start skiing but never get the proper instruction. The only way they know how to stop is to fall, so it can be a total hazard out there.”

She recommended that parents have their kids wear helmets and that they use proper fitting equipment. But above all she stressed the need for formal lessons from a qualified instructor, so that children know how to stop and can maneuver safely.

Justin Downes, president of IMG Ski Resort Management & Axis Leisure Management, which was heavily involved in the planning and of development of Chongli’s Secret Garden resort and Thaiwoo’s resort, suggests:

• Be aware of the ‘Responsibility Code’ of the ski area – each resort will have it posted in the ski hall
• Ski within your ability level….if you are a beginner, stay in the beginner area
• It is always a good idea to get a ski lesson..learn from the experts
• Don’t ski too fast, especially in congested areas
• Wear a Helmet (many resorts now make it mandatory)
• Make sure that the rental technicians adjust your bindings to match your weight and ability level (it is a simple adjustment with a screwdriver)
• If snowboarding – you can also rent additional protective equipment (such as wrist guards, knee pads etc)
• Always watch what is happening in front of you – don’t worry about what is happening behind you (be aware and alert)
• It is helpful to be in some sort of reasonable physical condition
• Dress warmly to avoid muscle strains

Photo: Courtesy of Thaiwoo Ski Resort

Beijing’s expatriate community is mourning the loss of 32-year-old international school teacher Jonathan Sokoloff who was critically injured in a scooter accident on April 25. Sokoloff, who was in the ICU of an international department of a local hospital, passed away last night. An American expat from Gainesville, Florida, Sokoloff had been teaching at Beijing International Bilingual Academy (BIBA) for almost two years.

Sokoloff’s sister Jennifer Sokoloff arrived in Beijing last weekend to take over all the necessary arrangement and decisions. BIBA assisted Sokoloff’s sister in contacting the US Embassy, hospital, and traffic police department.

Outpourings of grief were posted last night on the public Facebook page Send Soko Home, set up to raise money to pay for medical expenses and possible special medivac transportation to fly Sokoloff back home for treatment.

"We were waiting for God to give us a miracle but it didn’t happen," Sokoloff’s sister Tracy Goolsby posted to the Facebook group last night. "But then I thought maybe our miracle was the fact our paths crossed with our brother Jonathan’s in the first place….Maybe our miracle was his big ole smile being etched into our minds and hearts as long as we live or the way we felt when he gave us that big ole bear hug that totally encompassed us, making us feel like a small child and loved beyond measure."

Before traveling to Beijing Sokoloff’s sisters Jennifer Sokoloff and Tracy Goolsby, spoke to their local tv news station WCJB about their concerns, and to stress the need to raise funds to cover the cost of medivac.

Friends of Sokoloff organized crowdfunding pages where donations can be made, as well as a benefit at  Homeplate Bar-B-Que which took place on May 1. BIBA is also fundraising through multiple channels.

As of last week over RMB 370,000 had been raised to go toward the the cost of treatment, bringing his family to China, and the ongoing medical expenses of his mother, whom Sokoloff had been helping support on his teaching salary. Today a source close to fundraisers said that over RMB 700,000 had been raised through fundraising in China and the United States.

Another fundraiser, Punks Jump for Jonathan, will take place on Saturday, May 21 at 9pm, with punk rock acts Final Impact and Bastards of Imperialism playing a benefit gig at DDC. Tickets are RMB 50, with organizers pledging 100 percent of proceeds to Sokoloff’s family. Click here to make a donation to his family via Indiegogo. Click here to make a donation to his family via Gofundme.

Photo: Send Soko Home

This guest post by Singapore-based Franco-American expat Cordelia Newlin de Rojas once again came to our attention from the excellent blog InCultureParent and was originally published there. It is used here with the permission of the author, whose bio appears below.

Ten days ago, a toddler was struck by two vehicles on a road in Guangdong and eventually died because no one stopped to help.

My initial reaction? Total shock followed by immediate outrage coupled with an attitude of “this would never happen where I come from.” It would seem from at least one article in the Washington Post that I wasn’t the only one thinking this was a cultural issue. A case where an American woman jumped to rescue a drowning Chinese woman was cited as proof that Westerners aren’t so selfish and interested only in their own success. (Unless of course they are part of the 1%. Viva OccupyWallStreet!)

Not only could this happen at “home”, it has. I am using “home” here to denote my cultural background in a broad sense. I am a Westerner albeit living in South East Asia. I can’t help but spend time comparing East vs. West: why do they keep their kids up so late? How can they treat their helpers that way? Why can’t kids in the West respect their elders? Why is the East so much more welcoming of children?

So when this happened, I felt the East had something to learn from us. That the estimated 18 people who did nothing should, Japanese executive-style, bow down in shame and apologize for their lack of action. I started thinking about the piece I would write, the examples I would use. When I write, I have to get inspired on a topic, think a little about it and then let it simmer in my unconscious. Usually an alarm goes off out of the blue and I am ready to sit down and write. I was really surprised to find that I had experienced a full 180-degree shift.

A British Story

A tradesman notices a toddler girl ambling along a major roadway. His immediate reaction is that he should stop and pick her up. But he doesn’t. A short time later he hears on the news that this same little girl managed to make her way out of her daycare and roam along a roadside until she came upon a lake and drowned.

These two stories make me want to weep. And if I imagine my three-year-old’s face for even a split second on either of these children, I am brought to my knees with the urge to throw up. I want to make my way to the parents of these angels and beg forgiveness on the behalf of the human race. How CAN this happen?

It is difficult for us sometimes to comprehend the repercussions of actions in cultures different from our own. In China, it turns out that if someone stops to help, they are often then stopped as the perpetrator. Well, wait a minute, surely once they explained what happened, they would be released. Undoubtedly the life of a child is worth a short period of detention. But we are talking about a radically different system, one in which citizens are not guaranteed a fair hearing or any hearing at all.

If stopping and acting is akin to a game of Russian roulette, would we act? I am sure we would like to think we would. But then it’s worth looking at our British driver. Why didn’t he stop? It turns out he was afraid someone would consider him a pedophile trying to abduct the young girl. And thanks to media sensationalism, even if he was stopped and cleared, everyone would always remember him as that bloke who was probably a pedophile but got stopped before they could prove anything. How many other people saw that little girl and didn’t stop?

The cases are clearly different and yet both resulted in unthinkable tragedies. I believe that Chinese need to take a good, hard look at themselves. But I’d argue that we in the West need to as well.

Cordelia Newlin de Rojas mostly spends her time pondering, parenting, writing and managing. Franco-American, she spent her summers in the Loire indulging in heart-arresting foods. An eclectic background ranging from Japanese art and postal history to environmental social innovations and rigging dinghies has taken her to England, Turkey and now Singapore where she resides with her Mexican husband and their two daughters. They are attempting to raise trilingual kids in Spanish, French and English with some Mandarin thrown in. She can also be found blogging at multilingualmama.com.