by sportswriter He Leijing
NANJING, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- As the new school year begins, fifth-grader Wang Xuan is looking forward to more than just seeing his classmates again. He is hoping to find someone to play pickleball with.
For the young sports enthusiast who picked up the fast-growing sport during the summer vacation, that may not be difficult. His school in Suzhou New District is just a short distance from a newly opened pickleball complex that drew scores of teenage players during the season.
"We had never played before, but pickleball is easy to pick up," said Wang's mother, Li Shuang. "I played with him, too, and it was such a relaxing way to have fun."
The family lives nearby and often comes to the courts to work up a sweat. During the summer, the venue offered four hours of play for just 29.9 yuan (about 4.4 U.S. dollars), further lowering the threshold for newcomers.
The 23-court facility, featuring a 1,600-square-meter central court, is the largest pickleball base in Jiangsu Province. Yet its growing popularity is more than a local phenomenon.
Across China, a new generation of sports is rapidly moving from niche pastime to mainstream leisure, transforming how people exercise, socialize and spend their free time.
Data from Douyin E-commerce show that sales of pickleball products surged 229 percent year-on-year over the past four months. On Xiaohongshu, a lifestyle-focused social media platform, more than 1.2 million posts about the sport have been published, while related topics have accumulated 820 million views.
"Ten minutes to get the hang of it, half an hour to get hooked," said Zhang Bingcheng, deputy general manager of Suzhou River Sports, capturing the sport's appeal in a nutshell.
With a session costing only a few dozen yuan, pickleball combines elements of tennis, table tennis and badminton. Its relatively gentle pace and easy-to-learn rules allow beginners to find their rhythm quickly, while its built-in sense of rally and interaction keeps them coming back.
Its appeal also finds unlikely new settings. On the 51st floor of a shopping mall in Nanjing, 11 standard pickleball courts offer players a game with a panoramic view of the city. The courts are often packed at night, with young people emerging as the driving force behind the summer boom.
"Playing pickleball this high above the ground while taking in the city view is such a unique experience," said pickleball enthusiast Zhang Ying.
And pickleball is only one piece of a much larger sporting mosaic taking shape across China.
This summer, as people sought ways to beat the heat while staying active, paddleboarding, kayaking and indoor skiing also gained traction, turning exercise into a form of leisure, socializing and escape from the heat.
At dusk, paddleboarders can be seen gliding across some waterways in Beijing and across lakes in cities such as Suzhou and Chengdu, their silhouettes drifting through the evening breeze.
"We have seen around 100 paddleboarders a day on average this summer, up 400 percent from a year earlier. Many visitors have also come from other cities specifically to try it," said Wu Yan, a manager at a water sports base in Jiangsu's Huai'an.
At Wuxi's Lihu Lake water sports base, daily visitors have topped 300, with revenue exceeding 20,000 yuan, while weekend traffic has doubled.
"After inflating the board for about five minutes, you can stand on the water. I was nervous the first time, but after paddling a few dozen meters, I was hooked," said paddleboarder Wang Xin.
The sport can be enjoyed by people ranging from children as young as six to those in their 80s, said paddleboarding coach Sun Qihai. "Beginners often fall into the water, but that's precisely part of the charm. It leaves room for mistakes, allowing people to unwind and let go of pressure while playing with the water."
Experts say easy access and affordable prices are the most visible reasons for the rise of these emerging sports. But behind the boom lies a deeper shift in what people expect from exercise.
"People's demand for sports has gone beyond simply staying fit. They are increasingly seeking stress relief, social interaction and ways to express themselves," said Lu Yulin, an organizer involved in promoting pickleball in Jiangsu.
The blend of fitness, fun and social connection is helping turn once-niche pursuits into new consumption engines.
In Suzhou, the pickleball base run by River Sports plans to host more than 90 competitions a year and expects them to generate around 220 million yuan in consumption. In Yangzhou, a flag football tournament attracted about 600 players, and after the games, athletes and their families explored local tourist spots, turning a sporting event into a gateway to tourism and culture.
The boom is also rippling through manufacturing. In Hebi, Henan Province, the city's established rubber and plastics manufacturing base is being leveraged to develop pickleball equipment. Nearly 1,600 courts are being built across the city, making it one of China's most densely equipped cities for the sport.
In Weihai, Shandong Province, orders for water sports equipment have surged, helping create an industrial chain spanning raw-material research and development, mold design, assembly manufacturing and cross-border sales.
Traditional commercial spaces are adapting as well. "As shopping increasingly shifts toward experience-driven consumption, such sports are an ideal vehicle for blending different scenarios and activities," said Niu Yong, an executive at a department store.
"Since our pickleball venue opened two months ago, players from several banks, insurance companies and technology firms have already used it as a place to socialize and build business connections," Niu said.
In some cities, meanwhile, unused or underused urban spaces are being converted into facilities for new sports, offering more options for public fitness while giving a second life to dormant corners of the city.
"These sports are not simply creating new ways to exercise," he said. "They are also helping cities rethink how public space can be used and how sports can become part of everyday life." Enditem
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