Tai Chi in the Morning
Foreigners going for a jog through the streets of China’s big cities should be prepared for stares. Chinese people find this behavior strange and inexplicable and you will certainly never see Chinese people jogging. But this doesn’t mean that Chinese people don’t take exercise and physical fitness seriously; they simply choose to burn their calories a different way.
Should you happen to be out and about in the early morning hours, say between 7:00 and 9:00, you’ll find China’s city parks, and any other large open spaces, filled with groups of people, generally elderly, taking their morning exercise. They go through Tai Chi forms in large groups, some with fake swords and some without.
Now, most of these people are not martial arts masters. Contrary to popular misconception, not all Chinese people know martial arts. Rather, Tai Chi is viewed as simple good exercise in much the same way as an organized dance class or yoga is. Also, because it’s about as low impact as you can get, it’s especially good exercise for the elderly, and this is perhaps why it’s so popular in that age group.
The other thing about China’s parks and open public spaces and often the courtyards of its apartment complexes is that they often have space set aside for free outdoor work out equipment. These Fitness Paths were first built in the mid-90’s as part of the Central Government’s National Fitness Campaign(1). Today there are 37 million square feet of outdoor gyms across China (2), and Chinese people put them to good use. They’re so popular early in the morning that you may have to wait your turn to use them.
These outdoor gyms have been so successful and so popular that China has exported the concept to the UK, where the first free outdoor gyms were built in Docklands this year.
