The Chinese Fountain of Youth! - Exercise!

Yeah, well, I'm sure not going to be outside exercising in 3 feet of snow and 20 below zero temperatures. I'll save myself for pruning, sawing, never-ending bed edging and lawn mowing once spring, summer and autumn finally cycle around again (if the ever do; this may be the year of the winter that never ends - worst weather we've had in over 20 years). From The Times Online March 9, 2008 All the chi in China Shouting, whip-cracking, wrapping their ankles round their ears: the citizens of Beijing have strange ways to free the life force In the grey stillness of predawn, I followed the silent figures ghosting down Beijing’s long avenues towards the Temple of Heaven. They were on foot or on bicycles, alone or in couples. Shuffling through the gates, they spread out through the park that surrounds the temple. As the first rays of the sun slanted through the trees, I realised that there were hundreds of them scattered across the grass, and that some were dancing the foxtrot. Everything about China is different, from the alphabet to the cutlery to their habit of ending dinner with soup. To the casual visitor, even to those not given much to ruminations about physiognomy, one of the striking differences is the physique of the Chinese. There are few fat people. Occasionally, you may see a slightly plump type, in a cosy Chinese way, but the spreading girths of western society, the rolling buttocks barely contained by terry-towel fabric, have no place here. And it is not just a diet of rice and cabbage that keeps them so slim. The Chinese secret is that they exercise. To catch them at their fitness regimes, however, you need to rise well before dawn. I broke the habit of a lifetime to witness these early-morning rituals. Creeping through the dark streets, it felt like a nature safari, an expedition to glimpse the mysterious rites of some strange species. Geoffrey was one of the regulars in the Temple of Heaven park. He waylaid me just inside the northern gate, chiefly to practise his remarkable colloquial English. He liked to arrive before 5.30am, he informed me. “Flitness,” he said, “is for the early worm.” He tapped his forehead. “For flitness, you must let the energies flow. Chi,” he said, making a noise like sneezing. “Chi is energy in the body. It must be flee.” In China, exercise is chiefly the preserve of the old. There were plenty of younger people in the green acres of the park, but the middle-aged and elderly – scarce in a western gym – predominated. And the results don’t half show. China has old people the way Russia has chess champions. They are the best old people in the world, old people as a source of national pride – fit, slender, supple, their skin smooth, their eyes bright. Anywhere else in the world, you would suspect surgical intervention, coupled with a heavy regime of hormones. Chinese 70-year-olds could pass for middle-aged in London, and for thirtysomething in a Glasgow pub. Geoffrey was typical. He was 75, but looked like a man in his early fifties, perhaps not coincidentally the age of his wife. In the Temple of Heaven park, astride the great meridian known as the Dragon Line, where the emperors used to pray for national redemption and good harvests, the assembled masses were deep into their morning rituals. Chief among the activities was t’ai chi, the classic Chinese exercise. Originally, it was a martial art. As an exercise, it is performed, usually in groups, at half speed, a slow-motion ballet of precise movements, a kind of synchronised swimming without the pool. T’ai chi is illustrative of what is so different about Chinese exercise. There is lots of mental concentration and very little sweat. Exercise is elegant, graceful, almost sedate. Not for the Chinese the muscle-pumping of the gym, the slog of the jogging track. Nobody here is going for the burn. Instead, it is all about balance and concentration and flexibility. In a western fitness programme, t’ai chi would register only as an elaborate warm-up, a series of stretching exercises. In China, it is the main course, because it involves thought as well as movement. In the wide spaces of the Temple of Heaven park, however, t’ai chi was only the tip of the exercise iceberg. On all sides, straight-faced people were engaging in a range of ever more bizarre activities. In the shade of a pine tree, an old man was limbering up for the day by tapping his head repeatedly, moving his fingers round the ley lines of the skull, a sort of self-administered acupressure. Nearby, three elderly women stood in a flowerbed, rubbing their backs slowly up and down the bark of the camphor trees. At another tree, another woman was engaged in a sort of sniffing exercise, pressing her nose to a trunk and inhaling in short, sharp bursts. Suddenly, from beyond the shrubbery, I heard gunshots. Hurrying round the oleander bushes, I came upon three men cracking long whips. Like lion-tamers minus the lions, they prowled back and forth, exercising first with one arm, then the other. Beyond them, on the open grass, a group of young women, arms raised, knees flexed, were twirling long ribbons with balletic grace, like Chinese cheerleaders. Over by the eastern gate, a group of elderly women had hooked their left legs over the chest-high railings, bending forward to flex their back muscles. It was the kind of thing that would have been impressive performed by an east European adolescent gymnast. As performed by elderly grannies, in nylon shirts and cotton slippers, it was astonishing. In the gardens to the south of the great temple, I came upon the happy clappers. A large group had assembled between the flowerbeds in orderly rows. They were engaged in a sort of call-and-response clapping. First, the Clapper Chief – a willowy young man with the fervent look of an evangelical preacher – gave them a short burst of clapping, which the whole group then copied in unison. It was like one of those old-fashioned communist rallies where everyone spent much of their time applauding themselves. The vocal exercises were a more solitary pursuit. Across the green lawns, individuals stood alone, gazing into the middle distance, shouting, albeit in a restrained Chinese manner, presumably hoping to get the chi flowing by letting it all out. Meanwhile, contortionists, many of them of an age when getting their socks on straight might have been a struggle, were wrapping their ankles round their ears. Badminton players had set up nets, but nobody was gauche enough to keep score. The long arc of the shuttlecock, the graceful rallies, seemed an end in themselves. Even the swordsmen and women, whose ceremonial blades glinted in the morning light, had reduced armed combat to an elaborate slow-motion mime. Of all the strange activities in the park, my favourite was the ballroom dancing. One of China’s many surprises is the quality of its ballroom dancing. Across the country, you see couples in the evenings, in the squares and parks of small towns, dancing the waltz and the tango. And here, early in the morning, among the whip-crackers and the t’ai chi exponents, sedate dancers were limbering up for the day with the foxtrot, the polka, the rumba and the two-step. Ballroom dancing has it all – the elegant, unhurried movements, the gentle companionability, a degree of mental alertness, the need to avoid other people’s toes. It is the ideal Chinese exercise, and a triumph of restraint. Among the rather formal couples, making their neat turns as they gazed politely over one another’s shoulders, Geoffrey and his wife glided expertly between the rose beds and the shrubbery. Later, they walked with me to one of the park exits. “Phwoxtwat,” Geoffrey said, unlocking their bicycles. “One per cent perspiration. Ninety-nine per cent concentration. Werry genius exercise. Lots of flowing chi.”