This ain’t no Ozone Fitness club

Do you know the Chinese gym equipment dotted in pockets along the streets, all over Beijing? My kids love these things. Elliptical trainers, stationery bikes, stair-masters, lat-pulls, they’re all there. It’s just that they’re made for grannies and everyday ren, rather than great hulking chunks of hunk, bulging with testosterone and sweating steroids.

When we first move to China, I was scared to let my kids run rampant on these community exercise staples. I felt we didn’t qualify to use such an inventive local initiative, really reserved for harried businessmen on their way to and from work, or elderly Beijingren in need of arthritis relief. I felt, well – that we were just too foreign and my kids were too small and would totally mis-use these effective exercise options as play equipment.

How things have changed. Now that we are lao pengyou de Beijing, our entire family feels far more comfortable stretching our boundaries and stepping into the footprints of the local Chinese. We’ve now been using this Chinese exercise equipment for around three years and not only are we wholeheartedly welcomed by the locals who use these contraptions to keep fit, we also seem to encourage other Chinese passersby to join in.

The Chinese have a no-nonsense, enormously admirable affinity for looking after their health. They shade themselves from the sun, live in synch with the seasons, eat an excellent diet (even if it is a little high in oil and salt), practice an impressively lao form of alternative medicine, and believe in keeping physically active and able. Coming from Australia, where few people exercise in public unless they can pull off a stunning set of laps using a perfect stroke, run like the wind with Olympic track and field style, pop with muscles whilst lifting their own bodyweight in barbells or look like a supermodel in a leotard, it was a little cheesy seeing people walking backwards, ballroom dancing to screechy pre-Cultural Revolution oldies, clapping their hands and chanting in the sunshine, or practicing tai chi with faux swords under a tree whilst wearing their pyjamas.

I almost averted my eyes, at first. Standing in the middle of the street while people scooted around them, slapping their hands together behind their backs like dilapidated flamingoes was just, well – strange to me. But it soon became an everyday sight in our lives and with it came the understanding that it doesn’t matter where you exercise, how you do it or how dorky you look whilst doing it, so long as you do it, and even better – so long as you enjoy doing it.

Now I can’t live without the grannies at the bottom of my building twirling their wrists around, kicking their legs in the air or performing deep knee bends. I can’t get enough of the ballroom dancers, especially the ones who can’t find a partner and dance solo. How I’ve pined to go over and take their hand and swirl and twirl alongside them. My absolute favourite are the tai chi groups who entrance me with their muscle-toning moves, and the granddads who roll up their singlets and rub their sore back muscles on the meat-tenderising machines next to the joint-loosening contraptions.

My personal favourite of these contraptions, often painted bright yellow, blue or green, would have to be the hip-slipping walker. You plant a foot on each pedal and swing your legs like you’re running through space, ironing out all the crinks and clicks in any type of hip, especially those crusty ones of an oft-seated writer. My other favourite is that lower back massager – a type of cynlindrical tenderizer, studded with nodules that knead into the muscles deliciously. I also love the pizza wheels, as my kids call them – small flat disks you stand on, grip the handles and twist from side to side like a pony-tail wearing jivester at a 1950s school dance.

My kids’ favourites? Everything! They run from piece to piece like mice in a maze, unable to decide what to go on, what to stay on, what to hog. It’s a joy watching them enjoy these simple contraptions so much – and for free!

What could be better?

I’ll tell you what – watching my kids attract an audience of fellow Chinese sports-enthusiasts to share in the joy.

Tania McCartney