A Chinese Girl Would Never Do What You're Doing

As seen in the Trib:

Click here to read the article I wrote!

Fitness experience differs in China

Published: Monday, August 13, 2012, 8:57 p.m.Updated: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 

“You know, if you do too many power squats, your legs are going 

to get big and you won’t look good in a skirt.”

Frustrated to be interrupted in the middle of a set, I looked up at 

the sound of a familiar voice speaking to me in Chinese. The 

gym’s manager and an amateur bodybuilder was staring at me 

with concern. “Aren’t you afraid of that happening? You are 

trying to lose weight, aren’t you?” he asked. I laughed, because 

I actually was trying to gain a couple of pounds of muscle.

“Well, I guess I won’t be able to wear skirts anymore,” was all I 

could muster in reply.

This past year, while studying sociology at Nanjing University as 

a Fulbright U.S. Student Program grantee, I participated in 

fitness activities to gain insight into Chinese society and culture. 

Encouraged by the U.S. Department of State-funded Fulbright 

Program to seek opportunities in facilitating cross-cultural 

exchange, I turned to sports during my free time: running, 

weightlifting and training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Considering China’s consistently impressive showing at the 

Olympic Games — Chinese nabbed 87 gold medals, second only 

to the United States’ 104 — one might assume that the Chinese 

are especially supportive of athletic programs. The Chinese 

showing at the events in the just-concluded Olympics, however, is 

not representative of activities that are accessible to the average 

Chinese person. Badminton and table tennis are two notable 

exceptions; they are two of the most widely practiced and popular 

sports in China.

Young Chinese are generally discouraged from participating in 

sports, unless they are good enough to make a career out of it.

“Chinese people just want to focus on one thing in their life, and 

they put all their time and resources into getting good at that one 

thing,” explained my classmate Zhou Lijuan.

While most students are generally discouraged from any 

activities that distract them from preparation for the high 

school- and college-entrance exams, the exceptionally talented 

athletes are sent at a young age to special physical-education 

academies where they spend all day training.

Li Hua, 19, one of the more athletic members at the Frontier Asia 

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu club in Nanjing, told me that when he was 

younger, his parents thought he would go to the Olympics in 

swimming. “I put all my time and effort into swimming,” he said. 

”By the time we realized I wasn’t good enough to go to the Olympics, 

it was too late. I failed the college entrance exam, and now have 

limited options for a career path. The only reason my parents let 

me continue to train Jiu-Jitsu is because it gives me an opportunity 

to practice English with my foreign teammates.”

While I never did understand why the Chinese were so fond of 

working out in jeans and dress shoes — and they could not 

accept my insistence on wearing barefoot running shoes or my 

aversion to synchronized dance — I engaged in insightful 

cultural exchange with my fellow athletes that revealed 

contemporary Chinese attitudes toward gender and athletics. 

In China, I felt that my identity as a woman had huge 

implications for the way I should be exercising. As I female, 

I should be trying to lose weight — and nothing else.

Working out in China was always an interesting experience. 

Frequently, when doing pull-ups in the adult playgrounds, 

which are equipped with pull-up and dip bars and various 

apparatuses, or weightlifting at the gym, I was stopped by 

men, who would stare, give me the thumbs-up, give me 

advice, or tell me that I am lihai, super strong. They almost 

always made a point to add, “You know, a Chinese girl 

would never do what you’re doing.”

I only ever saw one other woman in the gym, and I never 

saw any Chinese females doing pull-ups, but I still had to 

wonder how the Chinese female Olympic athletes would 

feel about that comment.

My feeble attempts at a single pull-up and 80-pound 

clean and jerks were nothing compared to Wang Mingjuan, 

who nabbed gold for China in weightlifting with a 250-pound 

clean and jerk. Li Xueying won gold with a 300-pound clean 

and jerk. And they are both lighter than me by over 

10 pounds of body weight. That is not even to mention the 

world record that gold medalist Zhou Lulu set this year at the 

London Olympics with a clean and jerk of over 412 pounds. 

In other words, there are Chinese girls that could destroy me 

at what I was doing.

Despite my internal protestations at what were nothing more 

than well-intentioned attempts to give me face (make me look good), 

I knew that their comments were less about what I was doing 

and more about the fact that I was a tall, big-nosed, blue-eyed 

female foreigner working out in China. I was seen as an anomaly, 

an alien in a sea of familiar faces. I challenged my expected 

identity as an American female, and by doing so, my activities 

brought stares and raised eyebrows. And they had not even 

seen me train Jiu-Jitsu.

The Chinese word for different is synonymous with the 

word for weird. My classmate Zhou Lijuan said to me once: 

“In China, everyone just does what everyone else is doing. 

People will say to you, ‘Well, everyone is doing X-Y-Z, why 

aren’t you doing X-Y-Z?’ I’m so jealous of the colorful life 

full of variety that you Americans lead.” She told me later 

that I had changed her life when I introduced her to an 

exercise routine — 30 minutes of walking or running a day — 

telling me she had never thought she could combine exercise 

with time for her studies.

In China’s overwhelmingly conformist culture, it is notable when 

anyone breaks out of the mold. Weirdness arouses curiosity. 

As a foreigner, you are weird just by existing in China. Then, 

you try talking or walking or eating or exercising, and the eyeballs 

practically jump out of their sockets. It is difficult for them to 

comprehend why I was doing something so unexpected and 

atypical. My experiences in China showed me that China is a 

conformist and collectivist, but not exclusive, culture. After all, 

older Chinese would gather in the parks to practice tai chi or 

dance or stretch or play basketball while chatting together. 

Gathering in the park was always a social activity, especially for 

the retired.

One day in the sociology course “Chinese Behavioral Analysis” 

at Nanjing University, we discussed Western individualism versus 

Chinese collectivism. The class roared with laughter as the 

professor described how, in China, “You don’t have possession

of your own body or your own thinking, but instead, your entire family 

owns your body and your thinking.” Someone else usually gets to 

decide whether you are full or hungry and cold or warm.
I laughed, too. 

As a Westerner, I had found it particularly jarring when Chinese 

people insisted that I eat more because I could not possibly be 

full yet, or wear more because I could not possibly be warm.

That habit manifested itself during workouts in comments like, 

“You must be tired, especially because you’re a girl!” I slowly
learned, however, that their comments of “Aren’t you cold? 
Tired? Hungry? Thirsty? Crazy?” were attempts to take on 
my concerns as their own. They expressed genuine concern 
over my well-being, because they saw me as a new member 
of their collectivist society. I eventually embraced it and, 
gradually, felt like I truly belonged.