Life in China 2016: A Picture A Day, October 2 – Free outdoor gyms, Open-air gyms or adult playgrounds, can be found in many Chinese housing areas and parks. The following is info I found online, I don’t know if it’s fully accurate, but …. in 1995 a “Physical Health Law" was passed in China to encourage people to participate in a fitness Program. Then, there was supposedly a big campaign before the 2008 summer Olympics where the government installed a large amount of outdoor gym equipment to continue to encourage people to be more active. These gyms are quite well used, mainly in mornings and evenings, you can see people of all ages and abilities exercising. I’ve never counted how many gym areas there are where we live, but I know of 4 fully outdoor areas, and there are at least a couple more that are outdoor, but under roofs on the ground floor of some buildings. One of the fully outdoor ones is right next to some children’s playground equipment in a fenced in area. It seems this idea is also popular in Australia, the UK, and is starting to catch on in the USA and some other countries. The pictures are of the outdoor gym closest to us, we have to walk around it when we go to walk by Songshan Lake, so we often stop and “play!” :-)
Life in China: A Picture A Day, March 27, 2016
Today was the Dongguan International Marathon: It started in Songshan Lake and the runners came right past where we live. We missed the front runners, they were much faster getting this far than I anticipated! But, we watched others go by for an hour! There were 15,000 participants in 4 different length races. The participants included everyone from the professional marathon runners down to babies being pushed in strollers! And a whole group of Anime characters, Batman, the Mario Brothers, the Monkey King, a miniature Pikachu, quite a few Supermen, hula dancers, plus quite a few with bunny ears :-) By the time the back of the group came by, they were mostly walking, and there were a good number of children. I loved the two little girls pictured, they were just walking along, hand in hand, singing away. We watched the finish on TV, both male and female winners of the full marathon were from Kenya.
