Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable. Hello everybody, welcome to Roundtable.
Coming to you live from Beijing, I'm Hayoung.
Good to have you join us on a day's show.
This August 8th China celebrates its 16th National Fitness Day and the excitement is off the charts as it coincides with the thrilling Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
As the Olympic spirit ignites enthusiasm nationwide, how will this unique blend of local celebration and global competition inspire us to embrace a healthier lifestyle?
Let's dive right into it and see how we can all get involved.
And social media is as common as air these days, especially for the under 18 crowd.
In the US, New York has made headlines with tough new laws to protect kids from the darker side of the digital jungle.
Think algorithm restrictions, data privacy, and even a curfew for notifications.
China is already ahead of the game with rigorous rules to shield our young internet users since 2021.
What does this mean for the future of social media use among miners?
For today's program, I'm joined by Yushin and Steve Hatherley in the studio.
And on a day's show, this August 8th marks the celebration of China's 16th National Fitness Day, a tradition that began in 2008 during the Beijing Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games.
This year, the excitement is palpable as various nationwide events unfold, featuring sports carnivals, fitness competitions, and stunning performances that invite everyone to join in the fun.
What makes this year's National Fitness Day even more special is its timing alongside the ongoing Paris Olympic Games.
So get ready to participate, celebrate, and enjoy a day filled with energy and enthusiasm.
Yushin, please give us the origin story, if we can, of the National Fitness Day, and are you feeling the excitement in the air these days?
Oh, wow, I'm pretty much excited already, not mainly because of the fitness day, but that I'm working out quite a lot for moving lately.
That is my thing. Such a new experience.
I'm telling you. Exercise comes in many ways and shapes and forms, and moving house is one of them, right?
Right. You're moving boxes and it feels to me that even though I'm the only one participating, it's a competition.
Back to the 16th National Fitness Day, which takes place on August 8th.
The aim is, of course, to encourage more people to exercise and to join the excitement and passion of fitness.
And of course, the day is aimed to meet people's growing sports needs and encourage people to just take part in sports and fitness activities.
And this year is joined by just people from all ages.
I read that it's encouraging public sports venues to open, free for people from all of the society.
And also, there are grouped competition for people of different ages.
They're for children, for adults, for older people who just maybe don't get out so often these days.
And they're even encouraged to go downstairs and join some, just maybe not so intense, but kind of fun activities as well, that's under the theme of the National Fitness Day.
It's not, it's not an everybody go to the gym today, day is it?
We have this in Canada to National Fitness Day.
And it's a day where Canadians are encouraged to live healthier lifestyles.
It's on the first Saturday of June each year, so it's passed already.
But yeah, people put their pictures up on social media.
The hashtag this year was Let's Move Canada, there was another hashtag CanFitPro.
And it's the same idea, right?
It's just encouraging people of all ages.
It's a reminder to move your body, keep your blood flowing, and eat well and live a healthy lifestyle.
Yes, and it happens on different levels in different facets, does it manifest itself?
And like you guys mentioned, well actually, I've only found out right before the show that Steve has been engaged in some moving house activity as well.
Yes, I've got one year of exercise in three days.
Oh, that sounds super intense.
Yes. But yeah, fitness can happen in different ways in our lives, and I think it's important to have this awareness and sort of embody this spirit that, you know, it's just so easy to fall for this sedentary lifestyle that's so common for most city folks these days.
The city folks, country folks too, I think just people need a gentle reminder from time to time to get up and move.
People obviously who are working, they know that very well you get stuck in your chair, staring at a monitor all day, depending of course on what type of work you do.
Students at school, they're sitting in their chair at their desk for many, many hours a day.
Elderly people oftentimes forget the importance of moving to, and this is an international thing, right?
So days like this, I think are really, really important.
You mentioned it's the 16th version here in China.
What's new this time around?
Well, this year I was reading, like this is kind of funny to me because this year the competition emphasizes innovation, flexibility, local adaptation and participation.
And by local, we mean like dividing the competitions into seven regions in total, including like North, China, East, China, Central, China, etc.
And in addition to the five main events such as soccer, volleyball, fitness, have you heard of this before?
Like fitness, Qi Gong, and of course Tai Chi and basketball, apart from these main events, each region will also host self-selected events based on local characteristics.
And yeah, like one example would be in Ping Tun, Southeast China's Fujian province, competitions such as baseball or softball fun matches, land curling and team tug of wool are held.
Like it's been years since I participated in the tug of war.
Yeah, that's an elementary school game.
It's a popular one in company activities too.
Is it really? Maybe not so much anymore, but I remember when I first joined, it was something that generated excitement because it's so easy to do in the sense that there's not, well, I suppose enthusiasts would argue there is technique involved, but for us amateurs, we just think if you have a heavier body weight, then that's the technique.
And anyhow, but it gets people involved.
Of course. And there's somebody's one side's definitely going to win, the other's going to lose, and then getting people excited and off their chairs into the courtyard and engage in a little bit of sports.
Land curling, by the way.
I wonder what land curling is because I did curling in Canada.
That's on ice in the winter time.
So I'm curious what land curling is.
Maybe we call it lawn bowling.
I'm not sure, but rolling something on the grass perhaps on the ground anyway.
There's one that's my favorite actually.
I'll quickly just jump in here.
There's croquet. Croquet is fun.
Yeah, it's called Dreetio.
And finally, I've, because I've seen older folks do this in many neighborhoods, and well, maybe not that many, but they require a specific surface.
And usually it's older folks in this country that would do this.
And finally, I know the name of it.
Oh gosh, my parents, pardon me, stayed in a, kind of like a retirement community in the United States for a few months a year.
And I looked at shuffleboard as kind of an old shuffleboard.
You use kind of a long stick to push a little disc, and then it slides along a surface with some sand on it.
So it slides easily. And you score points at the other end.
I always looked at that as an old person's game.
And when I played, I had so much fun playing it.
And I think that's the point here is that it doesn't really matter how you get up and move on fitness day.
Just get up and move and get some exercise.
Yeah, it sounds like sand hockey.
It kind of, yeah. And if ice hockey is like too fast and furious for old people, sand hockey is for you, right?
Yeah, right. And then also you guys mentioned that this is a national fitness promotion, week or national fitness competition.
I mean, is this a friendly competition or is it very serious?
This is actually the first time that is happening in all parts of China.
So an active effort to promote sports on this day and fitness as well.
I suppose it's just friendly matches.
It's not really about winning.
You're good. Yeah, because I was reading that this competition is mainly rooted in the community level, which is mainly attracting people from grassroots level or just normal day-to-day folks from all different groups of society.
Not Olympic level athletes.
Exactly. So it's not for competing for gold medal as in Olympics.
If you're into that, let's just turn on the TV or go to the cinema.
But just for the national fitness day competitions, it's just like, frankly, and funny kind of matches.
Yeah, this reminds me of an observation in our Chinese neighborhoods.
That is, a lot of the older folks are more active than younger folks actually.
Yeah. And they're very involved and serious about winning, let's say, a neighborhood champion title or something.
Yeah. There's definitely some friendly competition going on.
Yeah. And that's a good thing, isn't it?
You know, divided into regions and you have that regional pride going on too.
So yeah, let's see how it goes.
So some of the sports you mentioned, those sports will be covered all over the country and all different types of ages.
So everybody will be taking part in all different types of activities.
I think that has a regional variation too, because some sports just happen in certain, say, regional competitions as held during this time frame.
Like, for example, in the national fitness competition held in the North China region, there are Tai Chi and fitness Chi Gong, I still can't believe it's part of a match now.
And experts from just various teams competed for a Tai Chi competition.
I don't see. Sorry, I thought Tai Chi is more about perfecting your own self or not even perfecting, but sort of you're trying to get better in your movements.
Yeah, and you're using your self as yesterday's you as sort of the benchmark of getting better.
And it's not competing with other people.
But, well, interesting.
It almost sounds like a show instead of a match or a competition.
And then I read that there's tangents unique hand pushing ball sport was that's included in this year's competition as well.
And I think that's mainly local.
Like it's just for tangent people or North Chinese doing the hand pushing ball.
It's kind of cool though that there are different exercises, different sports that are popular in different parts of the country.
Then I say that because in Canada, you know, Canada is kind of a, it's not really a South to North type country, we're more of an east to west or west to east type country.
But the sports that are popular in the east are also popular in the west and are also popular in the center of Canada.
Ice hockey's popular everywhere, curling's popular everywhere, golf's popular everywhere.
So I think this is kind of cool that each region has their own specialties.
Yeah, adding their traditional and distinctive culture into the match as well.
And back to my point, I think this is more of a showcasing of part of their culture as well rather than winning who is, you know, the number one.
Right. And I love it that there's this concept or understanding that traditional sports, they originate from daily life.
And it has something to do maybe with the geographic climate of a specific area or people's sort of habits in living and those kind of things.
And also found out that at the Quan Shan grassland scenic area in Long County, about G city, Shan G province, nearly 400 archery enthusiasts from 37 teams across the northwest region.
Wow, cool. Yeah, they engage in this active sport of archery.
Have you tried it before?
I've once, but I have really weak horse strength.
So not doing very well. I shot an arrow just one time I was doing a show at a theme park and right behind the stage was the archery place.
So I had my break time. So I asked the guy, oh, can I try?
He said, yeah, sure, go ahead.
On TV, it in the Olympics, of course, in the Olympics, they make it look pretty easy, don't they?
Because they're professionals.
Yeah. I know how difficult it is.
I didn't even hit the target thing.
It just the arrow just fell before it got there.
A little lukewarm, but at least you didn't hit somebody else's target.
That is true. Or somebody else.
Out. Stay clear. Stay on the merging.
What else is going on for fitness day?
What else do we need to know as citizens here, things we should be doing or be aware of?
I think one new thing that's coming up, or is it really a new thing called the 15 minute fitness circle?
It's something that I heard that's closely related to the fitness day theme as well.
It's part of what we're trying to promote as well.
People can just go downstairs and within 15 minutes or 10 minutes walk or on bicycle, distance they can already reach, say, a fitness park or some venues that they can access free sports or very cheap sports.
Like public areas. Right.
I'm not sure if this is like, as a matter of fact, I am sure.
It is not a new idea at all because I was reading that young mean and inspector at the general administration of sport of China introduced this idea like 10 years ago.
But yeah, lately with the national fitness day theme, I think it's being promoted even better.
And previously, we've seen the 15 minute sort of like convenience life circle as such, basically, it's the idea of you have all the necessary daily necessity needs met within 15 minutes of walking distance from your home.
And that includes convenience stores.
And I believe you guys probably talked about this about how amazing South Korean convenience stores can be.
And they want this here in China as well as you know, places to shop, places to go for a fitness workout or maybe a nice little walk around or as such.
And I think this is a brilliant idea, especially if you live in big cities in China.
And then you realize when sometimes you literally feel like you're walking in the concrete jungle and it's important to have these sort of like soft knees, but also very necessary, almost spiritual needs, uh, fulfilled within the walking distance.
And that could be really good.
And actually, this is echoed through infrastructure.
And we've seen here in China that I don't know if Steve, you've taken a walk around and notice these fitness, I call them playgrounds for adults, uh, originally designed for adults, but kids are welcome to.
And these are outdoor spaces designed to promote health and well-being among residents and these facilities feature a variety of colorful, sturdy exercise machines.
That focus on different parts of the body, such as leg presses, air walkers and back massages.
And they're intuitive to use and do not require electricity, allowing individuals to engage in gentle cardio exercises and strength training.
And my international friends, expert friends used to ask me, what's that?
Are we adults allowed to use them?
And this has become sort of like a defective setup in Chinese neighborhoods in the last two decades.
And it's a good thing, isn't it?
And it falls into the idea of the 15-minute circle.
You can leave your house and find, yeah, convenience stores and other things like that.
But you can find a place to have a little bit of a workout in your community.
You know, I had a trainer, I've had a lot of physical trainers over the years and, uh, Cody to say hi to Cody today.
He was from Australia and he said one of the best things I think I've ever heard a trainer say.
He said, people always think if they, if they need to exercise, they have to go to a gym, right?
And they use that as an excuse to not get your body moving because, oh, I, I don't have a gym membership.
He said the gym is everywhere.
The gym is anywhere you want it to be.
There are hills everywhere.
You can use that to your advantage.
And these little parks that we're discussing right now, we can use those to our advantage.
And the fact that they are so numerous, we can find them in so many different spots.
And yeah, you can use it for stretching if you want.
There was one near my house in Korea where they had a bench press and they had different weight levels there.
So you can, you, you can, if you want to, you can use these places to your full advantage.
And I can tell like these infrastructures are being built in much better qualities these days as well because the, those that, um, the red or yellow little poles that has all the kind of equipments that can help you to stretch and, you know, just play around with that existed.
I think when I was young, but these days, if you walk in, it, walk into any of these, um, fitness parks and, you know, just maybe somewhere that's in the outer premiere of Beijing because nowadays these parks take a big spaces.
And you can just see as if they've moved to gym to outdoor spaces.
Like they're so professional equipments such as the bend lifter, like all of the kind of bench press.
Yeah. Yeah, but sorry, I'm not very familiar with all the terms, but you can just see like gym like kind of equipment being put just outdoor free for all people to gain access and just use it and try it out.
And my, my personal trainer who, um, actually went to one of these parks and just came back and told me that it's like so cool that a lot of old people and children are playing on it.
There's like screens and monitors that can help you to count how many sets you've already done.
Oh, very cool. So they're including tech now as well.
Right. And you can even see yourself and interact with other people through the monitors as well.
It's like something I didn't grow up experiencing and now it's available.
Yeah. Quite the upgrade from my neighborhood.
And I think I guess my neighborhood needs a little bit more funding.
Yeah. You need a little bit of a facelift athletically speaking.
Yes. In these fitness areas, not only encourage physical activity, but also foster social interaction, which is really great.
Just considering where they are located, right?
And then it makes a lot of sense for everybody to get involved.
Also, I'm curious to find out if you guys are feeling the Olympic excitement as well.
Since the Olympic games are on and while considering the time difference here in China is usually well after work.
Yes. Around dinner time, everything starts to build up and then you can watch the sports well into midnight and later.
And I'm wondering, you know, with all this Olympic excitement, sort of brewing and is this going to affect people's enthusiasm to sort of take up fitness and national fitness day?
I think that's why the timing of national fitness day is absolutely perfect.
It actually couldn't be any better.
Could it? Because if you're not getting the motivation from us to go out there and exercise, we'll flip on your television at some point during the day and watch the pros do it.
And that might get you moving as well.
The me personally, yeah, I've got a few things.
And one of the sports that I caught was the BMX racing.
Did you happen to see that on TV?
Really fun to watch. And it does remind you that there are people in the world who do this exercise, these types of things on a daily basis, right?
They're so good at it. So when I was watching that, I was thinking, I should be moving more.
I should be not finding excuses to not get out there and move my body because it's really not that difficult.
By BMX, are we talking about BMX freestyle, the little bicycle.
Yeah, I was watching the one where they were on the track and going up and down and up and down and doing the jumps.
It was really impressive and exciting to watch.
Yeah. And I didn't really watch it, but I read a lot about the ping pong matches from lately as well.
It's so intense and people start to talk more about it and a lot that's coming in below are saying that they're going to just join and maybe play a match with their co-workers after work as well.
That's what I saw online as a comment after the match, after the Olympic games.
So yeah, I'll say definitely.
It is inspiring people.
Right. Yeah, definitely.
And this, I think, again, goes back to sort of the facilities and infrastructure available for people to enjoy and here in China.
Well, we are kind of known.
We're definitely known for being very good at ping pong.
Oh, my goodness. There's a table in our building here.
I know you know where it is.
In fact, there's two tables.
And pardon me, I went to get myself some water one day and I found the room and I was watching and I thought, oh, is this a training room for the Olympic team just watching these people play?
And my co-workers said, our co-workers said, oh, no.
They're just on their break time right now.
They just work here. Oh, my goodness.
They look like absolute pros.
And I hope to get a teacher here in the country someday so that I can improve my skills.
All right. One of the benefits of working here in China.
Yeah. And it's really great to see that even in the community level or in our sort of organization level, there are competitions too, Steve.
Oh, really? I'm not ready for those just yet, I don't know.
I guess you can maybe learn a few tips from the players, the cool part, participate.
And this kind of reminds me of earlier this year when the movie Yolo came out or in Chinese is really lagant.
It's about a girl story, well, rather a lady story of changing herself through boxing.
And then remember after that movie, Windwyrall and a lot of like female friends of my started to try and get boxing.
Yeah. I'm not sure how many like still practices it throughout the time until this day, but it was really something that inspires people to reflect on themselves and get in this circle and participate.
Yes. And that's why we need fitness day.
It's a reminder for everyone in the country to get out there.
You don't need to be a pro, right?
You don't need to be in the gym.
You don't need an expensive trainer.
Get out there, move your body, eat good food, stay healthy.
Right. So it's not just a great message to send to people, but you actually, if you stick to it, then you see the results and your body sort of gets healthier or gets in better shape.
And I mean, reaping the results, the benefits.
I think that's also important to flag for people to get a mold.
Sticking with it, that's the hard part, isn't it?
Yeah, forming a habit. Isn't it just?
And I like to just share with you one last figure before we move on.
As the end of 2023, China's per capita sports facility area has reached 2.89 square meters.
And that's almost doubling the figure from 10, well, actually 11 years ago.
So there's a place to do it.
Let's all get moving and make it an integral part of our lives if possible.
