I clench my gloved palms around the cold serrated steel bar, at either end of which sit several rubberized 5, 10, and 20 kilogram plates. My knees bent, I attempt to deadlift the weight by pulling the bar over my knees and straightening my back. As I prepare for lift-off, I try to ignore the gawking observers to my left. I suppose lifting over 80 kilograms (176 pounds), for a girl weighing less than two-thirds of that, is generally considered no small feat in China or elsewhere. But the fact that I am in Shanghai makes weightlifting a uniquely challenging experience.

When I joined the First (phonetically translated into Fei Si Te) Fitness Center near my apartment in Shanghai’s Yangpu District, I was not quite prepared for the adjustment process I would have to undergo: an abrupt introduction to the cultural gaps between Chinese and Western concepts of exercise and personal space.

My initiation into the Fei Si Te community brought me the dubious privilege of celebrity status, me being 1) a small-framed Chinese-American female, and 2) an avid weightlifter with an admittedly odd penchant for lifting dumbbells and barbells that are about as big as I am. Thus, not only was I upsetting conventional notions of femininity, but I was also doing so in a booming post-Communist metropolis whose youth culture is hovering precariously somewhere between Maoist puritanism and Britney Spears. So I guess I shouldn’t feel surprised that I attracted stares of fascination mixed with horror and fear as I squatted close to twice my body weight. Not that my weightlifting didn’t draw surprise from male bystanders back in the United States, but at Fei Si Te , the blatant shock plainly smeared on the faces of exercisers was a Shanghai specialty, and months would pass until they began gradually to accept me as simply a grotesque fixture at the gym.

Alone in the crowd

To complicate matters, Fei Si Te, like many new enterprises in Shanghai, is hopelessly over-invested and over-staffed. Though it is nice having an entire gym all to oneself in the afternoon, it is slightly unnerving to be the only other animate object in the cavernous space besides three trainers and the custodian, all uniformed in pert warm-up suits.

On busier days, the five of us are joined by several 30-something ladies who maniacally monopolize every sit-up bench. As I push around the freeweights, the custodian meticulously wipes clean all the cheaply manufactured equipment with pleather trimmings that manage to peel despite hardly being used, and the trainers idle in the 10-foot radius around the air-conditioner, or do a few random chin-ups. They often have nothing to do but watch the exercisers. Though they sometimes offer me advice on good form, which I appreciate, they are more eager to engage the American in conversation about powerlifting techniques, protein powders, bodybuilding contests, and other aspects of fitness culture in the United States of which Chinese are just beginning to catch on and be mass marketed to.

On occasion, a trainer or a bold male bystander has been known to reaffirm his masculinity by jumping in between sets and attempting to throw my barbell around with strenuously displayed ease. I try to warn people against jumping under heavy weights if they have no previous lifting experience, but for some reason, seeing me lift has prompted some to “test” their strength by attempting to imitate my movement immediately after I finish with a weight or a machine. (I do admit it’s gratifying to see a grown man grab and instantly drop in bewilderment the barbell I just lifted, but I’d hate to be responsible for someone’s injury.)

During some memorable lifting sessions, I have been approached every ten minutes with some sort of question about how I picked up such an odd hobby or a comment about my being lihai (powerful) or how I should keep my elbows closer to my side when doing tricep pushdowns. “Are you planning on entering a bodybuilding competition?” asked one trainer. “You must be familiar with that guy,” said another, gesturing to the pair of posters (front and back) of Mr. Olympia flexing his steroidal physique in briefs.  

The body as temple, or high mass?

If I were only more culturally resilient, I might do as my fellow Chinese gym-goers do and chat happily with the trainers from the warm-up to cool-down. For Westerners, though, a workout is either a functional task (sometimes a chore) or a chance to isolate oneself from the hectic stimuli of work and household and focus on simple physical cultivation. In China, the idea of “working out” is still novel enough that the exercise is not so much practical as it is exhilarating, not an escape hatch from the pressures of Shanghai city life but a chance to participate further in modern consumer culture. Though Shanghai’s blitzkrieg of economic development has enabled the city to import the trappings of a cosmopolitan metropolis, recreational activities that seem mundane in developed nations, like “going to the gym,” still hold a spectacular quality for many of its wealthier residents.

In contrast to other parts of China, years of capitalist transition have acclimated Shanghai to the presence of lao wai (foreigners), Western pop music, and European brand names. Yet more personal aspects of the Western lifestyle — from dimly lit cafes to sweat-pumping aerobics classes — still dazzle even Shanghai’s rising elite, representing sophistication accessible only to the moneyed class.

Some cultural intangibles, however, just can’t be bought. Privacy, for instance. China is not only a mass society, but a society of spectators as well, which might explain why at my gym, people seem much more adept at watching others exercise than doing it themselves.

During a one-day promotional event, visitors were allowed a free trial of the equipment, and the usually empty gym was for an hour or so overrun with young men and women in trousers and dress shoes, positioning themselves backwards on the leg curl machine, yanking various limbs and cables back and forth, and nearly running the wheels off of an exercise bike in a frenzy of freshly discovered aerobic energy — all to the tune of techno and mandopop blasting in the background.

A group of gaunt Chinese men in their twenties made no attempt at subtlety when watching me do a few sets of deadlifts from about 10 feet away.

“Do you have to watch me like that?” I said in my best Chinese approximation of my surly New Yorker tone.

“We just think you’re lihai,” said one.

I tried to explain that it was uncomfortable to be observed this way, particularly when I was trying to focus my energy on dragging an obscenely heavy weight up from the floor. I realized that in China, Western amenities are designed for display, and the idea of private activity, within a seemingly “public” space such as a weight room, remains a foreign concept.

The men ambled off soon after I began glaring at them. I complained about the incident to another American gym patron who was also lifting weights. “Different concept of personal space here,” I remarked.

“Yeah,” he said disdainfully. “None.”

But this culture clash perhaps has a deeper significance than personal annoyance. My watchers considered a stare a complement, my subjection to their scrutiny a testament to my “lihai.” Nonetheless, as an American city girl who doesn’t always appreciate being put on the spot, my flattery is dwarfed by unease. Shanghai’s great irony is that its size and bustle afford both the anonymity of a global metropolis and the claustrophobia of vintage urban China. The surveillance I encounter as a fitness novelty reveals that here, what seems like a personal quest for muscular achievement can quickly turn into a spectator sport.

Click here to read Part One of the series.

STORY INDEX

TOPICS >

THE CHINESE FITNESS TREND >

”Global Fitness Chain to Build First Gyms in Beijing, Shanghai”, published by People’s Daily on March 22, 2002.
URL: http://china.org.cn/english/investment/29295.htm

”China’s Wellness Revolution” by Mark Godfrey, published by China Today. June 22, 2004.
URL: http://china.org.cn/english/2004/Jun/98896.htm

GENDER POLITICS AND POWERLIFTING >

”The Bodybuilding Grotesque: The Female Bodybuilder, Gender Transgression, and Designations of Deviance” by muscle-bound scholar Krista Scott-Dixon of Stumptuous.com.
URL: http://www.stumptuous.com/grotesque.html

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Michelle Chen