China’s fitness revolution: young women getting that gym body, and showing it off in selfies is part of the experience
Social media posts about marathon training, joining the hottest new ‘fitness community’ or brand name yoga studio – China’s middle class young have been swept up in a fitness craze and see their lifestyle as a marker of success
China’s rising, 300 million-strong middle class have spurred a revolution in the fitness and wellness arena over the past two years, with entrepreneurs rushing in to meet the demand.
Before Xi Jinping’s rise to power in 2012, the luxury goods market took off as wealth in China grew and consumers latched on to logos as a way of denoting their status. Yearly sales of luxury goods in China accordingly tripled between 2007 and 2011.
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President Xi’s crackdown on corruption in the years since, combined with a focus on serious pollution issues and food-safety scandals, has also prompted twenty- and thirtysomethings in China – sometimes called the post-80s generation – to shift their focus from luxury goods and wealth to something ostensibly more valuable: their health.
Xiaowei Zhang, 31, is a retail space planner and store designer, originally from the southwestern city of Chongqing, and now based in Shanghai. She began her journey to a fitness-focused lifestyle as an international student in the United States, where going to the gym and practising yoga is a normal part of middle-class life.
“When I moved back to Shanghai I stopped for a while, but after one year of not being very active I felt my physical condition was not as good as before. Work is very stressful, that is quite common in China’s big metropolitan areas, so I started running again, and found it a great distraction from work.
