I’m on my way to San Francisco for the Rice Electric Vehicle Competition.
In searching for the cheapest flight a couple of months ago, I found that I could save about a hundred bucks if I left from Shenzhen airport (instead of Hong Kong airport), which was about 3 hours away from my school (whereas the HK airport was about 1.5 hours away). I thought it would be worth the cost savings, so I booked a flight for Wednesday morning departing from Shenzhen and took the subway on Tuesday night to stay at a hostel in Shenzhen. Before this I had only been to Chinese cities on the weekends, so I wasn’t sure what to expect on a weekday night.
It was Tuesday evening when I crossed into Shenzhen, and about 7pm on a weekday when I stepped out of the subway into the streets of Shenzhen. I knew this was a city that many Chinese people come to for work, so at this time I didn’t expect to see people out in public. I thought most people would be back home, watching TV, eating dinner with their family, etc.
When I stepped out of the subway I felt quite surprised. The streets were full with people walking around everywhere. I started walking around aimlessly around the streets, and was lucky enough to run into one of my most memorable experiences in China so far.
Again, it was a weekday evening, but this park was blasting with music and had TONS of Chinese people dancing (tiawu). Older people, younger people, everyone, and it didn’t seem like they had any shame in moving their bodies around. There was a line of leaders in the front doing a certain dance, and there were rows upon rows of Chinese people following these movements. And there were multiple dance groups here at the park, each with their own music. Some seemed to be stretching or doing a slower more fluid dance, whereas others seemed to be doing a shuffle and others jumping all around. Most of these dance groups had a leader that also sang along and shouted some of the movements to perform.
I took a little look around the park and observed different dance groups until I found one that looked like fun, yet the movements were not too difficult. This group had a piece of rope that they would move around their body and do thrusting movements with to an upbeat song. It seemed like fun, so I snuck in towards the middle of the group and started copying these movements and getting my workout in. I didn’t have a rope at the time but didn’t think it would be a problem.
At this point, I was really getting into the dancing. I was following the movements of everyone else, and I thought I was blending in quite well. I was moving my body all around. I was shakin’ it. However as soon as the song ended, the leader of the group started saying something and I suddenly heard “Laowai” (老外), which is the Chinese word for foreigner. She had spotted me. Suddenly the dozens of Chinese people dancing with me turned towards me and shot me a good look.
But they were friendly. They gave me a warm smile. The lady that called out my name told me to come up to the front of the line where everyone could see me dancing and gave me a rope to dance with. I did the tiawu with the rest of the group.
Throughout the park there were plenty of people hanging out. A bunch were dancing, playing badminton, playing cards, playing board games, and working out doing pull-ups. I even met a man who was 50 years old and doing muscle ups and gymnastics on a bar. He had the spirit of a young kid.
Experience:
I found this experience really surprising. I couldn’t imagine seeing anything like this back in Houston, especially on a weekday. I think most working Americans would leave their work and immediately sit on their cars and drive through traffic to their home in the suburbs. Maybe cook a dinner with the family, and then sit down again and stare at a TV to watch a movie or surf the web.
In China, I don’t know exactly what people’s schedule looks like on a weekday after work, but I do know that for many it involves walking, taking the subway, and a tiawu at the park.
I just couldn’t stop thinking about how good it is for people to move around on a daily basis and exercise, and even come together as part of a community in a place like a park just to have fun.
With the advancement of technology nowadays, a lot of people are becoming disconnected from the physical world. I was lucky enough to play outside as a kid with my neighbors, but I think a lot of city kids nowadays just like to play video games. We tend to physically isolate ourselves in a box for multiple hours a day, and it can have its’ toll. It’s fair to argue that rapid advancements in the world might lead to us becoming more physically lonely overall. However, Shenzhen is arguably one of the most developed and technologically advanced cities in the world, but they still manage to gather a mass amount of people to Tiawu at the park.