Three Reasons to Get Excited about the Paralympics

If the Olympics were China's debutante ball, then the Paralympics starting this Saturday are the after-party - less formal, less critical, and therefore in all likelihood a lot more fun. And more important. That's right: apart from popular opinion, that most deluded and easily led of beasts, the Paralympics have far more to do with One World and One Dream than the recently concluded jock-fest.

A Little Qigong Goes A Long Way

Summer's over; smell the mooncakes and stop worrying about your abs and cellulite. Besides, in China, walking around with your shirt off is a strictly lower class statement. A little restaurant display of naked belly, perhaps, but only if it's swollen enough to mark you as a person of substance.

That doesn't mean you can forget about exercising. Honestly though, do any of us ever entirely forget it? In these superficial times of body worship, even he who never exercises spends plenty of time beating himself up about it. The most tenacious gym rat will annoy coworkers by moping about a missed session.

The reluctance to exercise springs largely from a misconception: effective exercise must be an ordeal of clothes-changing, gym-commuting, straining until forehead veins bulge, then reversing the process. Who but the most insecure among us has the time or patience?

Now if you want a cross-cultural way to combat the fact that 80% of your food is drenched in low-viscosity orange oil, consider Qigong. No, not the levitating, nail-driving fakir tricks used to wow tourists. Qigong is a vast subject, and claims territory in the realms of religion and magic. At its simplest, though, Qigong addresses the optimization of energy flow in your body. This natural process is attained through gentle movements and deep breathing, and manifests from the inside out, like any legitimate self-improvement.

Try the Ba Duan Jing, or Eight Brocade Strands, an amazingly simple set of exercises, considering the improved physical, emotional, and spiritual health that are its rewards. Later you can move on to knocking people down without touching them.

Mazu - the Princess of Tides

Most of us air-breathers rarely face the dangers of the sea. But let's all of us, particularly the sushi and fish-stick lovers among us, take a moment to honor the fisherman. A livelihood made afloat carries the constant risk of finishing the day at the bottom of the sea, or in a shark's belly.

Those in dangerous professions cultivate an intimate relationship with higher powers. Fishermen are no exception. Portuguese cod chasers spying red clouds at dawn send a prayer to the Virgin Mary, no surprise coming from died-in-the wool Catholics. What may surprise, however, is the East Asian maritime deity, Mazu. She is worshipped in thousands of coastal temples from Qingdao to Thailand. Her story, a myth garnished with enough history to make one wonder, shows that the path to divinity is universal, as is the need for divine protection.

China's Greatest Autumn Forests

This is the Golden season for many of China's bright spots. Tourists escape summer's humid grip, and can enjoy an eyeful of history without shirts stuck to backs. But as the year slides into a mellow decline, many of us long for the wilderness, shady trails and leaves changing color. 

Believe it or not, China has plenty to offer in the way of sylvan splendor. Why, there are whole ranges of deciduous forest where one can roam about a whole day without seeing a single temple! Let's face it - as nice as all that red paint and dragon detail work is, there are places where man can't hope to improve nature's beauty.  Peaceful old forests are such a place, and China has plenty of them. Here are what we at China Expat consider the top five. We'll leave out the bamboo groves and tropical Edens for a wintertime post, when they'll arouse the most envy.

5000 Years in One Big Room

Five thousand years, five thousand years. It's a rallying cry for patriotic Han, and a sarcastic slogan for exasperated foreigners  cut off in line for the third time in a day. One might argue, "What were the rest of us doing in 3000 B.C., swinging from branches?" Not quite - Poseidon was helping build Troy's great wall, the Druids were balancing out Stonehenge, and Mesopotamians were trading in shekels .

 The Chinese claim to five millennia is unique in that they are referring to a more or less unbroken ethno-cultural line. It's easy to get cute and bring up Mongolians and Manchus, but it's exceedingly difficult to envision such a span of time, to appreciate what a profusion of ritual, art, and artifact has been bequeathed today's Zhonguoren. "Chinese Memory- Treasures of a 5000-year Civilization", an exhibition running at Beijing's Capital Musem until October 7^th, provides as good an opportunity as any of us are ever likely to get. Here are some of the stand-out pieces.

Zhang Yimou's Cinematic Ballet

Besides classical music, ballet is a traditionally Western art form being reinvigorated by Chinese talent and perspectives. China's National Ballet is winding up its performance of Raise the Red Lantern at the National Center for the Performing Arts, after a triumphant European tour.

The many who pay scant attention to ballet will probably remain unmoved by the assertion that dance, like painting, remains as relevant as ever in its ability to communicate on a level far more primal than even the most lovingly-crafted CGI character. They might want to pay attention to the latter performance, however, not just for the powerful movie on which it is based, but also for the fact that both are directed by Zhang Yimou. The man is enjoying a Spielbergian climb in artistic cache, and both his ballet and movie are greater testament to his artistic range and vision than even, dare we say, the Olympic opening ceremony.

The Secret Writing of Nu Shu

The old woman had fainted and lay unmoving. No wonder, crowded Chinese train stations on a summer afternoon had caused younger and stronger bodies to swoon. The guards who searched her for identification stumbled on a book with unrecognizable characters, slender and spidery, where Chinese characters were blocky and solid. Even if these hadn’t been the chaotic days of the Cultural Revolution, the guards might have reported her to the police, who detained her on suspicions of being a spy. Only when local scholars identified the characters as purportedly extinct nu shu, “woman’s writing”, were the charges dropped; the scholars were re-educated for their trouble.

Waking from the One Dream

Forget the "morning after" clichés that would logically follow the end of Beijing's "coming out party" [may this mark the last time the phrase is written or uttered]. The past seven years have been no party - they've been China's holy PR crusade. Expats have spent the better part of a decade witnessing frantic façade building, and experiencing all the inconvenience that entails. Let's look at what Beijing's gotten out of being ground zero of the Battle for a Glorious Olympics, besides all the intangible pride and honor, and what we may expect from a city that can finally exhale and pad around the living room in its underwear.

Five Ancient Chinese Sports Worthy of the Olympics

There are games, and then there are sports. For a game to be a sport, there ought to be a certain degree of athleticism, a touch of daring, a dash of intestinal fortitude. The Olympics seems to be losing that distinction. Shooting, for instance, requires no more physical virtue than steady hands and a good eye. As to daring and fortitude, it's not like any of the contestants are shooting at each other.

Then there are events like badminton. Sure, it's zippy, but an ancient Greek boxer would surely arch a bloody eyebrow at the way Lin Dan pumps his wiry arm over each point like he's just slain a dragon with a sword, not a shuttlecock with an oversized fly swatter.

The larger point is that many sports your ancestors played resembled current Olympic sports, only with more physicality and courage. Read on for some heroic games the ancient Chinese used to play. Or you can go back to the death-defying ping pong finals.