Have you ever wondered why the Chinese get many medals in the Olympic Games? Like all communist countries, exercising is a daily task and routine. I posted a photo a while ago showing an old lady exercising on a machine in the park outside my house. Sports and gymnastics are something nearly every Chinese person does at least once a day. It starts at school at an early age.
School in China doesn't finish around lunchtime or in the early afternoon. Lessons here can go until 10pm. Most students live on campus and return home usually on Saturday after their morning classes.
Part of their days at school is sport. Early in the morning, sometime between 9 and 10 o'clock, the students gather outside for their morning exercises. A jukebox is placed on the ground in most cases, or the instructions and tune comes from the school's PA system. Students stand in lines with enough space between them and do the same exercises every day. There's one student in front showing the moves, and all the others follow. If you look at the videos below, you will see that they are divided by grades. The younger ones are on the left, the older on the right. Two or three instructors stand in front and keep an eye on the students and interfere if someone is lazy and the other teachers gather at the back. Some of the teachers do the exercises and some use the 20 something minutes as a break.
The first ones to go out in the field are the primary kids. When they are done, follow middle and high school. This happens because firstly 1000 students don't fit on the field and secondly because primary school follows a different timetable.
There are many more sporting activities in the afternoon. Besides the PE teachers, other teachers, like us for example, have to go out and exercise or play with them. I've got an hour a week with middle school kids and another hour with primary ones. I play volleyball with the older ones and hopscotch with the little ones. Other teachers play football or basket ball or whatever they want.
If the weather is bad, we play indoors in the sports hall. One of the many things Chinese are good at, is jump rope. They practice every morning for 5 - 10 minutes and they do it at an incredibly fast speed. And it's not only the kids who are good at it, it's the teachers too.
The Chinese teachers, use every free minute they have to either walk around the track or do any sort of sports and exercise. The foreign teachers on the other hand ....
Enjoy the videos!
School in China doesn't finish around lunchtime or in the early afternoon. Lessons here can go until 10pm. Most students live on campus and return home usually on Saturday after their morning classes.
Part of their days at school is sport. Early in the morning, sometime between 9 and 10 o'clock, the students gather outside for their morning exercises. A jukebox is placed on the ground in most cases, or the instructions and tune comes from the school's PA system. Students stand in lines with enough space between them and do the same exercises every day. There's one student in front showing the moves, and all the others follow. If you look at the videos below, you will see that they are divided by grades. The younger ones are on the left, the older on the right. Two or three instructors stand in front and keep an eye on the students and interfere if someone is lazy and the other teachers gather at the back. Some of the teachers do the exercises and some use the 20 something minutes as a break.
The first ones to go out in the field are the primary kids. When they are done, follow middle and high school. This happens because firstly 1000 students don't fit on the field and secondly because primary school follows a different timetable.
There are many more sporting activities in the afternoon. Besides the PE teachers, other teachers, like us for example, have to go out and exercise or play with them. I've got an hour a week with middle school kids and another hour with primary ones. I play volleyball with the older ones and hopscotch with the little ones. Other teachers play football or basket ball or whatever they want.
If the weather is bad, we play indoors in the sports hall. One of the many things Chinese are good at, is jump rope. They practice every morning for 5 - 10 minutes and they do it at an incredibly fast speed. And it's not only the kids who are good at it, it's the teachers too.
The Chinese teachers, use every free minute they have to either walk around the track or do any sort of sports and exercise. The foreign teachers on the other hand ....
Enjoy the videos!
If you would like to read more by me, here are my novel and my diary from Ar'ar, in the northern Saudi desert. Both available on Amazon as soft and hard copy.
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