I know I need to lose weight. Everybody tells me this: My doctor, my girlfriend, my colleagues at work, my neighbor, some old guy I saw at the park, a clerk in a store where I was buying a juicemaker…everybody. This is Beijing — free health advice comes standard. Most people just shake their heads and blame “Western food,” assuming that I live on a steady diet of McDonald’s cheeseburgers and beer. Not true. I eat a lot of Chinese food which I am told – repeatedly – is so much healthier than Western food. Maybe I’m missing something here, but the health properties of fatty pork steeped in oil and sugar and then deep fried somehow elude me. Whatever. The situation is that I’m an ex-rugby player in need of shedding a few pounds. How to do this in Beijing?
First of all, I’m skipping the gym and hitting the streets. But jogging in Beijing requires a certain set of skills not usually necessary in other countries. The most important is the anaerobic workout you get holding your breath while sprinting past a) a public toilet; b) a city bus; c) a two-stroke nightmare of a cycle; d)