Jottings from the Granite Studio

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) all of the above. Then there is the important issue of head position and foot placement. If you keep your head up and eyes forward, you risk all manner of slop seeping into your cheap, second-hand Bulgarian trainers that you bought because the store said your feet were two sizes larger than “normal.” After losing a pair of shoes this way (don’t ask) I began jogging with my head down. I plodded along — diligently scanning the ground ahead with an attentiveness usually reserved for bomber pilots and ski jumpers - and was nearly killed by a guy pedaling a full washer/dryer set down a hutong on his bicycle. Now I run the streets and lanes with my head alternately nodding up and down - a sweaty, overweight (but seemingly easily agreeable) spectacle.

Jogging in China is also something of a spectator sport. I try to go early in the morning to avoid the real crowds, but it’s never early enough. Our local park fills well before dawn with Oldsters-on-Parade and they treat the sweating fat guy in their midst with a mixture of humor, wonder, and the occasional suggestion that I am, in fact, too fat and should eat more Chinese food. I’ve found a way to make it work for me in a game I call “Oldster Slalom” - a necessity, as my usual jogging path is always full of the strolling, chatting, shouting, tai chi-ing, line dancing, singing, bird walking, hackey-sacking, and meandering senior residents of my little neighborhood. First of all: God bless ‘em. I think it is wonderful how active seniors are in China. But I’ve had a few near-misses when somebody would unexpectedly change course. I don’t want to even think about the mess that would ensue if somebody’s grandmother got taken out by a huffing-puffing embodiment of American gastric decadence.

If jogging is for the morning then my afternoons are reserved for basketball. I’m not really that good but I’m a large mammal in a country of mostly smaller mammals. (That’s what you get when you forgo ESPN for your basketball analysis and head straight for Animal Planet.) In NBA lingo I am a “disruptive force under the basket” which translates as: I’m a big fat guy that you have to find some way around or over if you want to score. There are however a few quirks to Chinese basketball that required me to make adjustments to my game (such as it is).

The first is the concept of half-court five-on-five. Many Chinese are used to crowds of people moving haphazardly together toward a single objective and it’s useful to remember this when playing pick-up hoops in Beijing. There’s also no such thing as “planted feet.” The difference between “setting a pick” and “running into the defender at full speed” is apparently a subjective one here. The same holds true in the paint. Last week I took the ball down low and drove to the basket. The middle defender was right underneath the hoop and dancing like he was practicing for the Zhang Ziyi remake of “Flashdance.” The ensuing collision wasn’t pretty and he called me for charging.

“But your feet were moving,” I protested.
“Yes. But you are bigger,” was the reply.
“So, what’s that? A foul with Chinese characteristics?”

Welcome to street ball: Beijing-style.

I’ll always be “too fat” here. I’ve come to accept it. And with that, I think I’ll grab lunch…one of the best parts of living in Beijing: McDonald’s does free office deliveries.
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Originally published on April 30, 2007 at Jongo.com.