Since moving to my new apartment at the end of March, I’ve been looking for a good neighborhood gym to join. After touring a few different facilities (you can easily find gyms here by looking for a handful of trainers smoking just outside the front door), I settled on the newly opened Lucky Bird, two blocks from my apartment. It’s not the closest, as Love Great sits right behind my apartment complex, and yes, these are the typical names of gyms in China.
Lucky Bird has quite a bit going for it: all new equipment, aerobics and spinning classes, a pool that will open next month, and the ubiquitous ping-pong and pool tables. It seems all gyms in China come stocked with at least one of each.
Ping-pong “studio”
Walking in, I garnered stares from the two dozen or Chinese employees or members as I made my way to the front desk. This happens quite a bit in China and I’ve gotten used to this for the most part, but I’d be lying if I said it isn’t a little unnerving every time it happens.
They introduced me to Bryan, one of the sales reps, to go over the details of the six month contract I was interested in. Bryan spoke no English and we communicated mostly through my poor Chinese and translation apps. He walked me through everything and even knocked $30 off the price as a laowai, a slang term for foreigner, discount, provided I take a picture with him to show that the gym now has the prestige that comes with claiming westerners as members.
After all the t’s were crossed and lower-case j’s were dotted, Bryan informed me that included with membership is one free session with one of their “beautiful coaches”. He rang a bell and a handful of beautiful Chinese trainers came running from all over the gym. They lined them up in front of me like we were in a brothel and he told me to pick which one I thought was the most beautiful and she would coach me. All of the women offered flirty smiles and I began to wonder just what kind of perks was coming with this “coaching session.”
I picked my coach and, alas, what followed was basically just a health evaluation. Chinese health standards are a little different than in the US and I was told that the ideal weight for my height of 5’8″ was 127 lbs, and at 183 lbs I was 18 lbs past overweight and into the obese category. Nothing like a beautiful woman telling you that you’re obese.
After telling me her recommendations for my workout plans (Surprise – more paid lessons with her!), she told me that she would also help me to “change my clothes” today. Again, my excitement was for naught as she simply meant to say that she would show me to the locker rooms.
Along the way, she walked me past the cooler where I could purchase “performance drinks”. Bodybuilding shakes and supplement-filled drinks aren’t really a thing here and the cooler was stocked with different kinds of Red Bull, Monster, and other energy drinks. Of course, as is usually the case in China, the cooler wasn’t plugged in. Most Chinese believe that cold drinks are bad for your health and only drink warm or room temperature drinks. You learn this the hard way when you forget to order a ‘cold’ beer at a restaurant.
With all the formalities out of the way, I got in about an hour workout. During that time, I counted six times that Chinese stopped to look at the strange, obese laowai with the white skin clanging and banging along side them.