Its a very common exercise for old folks around Shandong, although Im sure people do it elsewhere as well.

Have you ever tried it? It gets your heart rate up and a sheen on your forehead!

It's not unusual.

It's fairly well known among the elderly as a way to work out and practice co-ordination.

Not even 15 minutes ago, I watched a spot on Chinese televsion in which a coach of some sort taught a group of older Chinese women how to walk backwards. He recommended that they do it for 20 minutes each day - "You'll be surprised at the results," he said. Apparently, it's a good way to improve/maintain one's balance. The coach also explained to the group that walking in place while blindfolded is good exercise too. It seems that only very few people can do this for one minute without wandering about the room (the point being that wearing a blindfold causes most of us to make slight adjustments that lead us to favor one side or the other). Again, this is supposed to improve one's balance.

[EDITOR'S NOTE:

This comment contained the entire text of a newspaper article reproduced verbatim. We do not publish comments that contain only copy and paste texts with no original writing.

In this case, the point is made with the dateline and a paragraph or so.]

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People in Shanghai Take Great Strides In Wrong Direction --- They Eagerly Walk Backward To Health and Happiness; Hello, I Must Be Going

By Craig S. Smith

Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

1084 words

4 February 1998

The Wall Street Journal

A1

English

(Copyright (c) 1998, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

SHANGHAI, China -- Before dawn, Gu Yuling and his wife jog backward down the empty street, narrowly missing a white-haired man walking backward in the opposite direction.

"I have to keep looking over my shoulder," Mr. Gu pants, with mock irritation.

China's economy may be taking great strides, but many Chinese are in reverse, running or walking backward to stave off back pain, improve digestion and heaven knows what else.

The contrariness is just one manifestation of a craze for oddball exercises that makes a walk through many Chinese parks seem like a visit to Monty Python's famous Ministry of Funny Walks. In Shanghai's Xiangyang Park one morning, a young woman repeatedly bangs her upper body into a tree; an elderly man flaps his hands while staring toward the sky; and a dozen women stand in a circle shouting the number 3396815. ...

This is Crampton's "work"? A new definition of that term, I would say.

@Sidney

It was a very hot day walking up to the peak. Hard work.

About an exercise that has been around for ages, and was reported much earlier--1998--in a full-length article?

I would also note that, like Sexy Beijing, the reporting is almost snide, as if one were reporting tribes on a faraway island.

Good of you to have, like many people, finally discovered China.

I think it was late 1999 or maybe early 2000, some friends flew to Beijing to visit me and I went to the airport to pick them up. We get off the highway and are driving in Sanlitun when I point out a guy walking the wrong way round. "See, this really is a backwards country." When I see my old pals they still laugh about that crack.