Running, a foreign concept

I recently ran outside with 2 other students and we found out that running outside around the city isn't easy.

First, there is the traffic. Dodging traffic is like a giant game of frogger. Not only are you dodging cars, motorcycles, and bikes, but also people. There are a variety of intersections that some how mesh together to from a giant maze. I'm surprised there aren't more car accidents. There are one-way streets, 5 way intersections, roundabouts, 6 lane roads etc.

Not only do you have to dodge people while running, but you also have to deal with their constant staring. People like to stare and take pictures at/ with us when we are just walking, so when they see some westerners running down the street it's like the circus came to town. In China it's considered impolite to stare, so when we are walking and we look back at the people staring at us the generally quickly divert their eyes. When we're running though, the sight of three westerners running down the street must have been too tempting of a sight, cause they stared at us with no shame.

As a joke, when we started running I was going to count how many people would stare at us, but that game quickly ended when I realized it was every single person (talk about feeling like a panda at the zoo).  People were shouting at us asking why were were running, and some kids thought it was hilarious! When we started to pass them they thought it would be funny to try and jog with us, but they didn't make it far cause they started bursting into laughter.

Before trying to run outside, I asked my tutor where the gym was. She had no idea. In fact we ended up asking several people and almost none had a clue where the gym was. I asked her why no one knew where it was and she said people in China don't usually workout. I asked her why they don't workout, and she responded with "Chinese people don't need to workout because they play pingpong and badminton" They obviously have a different definition of working out than we do.

My final obstacle to over come on my run was the air quality. In any major city in China you're bound to have some heavy air pollution. Since our lungs haven't quite adapted to the air yet, after about a mile, we were out of breath and our throats were burning. That has definitely been the most interesting run i've been on.