Yoga helps villagers cope with aches, pains

Healthier residents less likely to be overwhelmed with medical bills

Villagers in northern China are learning that yoga is not just for city slickers.

Lu Wenzhen, 52, is helping popularize the exercise form in an impoverished village in Hebei province, about 300 kilometers northwest of Beijing.

And since he first arrived in the village in 2016, more and more residents of Yugouliang are attending his daily yoga sessions.

Lu, who spent two decades as a music teacher at a college in Shijiazhuang, the Hebei capital, was sent to Yugouliang by the government to help villagers pull themselves out of poverty. But he was disheartened at first as he found it difficult to turn the village's fortunes around for a variety of reasons beyond his control.

"The place has few natural resources and suffers from a shortage of groundwater. This scares away any potential investment," Lu said.