Flex the fingers, move the body and roll the head.
They may sound like the kind of instructions that students have to follow during gym-class, only this time they were aimed at members of a CPPCC session.
Every group discussion of sports at the ongoing CPPCC meeting started with exercise. The gathered members followed Chen Sitan, a former Wushu world champion from East China's Fujian Province, who led them through the paces. All the journalists who covered their discussion were also invited to take part.
By their own admission, they are hoping to set an example by promoting exercise among the general public, a goal that was written in this year's government report at the NPC session.
"Everyone lives such busy lives in this rapidly developing society, so we need such relaxation," said Chen, who coaches the Fujian Wushu team.
"I want to promote the idea of practicing to others."
He said the CPPCC's sports group had started incorporating the warm-up exercises into its meetings at the annual "two sessions" two years ago. All the members praised the idea.
"It is a popular exercise in Taiwan and Japan. I learned to do it when I was visiting there," Chen said. "Since it is easy to learn, I hope to share this with people so more of them could benefit from it."
Being a sports journalist, it has been a challenge for me to cover the annual sessions of the NPC and CPPCC for the first time. I'm surrounded by piles of unfamiliar documents and news clues, and I feel excited to be covering such important political events, but I still can't help but be surprised by finding such interesting, unexpected phenomena as the warm-up exercises.
The CPPCC sports group has 19 members. Like Chen, most of them are famous sports veterans who have won great glory for China, such as legendary table tennis player Deng Yaping, multiple badminton world champion Li Lingwei and Olympic shooting gold medallist Xu Haifeng.
Now, they are playing a different role in making contributions to China's sports providing useful advice to the government to help it develop the country's athletes.
(China Daily 03/08/2007 page6)
