‘Dancing grannies’ stepping on toes
Chinese women are part of a senior health trend across cityscapes that are healthy for some, irritating to others.
Along with two dozen of her fellow “dancing grannies,” 60-year-old Zhang Jinsu twirls and steps her way every night across a central Beijing plaza, sometimes gliding over the pavement like a butterfly, at other times marching with a plastic rifle.
But when new Chinese government instructions on such hugely popular — and loud — senior dances take hold, Zhang may need to learn a new routine.
Zhang is part of a senior health trend that’s filled squares and apartment courtyards across China, winning the admiration of medical experts but upsetting neighbours over the noise level.
“It’s never quiet,” said Gan Xuehua, a 31-year-old man whose apartment in the southern city of Nanchang overlooks a plaza where the women dance. “These grannies play music all day . . . and every night. The music is really loud!”
Chinese officials have stepped into the fray by announcing the imminent arrival of new regulations on where seniors can dance and how loud they can blast their music. They also unveiled 12 officially sanctioned square dance steps set to such popular songs as “Little Apple” and “China is Beautiful” — although an official said the steps were not compulsory and merely a suggestion.
To some, the square-dance clampdown was a step too far for an increasingly restrictive government that has tightened controls on everything from college classroom lectures to the lavish spending of top government officials.
“You’re even going to tell us how to dance?” asked Yang Tao on the social media service Weibo.
As a precaution, Zhang said her fellow dancers, who gather in front of the Raffles Centre in downtown Beijing, have already stopped all dances by 9:30 p.m. And to show a government afraid of any sort of organized action, they have started re-enacting ultrapatriotic Second World War-era skits where they act like Chinese soldiers apprehending Japanese and German bad guys, to the rhythm of a live band.
The enormous popularity of the Chinese square dances, which have been spotted even in Moscow and New York, springs from an urban landscape lacking enough parks and other public spaces that pushes people to gather in front of shopping centres or in playgrounds, said Caroline Chen, an environmental planning expert at the University of California at San Diego who wrote her dissertation on the dances.
Those same factors help explain the ire occasionally sparked among nearby neighbours, including one Beijing man who did prison time after he fired a rifle into the air and released three dogs on several dancers in 2013. In the coastal city of Wenzhou last year, people pooled more than $40,000 to buy a militarygrade loudspeaker to retaliate against women dancing to boom boxes in a tit-for-tat escalation of noise.
For 52-year-old Huang Shihui, the nightly dances have got her out of the house and introduced her to a whole new set of friends. She said she didn’t mind the restrictions, as long as the music didn’t stop.
“If I didn’t dance, I’d just eat and watch TV,” she said before donning a red beret and olive-green military uniform to hit the plaza. “To dance, everybody’s together, everybody’s much happier.”
Jack Chang is a reporter for The Associated Press