In recent weeks and months, Shanghai residents have been receiving an unusual present in their mailboxes. The elongated blue packages contain a small self-help manual and a dinky little measuring tape - surely just the thing discerning citizens of China's biggest city have been waiting for。
But these "Healthy expo, healthy Shanghai" gifts from the local government are part of a citywide push to promote fitness and battle obesity. The tape measure has a dial to calculate the user's body mass index, and the tape turns from green to red at 80 centimeters, apparently the point at which a woman's body fat can start to become a health issue。
It's hardly the most tactful way to suggest residents may need to pay more attention to their diet and weight, but it demonstrates the degree of concern among officials over an issue shaping up to be a major social and political headache. Girths are growing fast, particularly among the affluent - and even just the mildly well-off. Everywhere you look in Shanghai, rotund bellies and thunder thighs are on show。
The most recent estimates suggest that as many as 120 million mainlanders are obese. The first culprit that springs to mind is the explosion of Western fast food chains, plus their domestic imitators, which now stand on virtually every downtown intersection. The reality is that people are simply eating more - prosperity means bigger portions of everything。
That is where this recent campaign comes into focus, quirky measuring tape and all. But there is one glaring omission from the government's arsenal to trim the city: sport。
The Shanghai government does little to highlight the importance of exercise for all-round physical fitness. At a recent long-winded Shanghai government press conference on the current health drive, exercise warranted only two passing mentions。
The truth is, Shanghai is not, by a long shot, a particularly active city. Apart from the occasional groups of men and women gathering in the park to waltz or practice their fan-dance routines, it is pretty rare to see someone exercising for the sake of it. Urbane young Shanghaiers seem to baulk at the thought of breaking a sweat - not just due to a strange revulsion for discomfort, but because they tend to view it as a wholly alien concept。
The city government deserves credit for tackling obesity head-on. But in the eyes of this observer at least, it will have only limited progress until it makes a concerted effort to shake off this aversion to keeping fit. Watching what you eat is only half the battle - a sedentary youth culture will only store up more problems for the future。 |