SHANGHAI • Retiree Chen Jifang hits the gym for at least two hours every day and has a physique to prove it. At nearly 70, she is being held up as a shining example as China orders its vast population to get fit and lose the bulge.
The grandmother from Shanghai has become a minor celebrity in recent months as her newfound and unlikely love for working out made national headlines.
After becoming a gym bunny in December 2018, Madam Chen lost 14kg in three months and now sports a flat abdomen and toned muscles that people decades younger aspire to.
She has built up a fan base on social media, clocking up 410,000 followers on TikTok with her impressive exercise routines and encouraging others to follow her example.
A post on the video-sharing app of the pensioner doing a rapid set of lung-busting squats and lunges has been viewed more than one million times.
"I will work out as long as I'm still alive," Madam Chen, who turned 68 this year, tells Agence France-Presse at a gym in a Shanghai suburb.
Chinese state media have reported her story with gusto because it fits the government's drive to encourage people of all ages to get fitter.
That message has been amplified this year by an assertion that being fit is one way to help beat the coronavirus, which emerged in Wuhan late last year.
Xinmin Evening News described Madam Chen as "hardcore grandma" and Xinhua news agency called her a "heavy-lifting granny".
She has also been featured on television.
For Madam Chen, who worked for a food company before retiring, pumping iron has come late in life.
She began going to the gym following a chance meeting with a personal trainer, propelled into action by worries about her deteriorating health and weight gain.
But she has shed the flab and got a clean bill of health last year from doctors, having previously had problems with a fatty liver, high blood pressure and eye cataracts.
Madam Chen, who has a grandson aged 14, recalled the shocked looks she got the first time she walked through the gym door.
"They found it very strange, they don't usually see people at such an old age who care about their health so much," she said.
Despite her active lifestyle, Madam Chen has no sporting background and said she barely got out of bed when her daughter was very young because her body was so weak from giving birth.
"If your muscles are strong and powerful, they will protect your bones if you fall, because the elderly are most afraid of falling," she said. "In fact, I also fell once and fell terribly, hurting my forehead, hips, knees and toes."
She recalled: "They saw an old lady with white hair lying on the ground and passers-by started calling an ambulance. I said 'don't' and I got up. I said that I had been exercising, so I'm fine."
She added: "At our age, it is not how much money you have, who you are, or how good your children are. You just want a medical record that is as short as possible."
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
