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Happy 3rd annual National Fitness Day Shanghai! In celebration of everything healthy, today you can go check out the Oriental Sports Center for free, along with 50 other public stadiums and gymnasiums around the city. But it gets better! The Oriental Sport's Center's outdoor diving pool will be open to the public not only today, but all month long! Go mess around in the water for free until September 7. Since this offer managed to combine two things that are both screamingly popular in China (swimming and free stuff) they suggest you call ahead and reserve time at the pool if you're interested. They only allow 200-300 people in per 90 minute session, but you can call ahead to reserve (call 20238305 or 20238316, or send an SMS to 106 573 000 168.) Opening hours are from 9:30 - 12:30 (two sessions) and from 13:30 to 17:00 (three sessions.) Weekday morning sessions are probably your best bet. If you do call/text ahead, they ask that you include name, number, how many people (up to three) and session time. more ›

O Dear God, no. You're taking our taxi touchscreen mutant humanoid neck stretch woman away from us?! Nancy Pon, the mystery fitness instructor who was inexplicably the subject of massive internet chattering recently, has been replaced in taxi video screens by a video featuring a male fitness guru doing shoulder exercises. more ›

Remember all that speculation over the WOW fitness lady teaching us how to keep it loose in a Shanghai taxi? Well the mystery is finally solved! Both City Weekend and China Daily ran interviews with her this week, only a few days before her stint as wacky aerobics guru comes to an end. And as it turns out, aside from the occasional push ups session at the airport, she's surprisingly normal. more ›

If you've taken a taxi recently, it would have been almost impossible for you to miss the somewhat masculine, retro-looking aerobics lady encouraging you to exercise by stretching her bulging neck side to side (video below.) According to Shanghai Daily, she's started quite the flurry of debate online. Chinese netizens have been arguing on Weibo as to whether they think she's totalz crazy and personally disturbing, or whether they think her retro 80s-era aerobic motif is cool. more ›

Back in 2007 Shanghaiist's Hélène survived the Great Wall Marathon. Following in her footsteps, we decided to give it a try. But we decided that running 21 k (the half marathon) was plenty exercise for us on a Saturday morning. more ›

By Richard Yu more ›

Aside from the fact that 25% of the population are smokers, China has always been a health conscious country. Strolling through the beautifully manicured parks and gardens of Shanghai, it is not rare to see people from the age of 15 to 85 working out on the outdoor exercise machines, practicing tai chi or people walking backward around the park to ensure that every muscle group is used. more ›

From France24:

Twenty-five years after China opened up to the west the Chinese are paying a price. Today the country has the fastest-growing obesity rate in the world and one quarter of its urban youth is overweight.

So after reports that Yao Ming would get married to his fiancée Ye Li, a player on the Chinese women's basketball team last year in Shanghai proved to be all but wrong, it appears the Houston Rockets star is finally ready to tie the knot this summer. According to the Rockets' Manager Daryl Morey, the couple will hold their wedding in August after Yao Ming is done with serial practices in July. more ›

If you’re like us and already feel slightly guilty at how much you will be drinking at this Friday’s Shanghaiist Happy Hour, maybe it’s time to start thinking about how to have an active summer? Whether you’re a cycling veteran or you’re just looking for something to do to these coming months, there are a number of bike trips available to see more of the beautiful countryside (or Suzhou Creek). more ›

"People say they love hip hop, but then they go to Guandii. To me, we’ve never had hip hop in China. We just took things from the States. It’s never been homegrown. And I really hope we can have a scene to call our own." more ›

Off-pitch goings-on again overshadowed play as Shanghai Shenhua notched up their second win of the season, in a fine 3-1 victory against Wuhan. more ›

star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur, the new graffiti king in town, Bill Cosby's adorable dog, and the disturbing tale of a yoga instructor who was found guilty of killing his girlfriend, a dancer from Ohio who stripped to make ends meet. more ›

Shanghaiist prefers sugar-free bevarages. We're not getting any younger. And we'd prefer our waistline not get any bigger. (And if it does, we'd prefer it be the result of consuming good beer.) We've been known to have friends who happen to be flight attendants bring us packs of Crystal Light from back home so we can satisfy our cravings for sweetish beverages that aren't full of sugar. In China, there are few sugar-free soft drink options (unless you go to City Supermarket). You've got Diet Coke ... and that's about it, unless you count water and tea. So, we were pretty excited to find that Guangdong-based drink company Mizone (脉动) has recently launched a sugar-free flavor called 冰莓 (bing mei or maybe "ice berry"). It's not bad (and cheap, maybe 3 kuai) and kind of similar to Gatorade's sugar-free Propel Fitness Water. But we hope they launch some flavors other than 冰莓. Look for the drink in most convenience stores and supermarkets. more ›

Former Germany international Carsten Jancker has confirmed what many suspected and is to leave Shanghai Shenhua FC imminently and return to Europe. more ›

For gay men around the world, the gym is always a potential hunting ground, and, no, not this type of hunting. Shanghai is no different from any other metropolis in this regard (but is put to shame by this place in “conservative” Singapore, which Shanghaiist believes to be the only 24-hour gay gym with foam parties in Asia ... please leave a comment if we’re wrong!). more ›

We Googled "iGallop" and discovered that while this device was new to us (and maybe Shanghai?) it definitely isn't new. Someone YouTubed the TV commercial for the iGallop back in January. Looks like it launched in Singapore and Hong Kong in January, and bloggers, sex bloggers and newspapers noticed -- one girl even tried to use her boyfriend as a free iGallop. Looks like an English version of the iGallop ad was shown during the World Cup in some parts of the UK. And many people have flexed their Photoshop skillz and placed dildos and vibrators on photos of the iGallop. Panasonic, apparently, also has a similar product called JOBA. Here's a video of someone trying the JOBA in Hong Kong. more ›

In a society where the socioeconomic structure is becoming worryingly pyramid-shaped when everyone had hoped it would become olive-shaped, there is a glimmer of hope: Women are becoming increasingly S-shaped. The Shanghai Daily reports: more ›

Shooping down pristine white slopes has been a recreational option for Shanghai residents since the Yinqixing Indoor Skiing Resort opened back in 2002, but it has taken all that time for Shanghaiist to actually get its all-weather, gore-tex gloves on (Xiangyang Market – 50 kuai) and hit the 45m-high slopes that are apparently "covered in snow of a depth up to 50cm". Well Shanghaiist got a very close look at those slopes, and they are indeed covered in a whole mound of sugary, quicksand-esque snow the likes of which we have never seen in our lives before. It quickly became apparent that one’s board or skis served as the proverbial ladder across a thinly-iced pond, but no need to panic, so long as you’re over one and a half feet tall. more ›

Imagine going to your gym to work out, and instead of being greeted by ladies in smart suits, you find a piece of paper saying something vague like “Due to a problem, the gym has closed.” Sound familiar? This happened at Golds Gym in 2003 and it happened again this morning, just a few blocks away, at Nottingham Gym. Are the gyms in Jing'an cursed? more ›

Shanghaiist chose an apartment based on the location of the original Megafit gym on Huaihai Lu. Not that the gym was anything spectacular. It was fine. We had a membership there. And we needed to be walking distance from where we worked out -- the last thing we needed was another excuse not to go. It was a three-story gym with nice big windows and if you used an elliptical machine on the third floor you overlooked an old neighborhood with tile roofs and you could see the Jinmao Tower. Now, Megafit has moved to the third floor basement of the building next door, one floor beneath the Huangpi Nan Lu subway station. more ›

One of China's brightest young soccer stars may be headed to one of the sport's most storied franchises. Shanghai Shenhua defender Du Wei began a weeklong trial with Scotland's Celtic FC on Monday. Du, 6-foot-3 and 23 years old, reportedly comes with an £800,000-£1 million price tag. He would be the second major Asian acquisition for the Glasgow-based Hoops this summer. Last week, Celtic purchased Japanese midfielder Shunsuke Nakamura for £3 million. Du's departure would leave a gaping hole at backfield for Shenhua, currently in third place in the China Super League, 10 points behind league-leader Dalian Shide, with three months left in the season. more ›

Shanghaiist's gym is moving. And since we found out about this rather abruptly -- and there's a decent chance it might be your gym, as well -- we figured we'd spread the word. We go to the Megafit on the corner of Huaihai Zhong Lu and Danshui Lu, not too far from the Huangpi Nan Lu metro stop. Not a bad gym. Spacious and clean (well, save for that rat we saw there a little more than a year ago). Shanghaiist chose Megafit for its windows, a big wall of them overlooking Huaihai. Time goes by faster on the elliptical machine when you can watch one almost-accident after another down on the busy street. more ›

We all know that Jackie Chan wants to marry off Shanghainese women to foreign men. Now we know how he's going to enact his plan -- he's going to whip those Shanghainese girls into shape! Chan opened his first Jackie Chan Sport Club in Hong Kong on Friday. He is planning on opening gyms in Beijing and Shanghai, too: more ›