In the 1960s and 1970s, when yoga and meditation became popular in the West, China bucked the trend. Almost 25 years later, in the early part of the last decade, China began to embrace the Indian physical and spiritual regimen. Today, due to the unique characteristics of Chinese society, yoga’s primary goal has been altered to mean devotion to the body but stripped of any spiritual refinement.
The despiritualization of yoga somehow conforms to the materialistic values that are sweeping China of the 21st century. But what is interesting is yoga is serving as a cultural connection between China and India, where it originated in ancient times. Though slightly different from the original Indian yoga, the Chinese have assimilated its essence and are shaping it into a new form more suitable for themselves.
Yoga was first introduced to China in 1985 via a daytime television show on CCTV channel, but it remained obscure through most of the 1990s. It was not till 2004 when several yoga studios sprang up in Shanghai, that people finally took notice of this global lifestyle trend. Ignorance quickly gave way to obsession, and yoga became a new and thriving business. In China, a single class can cost as much as $30. It’s not surprising that for the well-heeled the focus is more on the physical fitness that yoga offers instead of the spiritual pursuit.
“When I teach yoga in China, I teach foremost from a physical perspective,” says Richard Baimbridge, the program director in Shanghai for Karma Life Yoga. “When I teach outside China, or non-Chinese, I do it from a more spiritual perspective.”
Unlike people from other countries, most Chinese are not religious, and the lack of a certain belief system may sometimes lead to bewilderment, or even antipathy to spiritual concepts that are inherent in yoga. As the main zealots of yoga are young, white-collar women, they have only a vague idea of spiritual perfection.
“For Chinese women, it is a kind of Western lifestyle trend,” according to Paul French, a Shanghai-based marketing director of Access Asia, a market research company. “Going to yoga is just like going to Starbucks in China.” Besides taking yoga as an antidote to stress, the majority of people also turn to yoga as a way to lose the extra pounds that have come with increasingly sedentary lifestyles, a Wharton business school study reported.
The struggle to maintain high teaching standards further lowers the quality of yoga teaching, though China is not the only victim in this context. As in the West, teacher training is recommended, but not compulsory. Some professional programs may charge 30,000RMB for 200 courses while others are as short as one or two weeks. The costly and prolonged training programs therefore always frustrate many instructors.
“There are a lot of people coming out of teacher training programs, who are less qualified than they should be. That is everywhere, all across the board, in India, the U.S., China, all over,” Baimbridge says. Many founders of yoga studios in China now claim that they hope an organization could regulate what teachers need to learn.
“There is big room for improvement in the general quality of teaching and teachers. We often get many teachers from other studios coming to our classes,” notes Robyn Wexler, who co-founded Beijing’s first big studio, Yoga Yard, in 2002. “It is shocking to find out that some of those people are teachers.” For yoga involves so many potential injuries, it’s the teachers’ responsibility to keep them out of the classrooms, and thus guarantee the profits derived from this physical exercise.
Despite the many variations of yoga in China, not only has it gradually become an inseparable part of people’s daily life, it has also evolved into a cultural bridge between the two Asian giants – India and China. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already taken a step to further spread yoga by providing his followers on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, a daily lesson of yoga exercise complete with sketches about different poses and a list of benefits. His posts mainly embody the efforts by India to connect directly with the public in China, and to strengthen their shared links of Buddhism and other traditions.
Modi’s recent visit to China also launched several cooperation agreements, including China’s first yoga college to standardize the teachings of yoga as more and more critics are complaining about unqualified teachers. To restore yoga to its spiritual purposes, India has also made a first attempt to introduce Gandhian studies in China by helping establish a Center of Gandhian Studies at Shanghai’s Fudan University.
“Most Chinese have no religion. But there is a growing desire for spiritual life,” says Liu Zhen, an associate professor at Fudan University. “I think Gandhism, with its focus on truth, would be a good starting point for many Chinese wanting to travel the road to spirituality.”
Like many other exports from India, yoga’s popularity in China has proved to be yet another success. While a cross-section of people are enjoying the physical benefits drawn from yoga, it has also become a significant factor in the improvement of bilateral relations between India and China.
Given its profound impact on the general public, on diplomatic relations, not to mention the profits it is generating in the two countries, yoga has become much more than just a physical exercise.
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The writer is a 9th grader at The Mary Louis Academy, New York.
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