Around the World: China

Around the World is an occasional series celebrating the female bodybuilders of a particular country, and examining any issues peculiar to muscle women there.



Today, we visit China, hardly - despite the numbers - a hot bed of female muscle so far. Unless you are an Asian FBB nut, it's unlikely that you could come up with more than a few Chinese FBBs, if any. Those that have made something of an international name for themselves - Zhang Ping, Xinli Cao, and Liang Yueyun, for example - have had to overcome considerable cultural (and/or economic) obstacles to do so. Women in China have long associated being beautiful with being skinny, says CNN correspondent Nanlin Fang, a situation not unique to China by any means, but also noted by Beijing gym owner Hou Shiyao. Most of the women who come to our studio aim to lose weight, she says. They want to be like a skeleton, or a piece of paper!



However, that may be changing. The skeletal body may still be the ideal for the majority of Chinese women, but an increasing number are, according to Hou Shiyao, coming with a slightly different, slightly more muscular goal - majiaxian.



Literally, this translates as "vest lines", but in fact it's how you say "six-pack" in Chinese, and claims Nanlin Fang, China's "increasing exposure to Western lifestyles has made a desire for a more muscular physique, especially visible abdominal muscles, trendy." Chinese women, besides the usual summer essentials, have found another accessory, confirms the (newspaper) People's Daily - six-pack abs have become the latest fashion.



On Chinese social media #majiaxian has been at or near the top of the trending topics list ever since Chinese New Year, with women proudly flaunting their new flat/muscular midriffs all ready for summer. I bought a gym membership as a birthday gift for myself, says fashion designer Liang Yuan - one such woman charting her journey to majiaxian via WeChat, the country's most popular social media app. I wanted to challenge myself. Now friends and family members have started to call me a "fitness monster" because I workout twice a day, seven days a week.



A capital B Bodybuilder Liang (and the vast majority of the #majiaxian WeChatters) may not be, but she (and they) are indicative of a change in attitude which is backed up by the stats. A 2017 Gym Data Report stated that females now account for 51.3% of members in China's gyms, with chest and back exercises almost as popular among them as those focusing on abs. Moreover, an impressive number (almost 20%) of those female gymgoers stated that they used fitness equipment "in the same way as men".



Pioneering Chinese IFBB pro Mou Cong is hardly the most defined in the Figure division in which she competes, and few of the random women from pan-China contests in 2017 and so far in 2018 that we came across while researching this piece are very six-packy. However, when you consider there are around 650m women in China, all this adds up to potentially the biggest explosion in female muscle ever.




Liu Zhichang, a 25-year-old working in a marketing team at a Beijing tech company claims workouts posted on WeChat have spread among her friends "like a virus". Every woman I know wants to have majiaxian, she says. Especially if they have seen a friend's toned abs. At first, I just secretly admired them, but then I decided to dedicate myself to working out, to make it a habit. I want to have majiaxian, and I will.



请享用!

Champion of the Day: Mou Cong

2017 Arnold Amateur Figure "D" & Overall Champion



"Is Mou Cong really the 'prettiest bodybuilder' on the planet?" asks FHM, before admitting "she makes a convincing case". "Face of an angel, body of the Hulk" is how The Mail Online describe her, while Maxim invites us to "Meet the shredded Instababe who's stunning beauty and rock-hard physique is causing a frenzy all over the web".



Mou Cong, before the media storm, had won the Arnold Amateur Overall Figure title in Columbus last month, and in the process made history as the first Chinese athlete to triumph at a global bodybuilding event. I've come far, she told Muscular Development Magazine after she had stepped off stage, referring to the 20-hour flight from China to the US, but she may as well have been talking about her global media profile.



Seems this "bodybuilder" has serious mainstream appeal. She's getting serious pick-up with news outlets and tabloids everywhere, noted Maxim. Given how damn good she looks in a rhinestone-covered bikini, it's easy to see why. FHM rated her "A+", and gave their readers the green light to ogle a woman with muscles. While the whole bodybuilding physique might not be "your thing", they write, there's no denying the appeal of the 32-year-old, who flaunts the bod she works so hard at. A tight six-pack, some incredible curves and, of course, that butt of hers is on point, fellas!




And there's no denying her achievement either. Mou finished top of a 50-strong Figure field at the Arnold Amateur. After seeing off fourteen other competitors in her class alone, she outshone the other five class winners in a high quality overall posedown.



So, is it to be Mou Cong who opens the way for other muscle women to get noticed by the mainstream media? Perhaps, but let's not get too excited. We've had Cindy Landolt in the Austrian-Swiss FHM Top 100 Sexiest Women in the World countdown. We've had the "face of an angel, body of the Hulk" Julia Vins. And now it's Mou Cong's turn to have her brief moment in the news outlet/tabloid spotlight.



She still has far to go. Her Instagram still has only a somewhat modest following - less than 3,000 at the time of writing - so it's fair to say she's hardly caught the imagination of much of the world, or even her own country. But when the time comes for her to make her pro debut, I'm sure there'll be a few more female muscle fans who haven't forgotten about her and her rather unique blend of elegant muscular beauty.



恭喜 牟丛!

Michelle Jin

Remember Michelle Jin? She of the girl-next-door (well, stunning Asian girl-next-door) looks and calves that made your eyes water. Or something. Remember her?

Well, she's back. And right on cue, too. There I was just yesterday talking about female muscle in China, and here we have a Chinese-born calves legend returning after three years to enjoy the biggest success of her career so far - both in the same week.



At the age of 40, Michelle won her physique class the NPC Junior USA Championships last Saturday (May 24th), and with it her pro card. And yes, she has most definitely still got it in the calves department, although while she's been away she seems to have acquired "it" in a number of other departments too, wouldn't you say?



Michelle, whose Chinese name is Jin Shuchun, was born and raised in a village in the east of China. She left home at 18 to find work in Guangzhou, and four years later arrived in the US. She drove buses, waited tables, and got by. And in 2005, on the recommendation of friends, she took up bodybuilding. At first, the gym was more routine than passion, but now, nine years later, Michelle has a pro card.




I am very happy that I won, says Michelle. I want to get the fitness coaching certificate so I can get a real job. I was born in an ordinary family, my childhood was bitter. I finally found the confidence in life to learn, and to complete my goals.



And on top of that, Michelle's victory has had the Chinese media (well, the online, English-language Chinese media anyway) falling over themselves to claim her as their own. Incredible Fitness! screams the headline in Guangming Insights, adding the not entirely accurate sub-heading: A 40-year-old Chinese lady won the champion of U.S. Bodybuilding Competition. Women of China led with the much less excitable headline: Chinese Woman, 40, Wins U.S. Bodybuilding Competition, and the rest of the Anglo-Chinese media all had the story and all had a headline very much stressing this was the triumph of a "Chinese" woman.



Perhaps this is one more example of attitudes to female muscle changing for the better in China, perhaps it's just online news sources recycling a story a competitor has carried. Either way, it's some positive exposure for Michelle in her homeland, and a positive message to aspiring female bodybuilders within that country.




FMS wishes her every success in her quest for coaching qualifications. And we hope it won't be too long before we'll see those big ol' calves in competition with the pros.



Enjoy!

(I feel a Leg Day coming on for tomorrow...)

Around the World: CHINA

Around the World will be an occasional series celebrating the female bodybuilders of a particular country, and examining any issues peculiar to muscle women there.



Unless you are some sort of Asian female muscle nut, it's unlikely you can name more than one or two Chinese female bodybuilders, and even connoisseurs would have trouble coming up with more than a handful of names. China may have a population of 1.3bn (and nearly half of them are women), but the very few Chinese female bodybuilders who have succeeded in making a name for themselves internationally have done so in the face of considerable economic and cultural obstacles.



When Chinese female muscle pioneer Zhang Ping saw a bodybuilding contest on TV in 1984 and made up her mind she was going to be a bodybuilder, her husband's horror was the least of her worries. As a former athlete, she well-understood the necessity of a strict training regime, but only by packing her son off to live with her parents was she able to spend two hours a day pumping iron after work. Food, specifically how to get enough protein on a very limited budget, was her biggest problem though, and she would go to the food market just before closing to make her money go further.



By 1990 though, she had found a sponsor in Hong Kong to pay her whey (ha!) and a couple of years after that she was able to open her own gym in Shanghai and start offering personal training. International success followed. She was Asian Amateur middleweight champion in 1992, and finished tenth as a lightweight - the highest ever placing for an Asian athlete at the time - at the World Amateur championships in 1993.



Nearly 30 years after she first started training, Zhang Ping is still training as hard as ever, and has no intention of stopping anytime soon. In her 50s now, she appears on Chinese TV and reveals the "secret" to having such youthful looks for her age. And I dare say this, as well as all the gold medals she has won in competition, makes her husband feel a lot more comfortable about his wife's lifestyle (and muscle) now!



In the 1990s, the Chinese female muscle torch was picked up and carried to more international success, firstly by Liang Yueyun, and, a few years later, by Cao Xinli. The former's career has proved to be the longer of the two (Liang Yueyun was still competing and winning as recently as 2012), but Cao Xinli is probably the better-known, much-photographed throughout her career, and, I don't mind admitting, a Swell favourite for a bit of webcam naughtiness back when I did that sort of thing.

Liang Yueyun



Both began competing internationally at a time when China while not exactly becoming more female muscle frriendly, had (officially at least) started to become less female muscle unfriendly. In Zhang Ping's time it had been illegal to sell female posing suits in the country - yes, there was actually a law about it! It hadn't been illegal to possess one (or more) but it meant that in order to obtain their posing suit, would-be competiitors were forced to make a trip to Hong Kong to buy one they could try on. But by the mid-1990s, the government clearly no longer deemed ripped female bodybuilders showing all that muscle off in a public place to be a threat to the fabric of society, and the restrictions on the sale of posing suits for women was lifted.

Cao Xinli



But since then... forgive me if I'm wrong, I don't claim to have any expertise on Asian female muscle, but it seems to me that the Asian women who have been and still are making an impact on a global level these days tend to come from Thailand, South Korea, perhaps Singapore. But they are most definitely not coming out of China.

This may be about to change. Real Female Bodybuilding reported last year that this October Zhengzhou International Conference Centre will play host to the first ever professional bodybuilding contest to be held in China, the IFBB Asian Pro Bodybuilding Championships. It is hoped that Chinese homegrown female bodybuilding talent will join the giants of the international sport, the article claims. And coincidentally, evidence that China is (officially) doing something to actively cultivate that homegrown talent popped up in the FMS inbox recently.



Six Female Uni Students Join National Bodybuilding Team read the headline from the Chinese English;language news source CRI English. Now, I have to admit that my excitement at reading that headline was somewhat dampened when I noticed exactly how much muscle these college "bodybuilders" were carrying - not a lot.

(left) Chen Qiuling "Bodybuilder"; (right) Sun Yufen "Bodybuilder"


However, when I started to think about it, I couldn't help wondering whether the national team might not train in some secluded area where you find an unusually high number of ex-East German coaches. The kind of place the Chinese swimming team trained before the Beijing Olympics, if you know what I mean. Maybe in a few months these college girls will have turned into the biggest Asian female muscle beasts ever...

Diao Mengyue "Bodybuilder"


Shanghai List had another explanation for their lack of beef, though. We assume they're competing more in the "fitness" rather than the "bodybuilding" category, it read, and it's probably right. Nevertheless, I feel that the fact that China has a female contingent in the national bodybuilding team at all must be a sign of progress in a country where female bodybuilding was so actively discouraged not so long ago.

And I leave you sort of where we started, with the remarkable Zhang Ping.

Enjoy!



Comments? Additions? Corrections? Below or email 6ft1swell@gmail.com