Pickleball, Hyrox, and China's new fitness fix

户外运动为何突然爆火?

Round Table China

2026-06-04

16 分钟
PDF

单集简介 ...

From pickleball to Hyrox, the way China is getting fit is changing. Across the country, 800 million people took part in outdoor sports last year. Retirees. Office workers. Mothers. They are turning courts and trails into offline social platforms. They are not here to win or get attention. They are here for the experience. On the show: Fei Fei, Steve & Yushan
更多

单集文稿 ...

  • Discussion keeps the world turning. This is Roundtable.

  • You're listening to Roundtable. I'm Feifei together with Yushan and Steve Hadley.

  • Coming up, across China, people are heading out.

  • Not to malls, but to courts, to trails, to warehouses with DJ booths.

  • To be exact, 800 million people participated in some kind of outdoor sports last year,

  • from retirees to office workers to mothers.

  • They're not really here to win or get attention, but for the experience itself.

  • Our podcast listeners can find us at Roundtable China on Apple Podcasts.

  • And please don't forget that we want to hear from you.

  • An email is great, but a voice memo is super great.

  • Send those our way with your thoughts on any of the issues that we discuss on the show

  • to roundtablepodcast@qq.com.

  • And now, in China right now, people from all walks of life are heading outside

  • to catch that summer breeze and work up a sweat.

  • We have a mother booking a pickleball court on her lunch break,

  • an office worker signing up for HYROX to prove that those gym hours meant something else,

  • and also we have a retiree calling a court her offline social platform.

  • 800 million people participated in some kind of outdoor sports last year in China,

  • and this number captures exactly how Chinese people are organizing their leisure, their travel, and even their identity.

  • So, Yushan and Steve, it's summertime, it's getting warmer, so that means our muscle needs less time to warm up.