On the outskirts of Beijing, a gym with homemade equipment offers a special community for retired factory workers
The Yongding River flows through the western suburbs of Beijing. Not far from the riverbanks, a cluster of single-story cottages is all that’s left of the Erqi Locomotive Factory, once the second-largest industrial hub in Beijing and famous for the Erqi Workers’ Movement of 1923, a strike that ended with the death of 33 workers’ representatives at the hands of the warlord Wu Peifu.
In a nearby residential community housing mostly retired workers and their families, a former bicycle shed without any signage or lettering sits sandwiched between two brick residential buildings. It is home to the Erqi Fitness Club, which Yang Hongzeng has been frequenting for 22 years. For at least five days a week, the 84-year-old Yang, who needs crutches to walk, shows up in the dim light and air thick with the scent of sweat, rust, and mildew. He greets each person one by one, before slowly taking off his jacket and putting on a pair of dirt-stained white work gloves to get ready for some exercise.
Wang Jiawei is a contributing writer at The World of Chinese. He is deeply passionate about multimedia storytelling and sees the fate of ordinary people in grand narratives.
