Picture this...

...you are enjoying a lovely jaunt on your gym treadmill, stationary cycle, or elliptical. Listening to music, burning the calories, contemplating life, pushing hard, and sweating fiercely. You're decked out in your old sneaks, a well worn in pair of gym shorts, a raggedy tank, and your hair is all tousled and sweaty, but who cares? You're working out! But, then you question your attire, in fact you question your actual physical location, did you get the wrong venue? You're on a treadmill, right? There are weights and mats and water dispensers? Towels? Sterilizing wipes? What brings about this questioning? The man who walks in, dainty little gym bag in hand (quite a typical accoutrement here in China), donning his best tan leather loafers, porting his freshly ironed chinos, flaunting his crisp white collared dress shirt, he casually saunters around the room, puffing his chest out, eyeing each person's machine and their chosen level of resistance. After a slow once about, he meanders to the nearest, techiest looking machine and hops on, clicking the dials to be at least one higher level than the nearest user. For the next 5 minutes he "works out". Its at these times (and they are numerous) that I lose all focus on the calorie burning and MUST chuckle at the hilarity of it all, as well as pause in perplexity and wonder. Usually the man finishes his "cardio" and picks up a couple free weights, mostly to do something completely ridiculous, while grunting unnecessarily, perhaps what he has seen in some testosterone induced movie, which looks kinda good, maybe impressive from the right vantage point, but has no actual purpose or value. Then, casually, puffed out and proud chested, he picks up his baby blue gym purse and leaves satisfied and slightly smug. This is a regular occurrence (and not usually ever the same offender!) and completely shocking each and every time but it rivals the very recent, fantastically tight, all white, transparent gid-up a regular local has been sporting lately as he lunges and leans and grunts and growls. Honestly, its a wonder we get anything productive done at all at the gym, we are fully and entirely amused by the very diverse habits of some of the colorful locals.