52
53PUMPING IRON
走过三十余载的工业风健身房里，
有一群爱撸铁的北京大爷们
On the grounds of an
old locomotive factory, a bike-shed-turned-gym offers a special community for its dedicated retirees
TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY
WANG JIAWEI (王佳炜)
T he Y ongding 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 cond-largest industrial hub in Beijing and famous for the Erqi Workers’ Movement of 1923, a strike that ended with the death of 33 workers’ reprentatives 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 exerci.
The majority of the gym’s 60 current members are former employees of the Erqi factory, which mostly produced locomotives and wagons. When the gym first opened in the late 1980s, the forgers, clampers, and electricians made its earliest fitness equipment from factory scraps. Most me
mbers here first met during the heyday of Chine industry, then drifted apart when laid off from state factory jobs following the reform period, but eventually found their way back to this windowless shed—as exerci buddies and chess companions, trying to regain their physical glory while reminiscing about the past.
“Ask any child playing on the streets, they would tell you their parents worked at the Erqi factory,” Yang, who is the oldest member of the gym, says Entrance of the Erqi Locomotive Factory in the southwestern suburbs of Beijing
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Issue 6 /2022on what Communist Party officials eat at important national meetings. When the mood strikes, they t up a few games of Chine chess in the lounge area, which is decorated with members’ photos, awards, and trophies from sports competitions.For 300 yuan a year (but free for tho over 80, students, and the unemployed), each of the mostly middle-aged and elderly exerci fanatics gets their own key to the gym and can work out and socialize here anytime—if they don’t mind freezing in the winter and suffocating in the summer without air conditioning, or the w
ooden roof that always leaks when it rains.In 1988, Zhang Wei, the head sports coach for the national railroad system, founded the gym with about 20 fellow workers. Zhang’s job was to prepare workers to take part in inter-factory competitions, and many of the gym’s earliest patrons had trained and competed with him before. In 1956, Zhang won the first Beijing “Victory Cup” round-the-city running race, receiving a 45-kilogram halberd as a prize. The weapon has hung on the gym’s
of the neighborhood in the old days. He joined the factory in the early 1960s and witnesd its transformation from a few workshops in a cornfield into a local economic powerhou with over 10,000 employees.Now , former workers like Yang come to the gym after lunch with thermos flasks filled with tea. The stronger ones, like the gym’s current owner Xu Wei, jump right into pushing up barbells on the flat bench, while tho with slighter builds usually ea in with the lighter ttings on the chest press machines. In between ts, they fill the room with chatter about anything from the rising cost of eggs to speculations wall ever since, even through veral relocations.On May 12, 2014, Zhang pasd away after a protracted illness. Xu and gym members attended the funeral on a rainy day . “When Master Zhang was bedridden, he told me I had to take over the gym, and that he could only rest in peace if I succeeded,” Xu tells TWOC. Though he can’t lift the 45-kilogram halberd, Xu has carried the weight of this responsibility
, Li Shulin, 65,
works out his arms at Erqi Fitness Gym. He comes to exerci four
times a week.WHEN THE GYM FIRST
OPENED IN THE LATE
1980S, THESE FORGERS, CLAMPERS, AND ELECTRICIANS MADE ITS EARLIEST FITNESS EQUIPMENT FROM FACTORY SCRAPS.
presiding over the gym’s three relocations due to renovations and demolitions in the neighborhood.
By the 1980s, the Erqi Locomotive Factory was in decline. Around the country, state-owned industry was being dismantled and downsized. In later decades, Beijing’s commitment to regulate air pollution sounded
the death knell for factories within city limits. Despite this, Xu, who was talented in soccer and wrestling, was hired in 1981 by the soccer-obsd factory manager to play for Erqi full-time.
After a rious knee injury in 1985, Xu stopped playing soccer and took up fitness. He gathered clippings of muscular European and American men and women from newspapers and fitness magazines, which still adorn the gym’s walls today. Over the years, Xu has participated in four city-level bodybuilding competitions, with great success in the nior division.
In 1996, the factory issued a document encouraging workers to
find other livelihoods. A few tech-
savvy employees remained. Others
were cast into the muck and sand
to discover another way of living.
In 2004, Xu accepted a payout to
retire and officially left the state-
owned factory.
Without higher education or many
marketable skills, Xu had limited
job options. “I was quite lost,” he
confess. “In the past, the working
class was so powerful that we led
everything in the factory. But the
world outside the factory was very
complicated.” For almost ten years,
Xu lived off a modest pension while
working as a curity guard in parking
lots and hotels.
Nowadays, many disperd workers
are drawn back to the gym, partly to
keep healthy in spite of ailments from
old age (ranging from spinal nerve
problems to diabetes), but more for
the shared memories of the past and
the pleasant atmosphere.
Feng Jingchang—who given name
means “Beijing prosper”—began
working out here only a year ago, but
he had been an Erqi soccer teammate
of Xu’s for many years. In 1990, the
year he married, he forged dumbbells
for the gym. Erqi’s soccer team was
one of the top six teams in Beijing’s
major league. “We trained nine
months of the year. Every morning,
the other workers would go to the
workshop, but we’d go to the training
ground,” Feng says.
In 1984, China’s journey to the
final of the Asian Cup pushed the
nation into a craze over soccer. In
tho days, Feng claims, “there was
no one who didn’t play soccer.” To
him, Changxindian, where the Erqi
Locomotive Factory is located, was
the football capital of the world.
“I’ve known Ma Chengquan and
Dai Y uguang since we were young
children, and our families were
neighbors,” he brags. Ma later
became the chairman of
the Chine
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