Yoga injects vitality into village in north China’s Hebei Province

Elderly villagers practice yoga in Yugouliang village, Zhangbei county, Zhangjiakou city, north China’s Hebei Province. (Photo courtesy of Zhao Zhannan)

In Yugouliang village, north China’s Hebei Province, elderly residents were practicing yoga, impressing many with their flexibility and strength.

Yugouliang, located in Zhangbei county, Zhangjiakou city, used to be a national-level poverty-stricken village. In 2015, the village had a total of 457 villagers from 193 households, and 254 villagers from 85 households were living below the poverty threshold, with a poverty incidence of 55.7 percent.

Over 60 percent of the impoverished villagers had fallen into dire straits as a result of old age and poor health. The number of permanent residents in the village was only around 100, and with most of them being left-behind elderly people and women.

In February 2016, a work group was dispatched by the Shijiazhuang Posts and Telecommunications Technical College, which is based in Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital, to help with targeted poverty alleviation efforts in Yugouliang village.

Lu Wenzhen, who was from the college and took up the post of first secretary in Yugouliang village, found that the local villagers still continued a tradition of sleeping on brick beds heated by fire. When they sat on the brick beds, they usually could be seen in a cross-legged position.

“An idea hit me that sitting cross-legged is a pose used in yoga practice, so I could organize everyone to practice yoga, and after their health was improved through yoga, these villagers could boost the labor force of the village when it starts to carry out poverty alleviation projects in the future,” said Lu.

Lu invited Jin Xiuying, who had been in charge of women’s affairs in the village, to mobilize the villagers to take part in the yoga program. At the beginning, fewer than 10 villagers were on board, and gradually more villagers joined the program, pushing the number of yoga practitioners in the village to 60 or 70.

To help promote the village, Lu would upload short videos showing the villagers practicing yoga to a WeChat account he ran. Thanks to his efforts, Yugouliang became known by net users as a yoga village.

At the beginning of 2017, the social sports guidance center of the General Administration of Sport of China contacted Lu and encouraged him to continue promoting yoga in the village. The center also sent yoga books to the villagers and hailed Yugouliang as “China’s first yoga village” on the website of the National Yoga Exercise Management Committee.

Having altered the situation in which local villagers had become impoverished due to their old age and poor health, Yugouliang started to develop industries to continue helping local villagers out of their impoverished state. The local government built a quinoa factory in Yugouliang and the factory has since been put into trial operations.

In February 2019, Yugouliang officially bid farewell to its poverty. The per capita income of previously impoverished residents there had risen to 13,790 yuan ($2,029.89) in 2021 from just 2,800 yuan in 2015.

Thanks to yoga, the health of the elderly villagers in Yugouliang has continued to improve and the industries in the village have maintained their robust growth.