Governments all over the world are anxiously trying to improve the physical fitness of their citizens, and Taiwan is no exception. Big money is available for facilities and promotions, but adequate venues are unevenly distributed around the island, and the private sector shows little interest in plugging the gaps.
It is seven-fifteen in the morning when Chuang Chien-fa, 35, arrives home at his apartment in east Taipei after his daily jog. He punishes his exercise bike for a quarter of an hour, takes a shower, and heads down to the office. Chuang has been doing this routine for about a year now. Before that, the only exercise he took was an occasional game of golf with customers. "I'd been gaining weight but didn't much mind, until people started to tease me that I looked like a fifty-year-old pregnant man, and my jowls actually rippled when I walked," he says. "I forced myself to get up earlier and do some exercise, hoping to lose a few pounds, or at least not gain any more."
The results confounded all his expectations. Chuang no longer feels sleepy during the day, and although his appetite is keener than ever, he has lost about twenty pounds along with most of his "pregnancy." "My quality of life is much better, although there is one major downside," he says. "I need to buy new shirts and take in all my pants and suits."
At about the same time, Chen Yin-lieh and his wife, residents of the southern part of the city, are also arriving home from their early morning run. Chen is twice as old as Chuang and used to play for the ROC table-tennis team. "It started as a bit of fun and then suddenly it was for the country, but wanting to be fit and healthy never crossed my mind," he says. "But at my age, when I see my friends suffering from all kinds of ailments, I'm starting to appreciate the benefits of sports."
Chen is the only one among five brothers who made it to the national team, though all the boys took up table tennis in their teens. Their competitive days are long past, but occasionally the brothers still get together to organize family table-tennis tourneys with their wives and children, sons- and daughters-in-law, and, more recently, their grandchildren. Perhaps there is something in the genes, for most of them play a pretty mean game, and one of Chen's daughters almost made the national team. "My brother and I and our four sisters love almost every kind of sport," says his younger son, Chen Wen-chieh. "What's even better is that none of us has done as well as father, which means we can enjoy the game without training the hell out of ourselves."
Not every family can boast of having a parent who competed at the national level, somebody able to pass on good habits to the next generation. Fewer yet are likely to get up early in the hope of losing twenty-odd pounds with an early morning hike-and-bike session. But most people would probably agree, albeit grudgingly, that regular exercise is good for the health. Lu Kuang-lieh, director of the Sports for All Department of the National Council on Physical Fitness and Sports (NCPFS), notes that governments all over the world are endeavoring to improve physical fitness and quality of life through exercise.
To take two examples, in the late 1980s the US government noticed the way medical costs were spiraling as the population grayed, and called on Americans to exercise more as a means of improving their overall health. And the Japanese government estimates that the proportion of its national medical budget devoted to senior citizens will in crease from 34 percent in 2000 to 41 percent by 2010. Once again, the chosen solution was to adjust the country's national health policy to focus more on encouraging people to make exercise part of their daily lives.
Taiwan's society is also aging fast, coincidentally discovering that longevity, however much coveted, is not always a blessing. Every year, 25 senior citizens out of every 100,000 choose to end their lives, mostly for health-connected reasons. "Prevention is better than cure," Lu says. "In this case, the best prevention is to encourage people to get in the habit of regular exercise."
But although sports and physical fitness are starting to win recognition as important antidotes to the unhealthy side effects of modernization, some mindsets take a long time to reform. "When it comes to improving physical fitness, Chinese people tend to think in terms of proper diet and traditional herbal medicine," Lu says. "Perhaps it was because so many jobs in the past involved physical labor, and work itself was exercise enough. Now machines have substituted for manpower in many areas, but the former labor isn't being replaced by proper exercise."
Ma Yu-chiang, an architect who works in Taipei but lives in Taoyuan, some twenty miles to the southwest, is one of the many people whose jobs require more brainpower than physical strength. "I spent a lot of time in the pool and on the basketball court during my high-school and college days, but I've not done any serious exercise for nearly ten years now," he says. "I'd love to sweat--if I weren't this busy, weren't this tired, had the time to buy a pair of sneakers, if the facilities weren't so far away and, oh yes, if I happened to be in the mood. Since I started working, I guess I've successfully developed the habit of not exercising."
Many other people are of course only too familiar with these excuses. According to a 1999 white paper published by NCPFS, 15 percent of the island's adult population never exercise, 81 percent exercise occasionally, and less than 4 percent exercise more than twice a week for more than thirty minutes a session. Another NCPFS survey shows that 22 percent of the population exercise on a regular basis, but not necessarily for as long as thirty minutes a session. And even 22 percent is on the low side when compared to exercise-conscious nations such as Denmark, where one-quarter of the population joins sports clubs, or Japan, where one-third works out regularly.
In fact, the central government has been encouraging people to develop the exercise habit since the mid-1960s, but until recently it enjoyed little success. It was not until 1997, when NCPFS was set up to oversee and administer sports and physical fitness policies, that the situation started to improve. Before that, sports and physical fitness came under the jurisdiction of the Department of Physical Education at the Ministry of Education (MOE), which is now responsible only for school sports. "Just as we need the Council for Economic Planning and Development and the Council for Cultural Affairs to draw up the country's economic and cultural policies, we need a central body to devise sports and physical fitness policies for everyone," Lu Kuang-lieh says. "The establishment of such an agency at Cabinet level shows how seriously the government is taking this matter. It's being given a very high priority."
This translates into more money with which to do things. According to Lu, who used to be a specialist at the Department of Physical Education before he joined NCPFS, the MOE was originally handed an annual budget of NT$30 million (US$967,742) for the "Sports for All" campaign, with instructions to spend it on directly sponsoring activities as well as funding initiatives by local governments, schools, and private organizations. Now, however, Lu's department has NT$700 million (US$22.6 million) a year to do the job, and NCPFS can tap an additional budget for the construction of public facilities such as community sports parks and swimming pools. Altogether, the government spends NT$1.5 billion (US$48.4 million) a year promoting the Sports for All campaign--fifty times more than the original budget. "Money can't buy health," Lu says, "but it can sometimes 'bribe' people into starting to shuffle their feet around or stretch their arms a little."
In October 1997, a few months after it was set up, NCPFS started the "bribery" by launching a long-term "Sun shine, Health" project, with the goal of encouraging everyone to exercise whenever and wherever they felt inclined. The initiatives promoted under this program have been many and varied. For example, during the first five months of 1998, NCPFS commissioned the China Youth Corps and the various associations representing basketball, croquet, football, and volleyball, to arrange more than 6,000 games throughout Taiwan's twenty-three counties and cities. From then until August the emphasis shifted to young people's sports, such as inline skating, beach volleyball, and cycling. During the first six months of the same year, the Chinese-Taipei Croquet Association received a push in its endeavors to bring the sport to families and older people in fourteen counties and cities.
NCPFS has also been actively introducing new sports, and training instructors from communities or private organizations to promote them. This year it is the turn of surfing. Lu comments that Taiwan can be a strange place: Surrounded by water, it is home to some 22.5 million people, almost none of whom seem to be interested in water sports.
Since NCPFS is short of manpower, most of these activities are arranged by registered sports clubs, groups, and associations, of which there are currently more than a thousand in Taiwan. These non-profit private organizations have few financial resources with which to sponsor contests or activities, but they can seek money, expertise, and manpower from NCPFS, which continues to broaden sports' general appeal through its own website, a giveaway biweekly news letter, a monthly magazine, and weekend broadcasts on radio and TV.
The physically and mentally disabled were not overlooked either. Currently, Taiwan has three national sports associations for the disabled, and between them in 1999 they mounted twenty-one activities involving some 25,000 participants. Urgent steps are also being taken to improve sporting facilities in the remote villages occupied by Taiwan's indigenous peoples. In the past year, NCPFS has constructed or upgraded facilities at more than a hundred indigenous schools or communities.
Altogether, the Sunshine, Health project in its first year recorded more than 5 million person/event participations spread over nearly 70,000 events. This looks impressive, but do these statistics really mean that some people who had never exercised regularly before were inspired to change their habits? There are no reliable figures, only straws in the wind, but one particularly interesting indicator is the increasing popularity of new sports. University student Liu Chung-hui, for example, has just followed her classmates' lead and signed up for an aerobic kickboxing class at a health club. "I don't think of myself as a sporty type, but this is really fun," she says. "I'm not just exercising my body, I'm also letting out my stress through the kicking and punching. My boyfriend's worried that I may use him as a sandbag, though."
Another indication that people's habits may be changing for the better is the resurgence in popularity of some sports that were once widespread but had dropped out of favor. Bowling, for example, used to be the preserve of the rich, but now almost every evening of the week bowling alleys stage contests for individuals or teams composed of colleagues, classmates, and friends.
Billiards is also enjoying something of a comeback. "Ten, fifteen years ago, a well-behaved teenager would never walk into a poolroom, which was considered a den of iniquity," says Tuan Kuang-yu, manager of a poolroom in Chungho, Taipei County. "But now that several Taiwanese players have won high world rankings, people have started to change their minds."
Tuan opened his poolroom about two years ago because of the sport's popularity, and business has been good. Many students like to while away a couple of hours there after class, and some high schools and colleges even go so far as to sanction championships. In a sign of the way times are changing, some parents will even bring their children along on weekends or holidays. "If you're talking about sports where people sweat a lot and wear themselves out, billiards isn't even close," Tuan concedes. But he has his pride. "Walking around a pool table for an hour or two is at least healthier and more 'sporty' than sitting around a mahjong table," he argues.
Whether the growing popularity of these sports old and new is attributable to people getting richer, changing attitudes, simple curiosity, or vigorous promotion and advertising does not really matter. What counts is that there are more options than ever before, rendering it more likely that someone who wants to exercise will find a suitable activity. "Some sports are good for all, but people of different age groups and backgrounds need different types of exercise," Lu says. "An eighty-year-old grandpa isn't likely to go in for aerobic kickboxing, just as most kids won't be very interested in folk dancing at sunrise. All we hope is that everybody will find a sport they really enjoy."
Trying to encourage people to exercise is somewhat akin to selling a product. The marketing people first need to give it an enticing image. The key words here are "profit" and "cost," although not in quite their conventional meanings. If the perceived "profit" from a given activity is good, customers may just be willing to pay the "cost" involved: dipping into their wallets for a pair of inline skates or a tennis racket, sacrificing some sleep or TV time, rescheduling their day, and expending a lot of energy on learning new skills.
Sometimes, however, the "profit" derived from maintaining the exercise habit is not enough. Then what is needed is a "bonus," and with this in mind NCPFS came up with a plan to issue national sports cards enabling their holders to earn points for participating in community, school, or other sporting events. After collecting a given number of points, cardholders would be entitled to discounts when shopping at stores that had signed up for the scheme. Unfortunately, however, the plan had to be put on the back burner when the funds that had been allocated to it were diverted to assist victims of last year's September 21 earthquake. The project is currently awaiting the approval of the new administration.
There are other obstacles. According to NCPFS, Taiwan has some 63,000 sports venues. The Sunshine, Health campaign has already subsidized the construction of more than three hundred swimming pools, gyms, parks, and other community sports facilities. It has also provided lighting for various older amenities so that they can be used at night. This sounds all very fine and dandy, but the facilities are not evenly distributed throughout the island.
Taipei City and County, for example, have 11,000 and 16,000 sports facilities respectively. Kaohsiung City and surrounding Penghu County, on the other hand, have only 2,000 and 300. About one-quarter of the island's 63,000 sports venues are parks, but fewer than 70 of Taiwan's 369 townships have one. Looking at the problem in terms of population distribution, there are 9.7 venues for every 1,000 inhabitants of the small offshore island of Matsu, but only 1.2 venues for every 1,000 occupants of Taoyuan County.
One particularly efficient solution would be to open existing school sports facilities to the public in the evenings or on holidays, in exchange for modest fees. But according to NCPFS's Lu Kuang-lieh, many schools demonstrate little enthusiasm for this idea, because any money collected under the scheme would have to be handed over to the government. The school could theoretically get the cash back by listing an equivalent amount as an anticipated expense in the following year's budget, but that is of questionable legality, to put it mildly. Factor in the cost of paying overtime to school guards and maintenance staff, to say nothing of possible claims by people injured while on the premises, and it is hardly surprising that many schools would rather keep their doors locked.
Another problem is that although the Sports for All budget increased substantially when NCPFS was set up, it is far from enough to cover all the calls on it from private organizations wanting financial aid. The situation could be improved if commercial enterprises were prepared to help, but sponsorship has yet to catch on in Taiwan.
The reason, Lu believes, is that a corporate gift for sports purposes does not qualify for tax relief if it amounts to more than 10 percent of the donor's annual revenues. Plenty of companies are prepared to make very large donations to worthy causes, but they do so with an eye on the bottom line, so much of the corporate money theoretically available for sports goes to other purposes that qualify for a higher percentage of tax relief. Since fiscal regulations do not fall within the jurisdiction of NCPFS, the agency can only make representations and hope that the Ministry of Finance will see fit to revise the law.
Until then, the table-tennis-playing Chen family and formerly "pregnant" Chuang Chien-fa will keep on exercising regularly, because that is their habit and something they enjoy. But it is probably going to be some time before architect Ma Yu-chiang runs out of excuses for not going down to the basketball court.