Recreation
Sports
A fitness craze has swept the city in recent years with numerous gyms and fitness facilities appearing to cater to the growing tide of affluent Shanghainese and a fast growing foreign resident population. Many of these are foreign managed and offer comparable Facilities to those found anywhere in the world. Most of the big hotel shaves extensive and high quality fitness and sports facilities with swimming pools, steam baths, Jacuzzis, saunas, gymnasiums and massage services as well as tennis and squash courts, billiards rooms and bowling alleys.
As Shanghai is a city synonymous with business it is not surprising that an extensive number of golf courses have sprouted up around the city LO cater to the recreational, residential and social needs of their wealthy and well-connected members. It always helps to know somebody LO gain admission to the best clubs. The Shanghai International Golf and Country Club at Zhujiajiao in Qingpu County was the first golf course to open in the city for more than 40 years. Located 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of the city this Sino-Japanese-US venture has an 18 hole, par-72 championship course designed by Robert Trent Jones. The club also offers six all-weather tennis courts, a swimming pool and a cycle path. The clubhouse, built in 19th century British colonial style, features a Japanese restaurant, sauna, pro shop and bar.
Golf
There are numerous other options to play golf on world-class courses around Shanghai. Two of the most conveniently located clubs are the Thomson Golf Club in Pudong, to the east and the Tianma Country Golf Club set amongst the beautiful hills of Sheshan Lo the west of Shanghai. The Toinson Golf Club is an 18-hole championship course designed by Shunsuke Kaco and features, like most clubs, a wide range of five-star ascendant sports and fitness facilities. The Tianma Country Golf Club boasts a world-class 27-hole championship course as XX-L-11 as Californian-style residential villas and excellent recreational Facilities. The acclaimed Silport Golf and Country Club designed by Bobby J Martin, has a 27-hole facility with distinct southern Chinese landscape features, and is located on the shores of Lake Dianshan at Kunshan in Jiangsu province. The Sun Island International Club at Shenxiang in Qingpu district is an 18-hole facility designed by Nelson Wright Haworth with 30-bay driving and greens located in a lake. For those just looking to practice their swing there’s no need to go out of town as the East Asia Golf Club on Jianguo Xi Lu has a two-storey practice driving range as well as a good tennis facility.
Tennis
Tennis is another sport that Shanghai has taken to heart. There are fine clubs and public facilities around town. The Shanghai Racquet Club, at 555 Jinfeng Road, Town in the Minhang district, offers six indoor courts and seven outdoor courts managed by the Van Deer Meer Tennis University.
- The Xianxia Tennis Centre, located at 1885 Hongqiao Road offers five courts that are illuminated for night play.
- Conveniently located at 516 Heringshan Road inside the Regal International East Asia Hotel
- The Shanghai International Tennis Centre boasts two indoor and eight. Outdoor courts as well as a range of other sports facilities.
- The Pudong Tennis Centre inside the Yuansheng Stadium at 9 Yushan Road has 10 indoor courts each equipped with state-of-the-art roofs that can be opened for outdoor play.
More basic public outdoor courts arc to be Found at 1380 Central Fuxing Road and on the grounds of the Shanghai Stadium in the Xuhui district.
The city is also making a hit on the world tennis map and has in recent years hosted the Heineken Open and Tennis Masters Series matches that have seen the likes of Philippoussis, Agassi and Kournakova grace the town. Shanghai’s status as an international sporting arena was given a massive boost with the complexion of at formula 1 track at Anteing in Jiading district, which opened for Grand Prix racing in 2004.
Gym And Sports Facilities
The Chinese concept of fitness concentrates predominantly on health, while the western ideas of fitness focus on building body strength. Basically, there are 2 types of Health Clubs / Gyms: hotel clubs that open their membership to the general public and standard alone pubs in the main downtown districts. Shop around and compare rates, joining fees, and facilities.
In Shanghai, fitness clubs compete for popularity just like the hottest nightclubs.
Morning dawns in Shanghai. Hundreds of thousands of apartment doors open. Spry old-timers, as silent and punctual as the rising sun, slip out for their morning exercise. They don't head out to jogging tracks or gyms - rather, they exercise in gardens, concrete yards, and the streets. Each and every morning, they enliven this still-slumbering city of 17 million people with their tai chi routines, fan dances, backwards walking, couple dancing, and rhythmic stretching exercises. In China, it's the elderly who exercise the most.
Experts say that younger people hardly exercise at all. China is becoming modern and increasingly affluent at a breathtaking speed - and a growing number of people now commute to work by car rather than bicycle. The local one-child families consider food the panacea to all ills. The young spend their time glued to their desks at school anddoing homework. The army complains that most of the conscripts flunk their fitness tests.
Fitness Clubs
Shanghai now has 200 fitness clubs. In Shanghai, the country's trendsetter metropolis, fitness clubs battle for supremacy like trendy restaurants or nightclubs. Downtown Shanghai boasts dozens of fitness clubs, each larger and more impressive than the last. There are close to 200 in the entire city. The service portfolio offered to the residents of new high-rises and other residential complexes almost without exception includes a fitness center for the residents. Including these, it's estimated that the number of fitness centers in the city is about 2,000.
And there's no shortage of customers. Ruddy-cheeked people stream out of the Physical club located on Huai Hai Road, perhaps the most fashionable shopping street in Shanghai.
The clubs are packed with top-of-the-line equipment. In spite of this, many of the customers actually spend most of their club time in the saunas or reading fitness magazines on a couch. Many of China's fitness magazines focus on the trendiness of sports rather than the health benefits.
Fitness clubs are very much like nightclubs. Young people come to hang out in them. Customer turnover at Shanghai fitness clubs is about as high as in the nightlife scene - young people are eager to try new things and are always on the lookout for cheap offers, so it's not easy to get them hooked for long.
But Swete has confidence in the market, because fitness has broken through in other East Asian territories. The American chain California Fitness opened a club in Hong Kong in 1997, kicking off strong growth. Japan and South Korea are good markets for fitness club equipment, as is Taiwan, which has also been a major equipment manufacturer during the past couple of decades. Taiwanese equipment manufacturers hold over 50 percent of the market in China.
This year growth is anticipated in China from the multihousing segment (residential complex gyms) in particular, for which Premcor has developed new products. The lack of a functional debit system will continue to create business headaches for fitness clubs in the years ahead. Chinese banks are not networked and very few Chinese people have credit cards. In other words, customers have to pay for their full-year fitness club membership as one lump sum - a hefty outlay for the average Chinese.
But there are many who areprepared to fork out the cash. The ranks of the super rich are growing in China. Many clubs are building VIP sections for them. The fitness club business is also profitable in medium-sized cities - even as far as in the western province of Xinjiang - because competition has not heated up yet and there are plenty of wealthy people.