The Contemporary Fitness Lifestyle Concept in China. A Cultural Transfer from the United States?

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Sociology - Culture, Technology, Nations, grade: 1,3, University of Passau (Professur für Amerikanistik / Cultural and Media Studies), language: English, abstract: This paper is focused on the cultural transfer of contemporary American fitness culture into the Chinese environment. In what respect does the current state of the contemporary Chinese fitness culture reflect this process? Furthermore, cultural implications will be analyzed as well as the question about the shape of the cultural transfer is going to be answered: What part of the transfer is ¿literally¿ adopted from the United States, what parts of the culture are reinterpreted, what is distinctly Chinese?

To achieve this rather ambitious goal in this fairly limited scope, it is going to be explored what makes the fitness lifestyle as culture unambiguously American by looking at its historical roots and cultural features, before a snapshot of the adaption on Chinese soil including the determining cultural idiosyncrasies will be analyzed in depth. As the thesis is working with the framework of cultural transfer as well as it is exploring a concept of lifestyle, these two concepts will be initially defined to clarify what is going to be discussed subsequently.