So­ca star Kees Di­ef­fen­thaller ac­cu­rate­ly de­scribes Trin­bag­o­ni­ans’ way of life – Fete till ah fallin’ down. Caribbean life isn’t for the faint of heart – phys­i­cal­ly. Due to all the events and par­ties, I be­lieved Tri­nis were the most ac­tive.

In the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na, how­ev­er, a blend of tra­di­tion­al med­i­cine and rig­or­ous health habits has been crit­i­cal in keep­ing their bod­ies strong and re­silient to keep on the go.

Ac­cord­ing to the coun­try’s Na­tion­al Health Com­mis­sion, Chi­na’s av­er­age life ex­pectan­cy in 2023 was 78.6 years - this be­ing an im­prove­ment from 71.6 in the year 2000. There are even pro­jec­tions of this ris­ing to over 80 years in 2035.

Though mod­erni­sa­tion and im­proved health­care have shaped Chi­na, tra­di­tion­al med­i­cine re­mains deeply em­bed­ded in their cul­ture.

Imag­ine ar­riv­ing at your favourite restau­rant, thirsty from a busy day. You’re served wa­ter, which you ap­pre­ci­ate—un­til you re­alise it’s un­ex­pect­ed­ly hot.

I must ad­mit I was tak­en aback by this. It was 33 de­grees Cel­sius out­side. But drink­ing warm or even hot wa­ter is part of the cul­tur­al prac­tices in Chi­na. An ice-cold soft drink, milk prod­uct or wa­ter would rarely come your way, as warm drinks are said to aid with di­ges­tion and me­tab­o­lism.

This year, Chi­na won 40 gold medals at the Sum­mer Olympics. But I would like to be­stow un­to them their 41st gold medal – for walk­ing.

A Trin­bag­on­ian knows no lim­it when it comes to danc­ing, chip­pin’ or any oth­er form of move­ment with their legs on Car­ni­val Mon­day or Tues­day.

But walk­ing seems to be a wel­comed dai­ly de­ci­sion here in Chi­na. In ma­jor and huge cities like Bei­jing, it is hard to say all your des­ti­na­tions are with­in a walk­a­ble dis­tance. But with the ease of tak­ing pub­lic trans­porta­tion and the na­tion­al safe­ty, peo­ple opt to walk most of the way.

Mul­ti­ple stud­ies show that Chi­na of­ten ranks the high­est in tak­ing more steps per day than peo­ple in any oth­er coun­try in the world. My smart­watch is a tes­ta­ment to this, show­cas­ing that on my ‘lazi­est’ of days, I raked up a min­i­mum of 6,000 steps.

I felt mo­ti­vat­ed on morn­ings or at late nights, to go for a walk. At any recre­ation­al ground I passed, I spot­ted peo­ple prac­tic­ing tai chi, an an­cient mar­tial art. Along with en­gag­ing in both re­lax­ing and com­pet­i­tive games of bad­minton. I even­tu­al­ly felt mo­ti­vat­ed and bought a bad­minton rack­et to join in on the fun.

Be­yond these cul­tur­al prac­tices, tra­di­tion­al chi­nese med­i­cine (TCM) plays a ma­jor role. Bei­jing Uni­ver­si­ty of Chi­nese Med­i­cine, for ex­am­ple, at­tracts thou­sands of young peo­ple ea­ger to com­bine tra­di­tion­al and mod­ern health­care in their ca­reers. The uni­ver­si­ty al­so at­tracts many from oth­er coun­tries, as TCM con­tin­ues to emerge in glob­al med­ical ap­proach­es.

I ex­pe­ri­enced this first-hand when some un­der­grad­u­ate stu­dents at­tend­ed to some of the vis­it­ing Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­can jour­nal­ists.

Words can­not de­scribe my amaze­ment when the young doc­tors-in-train­ing per­formed pulse di­ag­no­sis – tak­ing my pulse to de­ter­mine my health is­sues. The stu­dent was spot-on in de­ter­min­ing the health is­sue I was fac­ing at the time. A mi­nor is­sue for me, but an im­pres­sive skill from them.

Your pulse is a vi­tal way to de­ter­mine the en­er­gy of var­i­ous or­gan func­tions. By de­ter­min­ing where there are de­fi­cien­cies and im­bal­ances, a TCM prac­ti­tion­er can rec­om­mend the most ef­fec­tive treat­ment.

And while I al­ways knew of acupunc­ture, ear acupunc­ture was in­tro­duced to me as a method for re­leas­ing stress, re­duc­ing pain and even treat­ing ad­dic­tion. Spe­cif­ic points on the in­ner and out­er ear are be­lieved to cor­re­spond to var­i­ous or­gans and emo­tions.

The on­ly thing that didn’t amaze me was the ob­vi­ous pain. The dis­com­fort rather. But I can at­test– it worked.

One of the main things we should take away is that TCM is all about proac­tive mea­sures. You don’t need to be Chi­nese or live in Chi­na to em­brace a healthy, ac­tive lifestyle—change and ac­tion starts with you.