“Running is the new religion of the Chinese middle class.” That’s the view of Catherine Sun, intellectual property lawyer, mother of five and devotee of the notion that China has finally moved beyond the days when its national sport was, well, shopping.
“For 30 years people have really been motivated by greed and money, they haven’t looked at how to live a more meaningful life,” says Ms Sun, the first female Chinese runner to complete seven marathons on seven continents. “But in the past three to four years, running has become a religion for the Chinese middle class. Once you are economically independent, you think more spiritually, and in China there’s not much religion.” Pounding the pavements, she concludes, “has allowed the middle class to find something meaningful in their empty lives”.
Scarcely a decade ago, Chinese marathon organisers struggled to fill their starting blocks. Now, in the big cities, runners have to win a lottery to enter: 100,000 people applied for full or half marathons in Shanghai last year but only 23,000 were allowed to run. But Ms Sun wants to proselytise further afield: she aims to organise 100 marathons in small and medium-sized cities. Her goal is to get 1m mainlanders moving.