What this site is
Fitness China is a long-form documentary archive. Each story follows one person — an athlete, a coach, a rival, a pioneer — through the era they lived in. We are not a news site. There are no scores, no transfers, no daily updates. There are only stories, told at the length they deserve: the boy from Shanghai who stopped a nation; the diver from a Guangdong village; the coach who rebuilt a team from nothing.
The People's Tribune model is the closest comparison — except that where they publish first-person accounts, we publish researched, third-person narratives. That makes our credibility question different: who wrote this, and why should you trust it? The rest of this page answers that question.
What we cover
People whose sporting lives are significantly connected to China: athletes, coaches, rivals, and the figures behind them. Stories are organised across five layers — the icons of Chinese sport, Olympic stories, sports legends, forgotten figures, and the people behind the athletes — and indexed by sport and by era.
How every story is researched
Each story begins in the Chinese-language archive, which is far richer than the English record. Our process, story by story:
- Collect. We gather original reporting, biographies, memoirs, and contemporary accounts — in Chinese first, then English.
- Cross-check. Claims are verified against multiple independent sources. Where sources conflict, we say so in the story rather than silently picking a side.
- Separate fact from interpretation. What happened is stated as fact; why it happened is clearly framed as interpretation.
- Publish sources. Every story ends with a "How this story was researched" section listing its key sources, so readers can follow the trail themselves.
Illustrations are original line art — never copied photographs — which is both a copyright decision and a visual one: this is an archive, not a news wire.
What we will not write
- Sports news, scores, transfers, or daily updates.
- Fitness advice, training guides, or equipment reviews.
- Ranking listicles ("10 Best Chinese Athletes").
- Propaganda — no empty praise, no national slogans.
- Wikipedia-style biographies that reduce a life to a timeline.
We can write about success and failure, controversy, injury, retirement, family, and the systems people grew up in. People matter more than positions.
Our principles
- People before medals.
- Stories before news.
- Research before writing.
- Relationships before isolated pages — every story links to the people and eras around it.
- Build slowly, build permanently.
Have a story tip, a correction, or a question about our methods? Get in touch.