Yesterday being a sunny spring day, I got up early and went to where the action is, where I knew I would find music and dancing and crowds of people. I did not go to an all-night club but to my neighbourhood city park.
Ritan Park, whose name means "Temple of the Sun" is like Dublin's St Stephen's Green with Chinese characteristics.
A city-centre oasis of grass and trees, it has weeping willows, ornamental lakes, arched stone bridges and artificial "mountains" topped with pavilions.
The park comes alive about 6 a.m. when the first Beijingers arrive for morning exercises, among which ballroom dancing has become very popular, especially with the middle-aged and elderly early-risers. People gather in little corners to perform the foxtrot and quickstep.
In one tarmacked space near the south gate, they strut back and forth with serious expressions and jerky head movements to the sound of tango music from a boom box.
In another open-air "ballroom of romance" on the east side, elderly couples glide gracefully round and round to waltz music.
Anyone can join in but must follow the instructions of unpaid dance teachers, who form the nucleus of each group. Masters of other forms of exercise like tai qi or qi gong use quiet spots where disciples can follow their slow, deliberate movements with utmost concentration.
There is room, too, for individual endeavour. A lone man stood among the pine trees on the artificial hills yesterday morning doing the "shout", emitting high-pitched cries like an owl as a way of relieving tension.
Close to where a group of old man had hung their songbird cages from a cherry tree, a man banged his hand on his head like a jack-hammer. Another swung a leg back and forth.
Near a lake-side pavilion, where a fat man was singing Chinese opera in a high-pitched voice, a slight figure rubbed his back against a tree trunk to commune with nature. In one little grove an intense man fenced delicately with an imaginary opponent, and in another six youths shadow-boxed in unison.
No one paid the slightest bit of notice to any of them, as Chinese people are not at all self-conscious about such things.
Even a lanky individual who could have come straight from John Cleese's "Ministry of Funny Walks" turned no heads as he passed by, shaking his legs in every direction.
He was followed by a couple of elderly men walking backwards, something which is supposed to be very good for the circulation.
The people who walk backwards in parks proceed on the same assumption which governs Chinese road traffic, if you don't look where you are going, other road users will automatically get out of your way, and it usually works.
Amid all this activity, something else was happening in Ritan Park yesterday morning, interfering here and there with the exercises.
Despite the fact that it was Sunday, dozens of workers were busy, as they have been for some weeks, putting down new paths, laying water pipes and erecting new bamboo fences.
They were cleaning an artificial pond which a park official told me would be stocked with crucian carp and blunt-snout bream for fishing. A large gang was labouring to complete a swimming pool beside a crazy-putting course. Like everything else in Beijing, the 450-year-old park is being upgraded.
But one can also see in the changes a new life style encroaching upon the old, one more attuned to a generation growing up on mixed Western and Chinese culture. There is a trend away from the oriental exercise culture.
Not so many years ago every work unit had compulsory work-break exercises, but this practice has largely been abandoned. About 80 per cent of the people who do morning exercises in parks are now retired citizens, according to a survey in the Beijing Morning Post.
Because they do less exercise, the working population, mainly the young and middle-aged, are becoming heavier, the survey found. Many suffer from less healthy hearts and lungs, and weaker legs.
Compared with 1994, the average weight of a male has increased by 3.6 kg and of a female by 1.2 kg. And oddly enough, the survey indicates, the average height has dropped by 3.89 cm in the same periods.
City medical official attribute the "poor health" of local residents to less physical exercise and eating fewer nutritious foods, and warn that diseases such as tumours, high blood pressure and diabetes are on the rise.
It is not only Chinese who need exercise, of course, and a few westerners like myself can be found in the park on some mornings. We can take whatever form of exercise we wish and no one will pay any attention - except jogging. That's the one exercise most Chinese regard as a really weird way of keeping fit.
And looking at the pained, sweating faces of those round-eyes who do jog, compared to the serene expressions of the Chinese dancing or walking backwards, I can only conclude they are right.