A sight for sore thighs

A race to the summit of Mount Huangshan is a fitness test with a view, Gao Changxin finds.

Having groups of paunchy, middle-aged men race past me as they went up Anhui's breathtaking Mount Huangshan last weekend was humiliating enough. The fact that many of them were marching backwards-like some outtake from a Monty Python sketch or David Lynch movie-just added to my burning sense of failure and self-torment. As I heaved my body up a stone staircase surrounded by dagger-shaped rocks half-buried in mist, I tried to think up a decent excuse for moving at such a snail's pace. After all, it was only two months ago that I had been living in Hong Kong, rowing every weekend and hitting the gym regularly.

Already, life in Shanghai had taken its toll on my health.