China 101
Square dancing
广场舞
Group dancing in public plazas and parks, mostly by retired women, a daily fitness-and-social ritual visible in every Chinese city and occasionally controversial for its loudspeakers.
Guangchang wu, square or plaza dancing, is the evening spectacle of Chinese public space: dozens, sometimes hundreds, of mostly retired women moving in sync to pop songs played through portable speakers. Any park, plaza, or riverfront at dusk will likely host a troupe or three.
For participants it is exercise, friendship, and a cure for the empty-nest quiet of retirement, and observers link its popularity to the social lives of a generation that came of age with collective activities. Estimates of regular participants run into the hundreds of millions nationwide.
Square dancing is also a civic flashpoint: noise complaints from nearby residents have produced years of neighborhood disputes, local regulations, and inventive compromises like bluetooth headsets for dancers. Abroad, the phenomenon is often one of the first everyday China scenes foreign visitors notice and film.