Hilary Fan, 21, the youngest boxer at the Shanghai Fight Night. (Photo by Gao Erqiang/China Daily)
Forget the lipstick, the mascara and that lovely new dress, but do bring those gloves with you-we're off to the gym for a few rounds of boxing.
As white-collar boxing becomes popular in China, women seem to be just as willing as men to dish out jabs, hooks and undercuts-and, of course, to be on the receiving ends a way of becoming or staying lean and fit.
Unlike the unsanctioned, subterranean brawls between men depicted in the 1999 cult Hollywood filmFight Club, these fights are out in the open for all to see, and indeed for the promoters the more people who see themthe better.
One of these promoters is China Sport Promotions (CSP), which stages fights in big mainland cities and in Macao and Taipei.
It was founded in 2012, and the first fight was held in Hyatt on the Bund in Shanghai, drawing 320 spectators who donated more than 80,000 yuan to charity. CSP's most recent event, Shanghai Fight Night 2015, in December, drew more than 800 spectators.
As the crowdswatching these bouts grow, so does the number of boxers, manywomen among them.
"Between 2,500 and 3,000 women have signed up for boxing classes with us, many in the last two years," says the company's founder, Shane Benis, who also runs the Golden Gloves Boxing Gym in the Jingan district of Shanghai.
Half those who use the gym are women, he says, from all walks of life, including office workers, businesswomen and fulltime mothers. Their average age is 29 and about half are Chinese.
"Boxing has become a very popular way for women to get into shape," Benis says."Countless celebrities are promoting the sport in the West, and this has directly affected the number of women here willing to give the sport a go."
Compared with eight or nine years ago thenumber is "staggering", he says, andhe is confident itwill continue to grow.
Numerous places in Shanghai such as Will's Gym, Tera Wellness Club and Tide-Caller have started to offer boxing classes. The craze has also spurred Gong Jing, a formerwomen's boxing champion, to set up Shanghai Princess Women's Boxing Club, believed to be the first women-only boxing gymin China.
And it is not just women in the likes of Shanghai and Beijing who are donning boxingg loves; they are doing the same in second tier cities such as Suzhou, which hosted its first white-collar boxing event in November.
