On February 11, Zhong Nanshan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, accepted an exclusive interview with Reuters in Guangzhou. In the interview, he said that we had encountered three coronavirus attacks in the 21st century: The first was SARS virus in 2003, and the second was MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) in 2015. This was the third time, new coronavirus in 2019.
Under the camera, 84-year-old Zhong Nanshan’s body is still tough. 17 years ago, he was fighting in the first line of the fight against SARS. Before that, he rushed to Wuhan to fight again at the forefront of epidemic prevention. Zhong Nanshan, who was already a year of death, was in a state of unabated health. He once said, “exercise plays a key role in keeping me healthy.”
In 1936, Zhong Nanshan was born in a doctor’s family in Nanjing. His father Zhong Shizhen was a famous pediatric expert in China, while his mother Liao yukin was one of the founders of Guangdong Cancer Hospital. Influenced by his parents, Zhong Nanshan was admitted to Beijing Medical College in 1955, that is, today’s Peking University Medical College. In the past ten years, Zhong Nanshan led the team to conduct systematic and thorough research on four respiratory diseases, including large-scale epidemic respiratory diseases, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer, and gained international recognition.
When talking about Zhong Nanshan, we all know his great achievements in the field of prevention and treatment of respiratory infectious diseases. But few people know about his personal life. In fact, Zhong Nanshan was still an athlete when he was young.
△At the first National Games, Zhong Nanshan broke the national record of men’s 400-meter hurdles at that time.
In 1956, Zhong Nanshan participated in the Beijing university sports meeting as an athlete representative of Beijing Medical College due to his outstanding sports achievements. He took the crown of the 400-meter hurdles in the sports meeting. Today, there are still several sports records set by Zhong Nanshan in Beijing Medical College that no one can break. In 1958, Zhong Nanshan, who was in junior year, was transferred to Beijing sports training team to prepare for the first National Games to be held in 1959. at the first National Games, zhong Nanshan broke the national record of men’s 400 m hurdles with a score of 54.02 seconds.
△Zhong Nanshan set a sports record in Beijing Medical College.
Zhong Nanshan’s family is also a sports family. His wife, Li Shaofen, is a basketball player and the first batch of athletes sent to the Soviet Union to study by Premier Zhou Enlai and marshal he long after the founding of New China. Li Shaofen joined the Guangdong team in 1951 and was elected to the national team in 1952. His national team won the women’s basketball championship in the emerging power games in 1963and the women’s basketball championship in France’s “Four countries” in 1964.
△Zhong Nanshan’s wife Li Shaofen (right).
Zhong Yuyue, the daughter of Zhong Nanshan, was an excellent domestic swimmer in the 90’s of last century. Zhong Yuyue’s husband, American felilon, once participated in the Men’s Basketball League of American universities. Zhong Yude, the son of Zhong Nanshan, is a urological doctor in Guangzhou First People’s Hospital and is also the main force of the basketball team in the hospital.
In 2005, Zhong Nanshan, who was nearly 70 years old, also served as the main force of the hospital basketball team and enjoyed the fun of sports with young people. However, Li Shaofen is often the referee of basketball matches.
△The video of Zhong Nanshan participating in the basketball game.
When I was young, I loved sports and kept the habit of sports all the year round, which made Zhong Nanshan still tough even though he was 84 years old. He said: “Exercise is just like eating. It is a part of life. We need to establish a concept that we need to exercise for a lifetime so that we can enjoy a better quality of life. The greatest success is to live healthily.”
In order to make normal exercise more convenient, Zhong Nanshan has arranged a simple gym at home, including dumbbell, spinning, treadmill, chest expander and other commonly used fitness equipment. Even on a business trip, he would take chest expander with him and do some simple strength exercises.
△Zhong Nanshan exercises at home.
In an interview with the media, Zhong Nanshan once introduced how to exercise at home: “go fast and run on the treadmill first, which takes about 20 to 25 minutes. Then pull, and then do 2 to 3 parallel bars, each group 15 to 20 times. Then do sit-ups, and finally do horizontal bars.” Because of busy work, Zhong Nanshan exercises about 3 to 4 times a week.
Although the movement has been like a day for decades, Zhong Nanshan never grudges how much exercise he must do. “If you finish the goal, you will not do it, not do it, but stop it. It is very important for me to maintain physical fitness at this age, not to enhance my physical fitness.”
Good physique is the premise of resisting diseases. One of Zhong Nanshan’s suggestions for preventing respiratory infectious diseases is to strengthen exercise and improve their immunity.
Zhong Nanshan said, “Now many young people, it is because they have not developed a correct lifestyle that the body will have various diseases and organs will age faster.” Healthy lifestyle and scientific physical exercise benefit people for life. Therefore, it is particularly important to choose a sport you like and stick to it for a long time.
For this reason, Zhong Nanshan once proposed in an interview with Liberation Daily that running is one of the best ways to improve the physical quality and resistance of office workers and young students. “The best way for urban residents to exercise is walking or running. Swimming is also very good. If there is no condition, you can do indoor equipment exercise.”
“The sport I myself used to engage in was middle distance running, and I had the habit of running and exercising 70 years ago. Of course, when I was young, I used running as a competitive sport and started jogging and fitness when I was older.” In an interview with Guangzhou Daily, Zhong Nanshan said, “I haven’t run a full or half marathon myself, but I often run a distance of about 5 kilometers.” (Wang Jianbing)