黎明脚步又登《中国日报》:这是运动的早晨
昨天很热。非大伏即大雨,也许是现代都市工业文明和热效应,让极端天气增多。听说继北京雨灾之后,前天晚上天津也被泡在水里。我们哪里的城市也不敢松懈,七上八下,谁知道老天爷下一个想冲谁发飙呢。
今晨虽热,可风很爽。跑在街上,难得听见有树木哗哗的响声。青年路新铺的黑黝黝的柏油路面上,落满了毛绒绒的会飞的花絮,环卫工人正在小心的打扫它。我没有跑远,给路人约了个小会。见着落日公,直接进公园了。
这两天,把马可、qq糖和小草忙坏了。为了搞好8月8日的活动,给外地11个城市联系,确定邮址,分发衣服,跑来跑去,忙前忙后,而这全是挤时间做的。有的机关工作人员还纳闷:黎明脚步的人图个什么?有人给他们开资吗?他们落了什么好处吗?领导安排还嫌麻烦的活,他们为什么兴滴滴乐滋滋的去干?就像干自家的事一样?其实,有这种疑问的还真不少。可真正参与和融入黎明脚步之中的人,都是发自内心的把黎明脚步的事当成自己的事,大家获得的和经济利益毫无瓜葛。外人也许真不能理解,黎明脚步人的头脑就这么单纯。在这个物欲社会,大家的动力来自简简单单的健康和快乐。全国各地的黎明脚步一同开跑,一同欢呼,我们乐于看到这样梦中的场景得以实现,那要比给我们发钱还高兴。
早在2008年4月17日,《中国日报》记者郭娅莉采访并全英文发表过黎明脚步的消息,当时一个在德国做翻译的黎友并为我们做了全文翻译。时隔四年多,《中国日报》又专派记者安百杰、齐馨赴焦作和大家一起跑步,进行深度采访报道。昨天,这篇文字发表在全英文版的《中国日报》。现予以转发这两篇文字。这也是对大家在离开校园多年以后进行的一次english再考试。黎友、跑友、热心人们看看,试着翻译翻译,能否能读懂啊?四年前后的对比,是否也能更多的读出些什么啊?
''Dawn Footstep'' says it''s morning and time to run
Updated: 2012-07-26 08:01
By An Baijie in Jiaozuo, Henan (China Daily)
Li Xiaoshuan (second right) and other joggers join the Thousands in Healthy Run event on May 19 in Jiaozuo, Henan province. Provided to China Daily
Li Xiaoshuan''s alarm clock rings at 8 pm. He switches it off and dials three phone numbers - one to Canada and the other two in the United States. Then he hangs up before anyone answers the phone.
"It''s about 6 am in the US and Canada now and it''s time for my friends there to get up for their morning exercises," Li says.
He is not a hotel attendant, but he has been providing such "morning call" services to tens of thousands of people since 2007.
"The idea of waking up others began on April 16, 2007. A netizen asked me to wake him up after he read online that I have been doing morning jogs for about seven years," Li says. "I accepted his request and then, it dawned on me that I could ''morning call'' as many people as possible."
He has since been called "Dawn Footstep".
Li, 43, says he has been jogging every morning since 2001 to cure his insomnia caused by work pressure. He shared his morning jog experiences on some online forums to encourage others to lead a healthier lifestyle.
After receiving the first request to wake up a netizen, Li publicized his mobile phone number on an online forum and promised to wake up those who sent him a text message request.
"I posted this message: Don''t oversleep. Get up and run. I will wake you up if you send me a text message," says the civil servant, attached to the Jiaozuo forestry bureau in Henan province.
To his surprise, he received more than 50 text messages the next day.
Keeping to his promise, Li called the message senders, all of whom were strangers, at about 5:30 am the day after.
"Waking up others in the morning is like a ''gentle harassment''," Li says. "Some may feel uncomfortable in the beginning especially those who are used to sleeping in but in long term, it is good for their health."
More netizens started embracing Li''s idea and he won much praise online for his dedication in waking them up every day.
Encouraged by the positive response, and to reach out further, he promoted his ideas through Internet messaging tools such as QQ, a free instant messaging computer program in China, and more online forums.
Over the years, not only did Li receive more wake-up call requests from within China, there were also residents living in countries such as the United States, Singapore, Germany and Australia, who asked for his service.
But, Li soon found it overwhelming to make hundreds of phone calls every day, and decided to recruit volunteers to share his responsibilities. He posted his recruitment advertisement online and was heartened when scores came forward. As of mid-July, Li says he has about 10,000 volunteers nationwide.
These volunteers, each with about 10 to 15 phone numbers, make their calls between 5:30 am and 6 am every morning. They hang up the phone before the calls are answered to save on both time and telecommunication expenses.
Xiao Yu, a 27-year-old blind man in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, became a "dawn messenger" in November 2010 after he heard a radio report about Li''s endeavor.
"Waking up others in the morning has given me a sense of self-fulfillment," Xiao says. "My ''receivers'' always send me greetings during Spring Festival and other holidays."
To publicize their services, Li and other "dawn messengers" have organized teams to participate in nationwide marathons.
Li''s efforts to promote morning jogs have even won the support of the Henan government, which named one of the city''s newly-built parks "Dawn Footstep Park" in November 2011.
Zhao Jianjun, vice-mayor of Jiaozuo city, says "Dawn Footstep" has become a brand name associated with the city.
To date, the group boasts of more than 250,000 members worldwide.
"China ranked top with the highest number of gold medals during the Olympics in 2008, but that doesn''t mean that Chinese people have better physical health compared to others," Li says. "I will continue with my gentle harassment to wake up as many people as possible to promote a healthier lifestyle."
Qi Xin contributed to this story.
anbaijie@chinadaily.com.cn
(China Daily 07/26/2012 page20)
Volunteers take up call to hit the road running
Updated: 2008-04-17 07:20
The people are speaking - and they want to jog.
More than 30 people from across the country have lent their voices to the call to run, first issued by a netizen and jogging enthusiast called Dawn Footsteps last April.
They are called the "dawn envoys".
By the end of last month, more than 600 people around China had answered the call by taking part in the morning jogs.
Though they are running in different places, these joggers were all persuaded by Dawn Footsteps.
"Do not sleep in anymore, and let me call you to jog," the netizen wrote last year on an Internet posting.
Having been a regular morning jogger for seven years, Dawn Footsteps has used his experiences to encourage people to get healthy by going for a run.
When interviewed by Dahe Daily, the 40-year-old man from Jiaozuo, Henan province, who said he would preferred to be known by his online alias, said he was good at sports in school, but as an adult suffered from insomnia because of the stress of work. After performing poorly in a 1,000-m race in a company sports meet seven years ago, he decided to refresh himself in the fresh air of dawn.
When friends heard that he had been getting up every morning to run, they all sighed with envy and then asked him to call them so that they could join.
After a couple of days of calling his friends every morning, he was struck by inspiration - he should widen the call.
He set up a volunteer service online for people who wanted someone to wake them up 5:30 am (6 am during the autumn and winter) for a morning run.
Curious about this new "medical plan", many slugabeds around the country "booked" wake-up calls.
The program caught on quickly, and people in different parts of the country soon formed teams to take part in single "dawn actions".
A netizen in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, recently sent him a message to say how much he appreciated receiving the calls every day.
As the number of runners grew, Dawn Footsteps decided to group all participants into 10-people teams, each with its own dawn envoy in charge of calling teammates.
He also set up a blog and writes a running diary, which has a daily readership of more than 1,000. His goal is to encourage others to get out of bed and run for a more vigorous life.
Since reports of the campaign were published early this month, nearly 3,000 people have sent messages asking for wake-up calls, far outstripping the ability of Dawn Footsteps and his envoys to keep pace.
Dawn Footsteps told China Daily that it will take about a month to arrange to help everyone.
"But we still welcome more people to join us by sending messages to 13938163156. And it would be great if you wanted to become a dawn envoy," he said.
Dawn Footsteps (middle) goes for a jog with his followers. Courtesy of Dawn Footsteps
China Daily
(China Daily 04/17/2008 page5)
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