As a 22-year-old factory worker, 1958.

The legend of Hottest Grandpa began one March evening two years ago, during Fashion Week in Beijing. Hottest Grandpa, who is 80 now, with an unruly Confucian Vandyke, stood backstage as minions coiffed his corona of white hair and tenderized his hairless chest with baby oil, his pecs pulsating to a techno beat of their own. He was fitted with padded cotton pants, and the designer, Hu Sheguang, shared with him that evening’s plan. He—Hottest Grandpa—would perform a pantomime to begin the show, a scene in which he would battle a high wind, and then later would lead the female models out for their curtain call. No other male models, just him. And because the female models had their faces gift-wrapped, wearing little steampunk glasses and cat ears, his was the only face—and flesh—truly visible.

In that comparatively calm backstage moment before the walk, as he was being fussed over one last time, Hottest Grandpa wasn’t yet Hottest Grandpa. To the 1.4 billion people of China, he wasn’t even lao xianrou, a name soon affixed to him, which translates as, of course, Old Fresh Meat. He hadn’t yet established himself as the next frontier, the new nexus where sex and old age meet to look ageless and sexy again (prompting people on YouTube to praise Grandpa’s “gorgeous stomach”), nor had he given his TED-like talks about the walk. He was just Wang Deshun, he of a wife, two children, and a grandkid, who when he took his shirt off seemed as if he’d just blown in from frolicking in the Fountain of Youth with a bunch of Chippendales dancers.

How he came to be here was its own story. The designer, Hu, had been consulting with the show’s DJ, a woman named QQ, when QQ’s phone rang and a picture of her aged father appeared on the screen. Hu’s reaction was instant: He had to have him! What Hu wanted from Wang now was a bare-chested finale, Hottest Grandpa stripped to the waist, all flexed and baby-oiled. Wang nodded his head, sure, but what about the police? What if they charged him with obscenity?

“Let them,” said Hu. “They’ll have to catch both of us.” But Wang was asking the question from experience, for he’d been censored by the Chinese government back in the ’90s. All for his art.

Soon enough, the house lights went down, a swirling wind sounded, and the old man stepped onto the stage, lost in his hurricane pantomime. He acted out the story of a little kid trying to get home, or an old man who’s a little kid trying to get home, or something like that. It went on...and on. But it was arresting, and if anything, Wang knows how to move his body in a way that mesmerizes. His face was elastic with emotion, joy and fear and joy again. And he possessed an ancient authority, of 80 unflinching years on earth: He didn’t seem to give a shit if anyone got what he was doing. Art is art.

When it was over, the music shifted and the gift-wrapped models tottered down the runway on ridiculous dominatrix heels (also gift-wrapped), wearing shiny, crenulated sacks, heaps of fabric that looked like…heaps of fabric. The show seemed to resemble the aftermath of a supermodel overnight, with the ensuing pillow-blanket-and-Elmer’s-glue fight gone horribly wrong.

Except for what came next.

The models vanished, the music shifted from electro-trance to something appropriately loud and jarring and finale-making, a singer intoning, Sister, you need to make big, brave strides. And suddenly there he was, bursting down the runway, Hottest Grandpa leading the gift-wrapped cat-models! He walked just as the lyrics suggested: with big, brave strides. In the world of fashion, where the default runway expression is one of laconic, almost opioidal nonexpression, Hottest Grandpa appeared fierce. In a country where masculinity sometimes conveys itself as bland diffidence, he walked fast, with swinging arms, calling attention to himself. He glared at the crowd and jabbed one hand in the air to wave. His torso gleamed, toned and ripped. He was rolling thunder.

Wang gets done up like a Rodin, 1996. A “Living Sculpture” performance in 1994.

On the set of Warriors of Heaven and Earth Supplied by Capital Pictures

At the end of the runway, he pirouetted, his hair swirling around his head like some sort of interstellar solar cloud. If you watch the replay, you can tell he’s so amped, he over-rotates just a bit, catches himself, and begins to stalk back down the stage with his own big-cat intensity that erases the misstep. The whole thing is ten seconds of Oh-my-God-really?

Afterward, as they say, Wang went viral. Everything that ad agencies would love to have us believe—that eternal youth is possible—was right there before our eyes, in action. An 80-year-old on the catwalk, looking this fine? What was he eating? How did he keep in shape? Could we all look forever young? So came the lustful, leering commentary. What was Hottest Grandpa’s secret?