

With the recent smoggy and snowy weather, if you live in northern China, now might be a good time to start thinking about finding a fitness hobby you can do indoors. One option that is growing more and more popular among young woman in China is pole dancing.

In the basement of an office building outside of the Third Ring Road in Beijing, a group of young women from all over the country come together in one classroom to learn the art of the pole.

In China, pole dancing still carries the stigma of being vulgar, so many of the girls that attend classes here haven’t yet told their parents about their new hobby. Instead, they take the money they earn from their jobs and secretly enroll in courses.

The women are mainly there for three different reasons: The first group sees pole dancing as a fun and effective way to stay fit. The second group take the lessons more seriously, hoping to dance competitively and eventually join the animal rights conscious and award-winning national team. While the final group hopes to start earning some extra money via their pole dancing skills.

Check out some pics from their training sessions and see if this is the kind of thing for you (Remember: No pain, no gain. Sometimes people will have to stand on your butt.):























While this photoseries focuses only on young, attractive women, pole dancing has started to spread to other demographics as well like elderly women searching for health and happiness and Monkey Kings searching for who knows what:

Oh look! It's a pole-dancing Monkey King! Posted by Shanghaiist on Wednesday, November 18, 2015

[Images via NetEase]