In the past couple of years, videoclips of young Chinese doing traditional fitness qigong     1     (flood) video sharing websites, among which     2     instructional video of Baduanjin, a form of fitness qigong has been played for more than 10 million times and received over 6,000 comments on Bilibili, a quality-video sharing platform     3     (target) young people.

Baduajin is one of the oldest health and fitness therapies in China, and it was     4     (original) created 800 years ago during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). The name, literally meaning “eight-section brocade”, generally     5     (refer) to how the eight individual movements characterize a silken quality to the movement of the body and its energy. Compared with more physically demanding sports such as the ballgames, swimming or gym workouts, Baduanjin is slow and usually accompanied     6     soft music,     7     it used to be considered as the exclusive sport for the elders.

No equipment is necessary and     8     requires very little space or, perhaps most importantly in our fast-paced lives, time. “I have been doing Baduajin for about four months, which makes me sleep better and get stronger. I owe big thanks to Baduajin since it gives me a much     9     (healthy) lifestyle,” a young netizen commented below the video. But not all people are suitable for practicing Baduanjin. Liu Xiaodan, an associate professor at Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, cautioned that people should always put     10     (safe) first when doing Baduanjin, and patients who are weak should not take up this exercise.

3 . As this year’s ski season got underway, Liu Zhihua joined the crowd at a ski resort and glided fluently down the piste(滑雪道). With only a brief break, she took a quick turn, got onto a chairlift and was ready for another round.

Liu has become a star at the resort in Urumqi. Dressed in her baby blue suit and white helmet, she blends in with the other ski enthusiasts. But in fact, she is the resort’s oldest skier, at age 87. Though a fluent skier now, Liu only took up the sport when she was 72. Up until then, like many old people, she would spend her days taking care of her grandchildren, watching TV or playing mahjong. Encouraged by her children, Liu got on the piste for the very first time in 2007.

“The first day was not easy. My waist and legs ached. But in the following days, I was able to walk on the skis,” Liu recalls. “After conquering the fear of falling, I became increasingly interested in it and got addicted as time passed.” Starting on the beginner slopes, Liu gradually advanced to intermediate runs, and has even got onto the advanced ones. “I’ve taken part in a competition twice. I didn’t do it for a medal. Finishing the competition without falling is enough for me,” she says. When asked about the difficulties she had encountered during her years of skiing, Liu recalls that she fell over while going down a slope due to a lack of experience. “But skill comes from practice. Just get used to it,” she says.

For Liu, skiing is also a way to keep herself young and lively. Despite being the oldest ski enthusiast at the resort, she thinks she is just as vigorous as younger skiers. “No one can tell your age when everyone’s in a ski suit and with snow caps and goggles on,” says Liu with a smile. “Health and happiness are the two things that doing sports. has brought to me,” she says. “I don’t think age has much to do with my mindset. Old or young, I have been brave and optimistic.”

5 . While the teams of the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar competed in the fields, it was worth noting that it was not only soccer that caught the world’s attention, but also the video assistant referee (VAR) technology. Like it or dislike it, the VAR is a part of football games today.

Many football fans question whether the system made the game better or if it added an unnecessary layer of complexity to the beautiful game as a number of debatable decisions were made involving the VAR — it slows down the game; the offside law sometimes becomes rigid. The introduction of the VAR means top-level football games are now easily affected by stoppages and delays with the on-field referee often waiting for decisions to be made by those in offices often far away from the stadiums.

Actually, the use of video match officials in football was included in the 2018/2019 edition of the Laws of the Game and was already used at the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Since then, the system has been applied in over 100 competitions worldwide.

Despite criticisms, FIFA considered the first use of the VAR to be a triumph, with referee committee head Pierluigi Collina claiming that 99.3 percent of “match-changing” decisions were called correctly at the World Cup—“very, very close to perfection”. Without the VAR, referees called 95 percent of the incidents correctly.

Not only football, sports tech to support a referee’s decision-making is widely adopted by other major sports in professional and Olympic games to assist referees to make the correct decisions. Tennis employs the Hawk-Eye Live system on competition courts, and the NBA has long used instant replay and other high-tech aids to make sure players are shooting within the time given by the shot clock in order for the referees to make the right call.

We should admit that sports tech is still not perfect in the field of sports events. People’s feelings are not towards those technologies themselves, but the current shortcomings of the application of the technology. However, fairness and consistency should not be a zero-sum option. Efforts should be made to further improve efficiency and reduce disturbance to beautiful games.