This paper presents a longitudinal narrative ethnography tracing the embodied experiences of Hippo, a young woman navigating clinical depression and a shifting relationship with physical activity over 6 years. Set against prevailing discourses that promote exercise-as-cure for mental illness, the paper does not seek to test efficacy, but to explore what movement does, emotionally, socially, and existentially, for someone living with chronic distress. Rather than offering generalisable claims or neat resolutions, this study privileges temporality, subjectivity, and storied complexity. Hippo’s journey unfolds not as a linear transformation, but through slow, recursive encounters with walking, swimming, running, and moments of stillness. Her initial curiosity about movement was sparked not by medical advice but by reading a running narrative. Over time, she experiments with exercise as a form of survival, not salvation. The story was co-constructed through diaries, unstructured interviews, conversational dialogue, fieldnotes, and collaborative storytelling. Grounded in storytelling and phenomenological sensibility, the paper argues that physical activity can foster a mode of ‘being-with’ depression rather than simply offering a route out. Hippo’s story highlights traits of slowness, coexistence, ambivalence, and embodied re-sensation, challenging dominant health narratives that assume movement leads to measurable recovery. In advocating for narrative as a method and as knowledge, this work contributes to growing calls for research that centres the lived, affective, and complex realities of those whose stories do not fit mainstream frameworks. It invites readers to understand movement not just as medicine, but as a mode of being with difficulty and of becoming.

Physical Education (PE) occupies a paradoxical position in China: constitutionally mandated yet persistently marginalised within a system that prioritises cognitive attainment and measurable academic outputs. This paper critically examines the ideological, cultural, and neoliberal forces underpinning this marginalisation, situating the Chinese case within broader global trends while attending to its distinct historical and philosophical contexts. We argue that its marginalisation is not a mere logistical failure but an onto-epistemological crisis rooted in a constellation of mutually reinforcing discourses. These include the enduring Chinese cultural hierarchy of ‘Zhong Wen Qing Wu’ (valuing the literary over the physical), which is amplified by the high-stakes Gaokao examination system; the influence of Western mind–body dualism, which devalues embodied knowing; and the ascendancy of a neoliberal utilitarianism that reduces education to market utility. Together, these forces create a destructive cycle that instrumentalises PE for narrow health metrics while stripping it of its broader humanistic value. Moving beyond critique, this paper proposes a strategy of ‘glocalisation’ as a robust path forward. We contend that a meaningful revaluation of PE requires a dialectical process: engaging with global scholarly turns toward embodiment while simultaneously reclaiming indigenous Chinese philosophical resources. Specifically, we articulate a framework grounded in Taoist concepts of the lived body (Shen), spontaneity (Ziran), and non-coercive action (Wuwei). The proposed framework displaces the dualistic, mechanical body with a processual, relational, and phenomenologically rich understanding of the lived body, offering a culturally resonant and philosophically robust basis for reimagining PE. By advancing this counter-ontology, the paper contributes to ongoing international debates on the epistemological status of PE and offers pathways for restoring its centrality in nurturing whole persons and fostering human flourishing.

This cross-sectional study examines how media pressure, feminist beliefs, and body image interact among well-educated young adult women in China, a demographic navigating a complex communication environment where globalized fit body ideals are reframed through state-led health media and consumerist social platforms. Data from 291 participants were analyzed using a moderated mediation model to test how feminist beliefs shape the pathway from perceived media pressure to body satisfaction. Findings revealed that the negative association between media pressure on body satisfaction was mediated by the internalization of both thin and fit ideals. However, feminist beliefs operated paradoxically: Stronger feminist identification heightened the cognitive internalization of media-promoted ideals yet conditionally buffered against their negative emotional impact. This protective effect dissipated at the highest levels of feminist beliefs. These results complicate the widely acknowledged view of feminism as a uniformly protective factor and highlight the cultural specificity of media influence in China’s hybrid communication ecology, where state biopower and neoliberal consumerism converge to shape women’s bodily self-understanding.

Elite athlete mothers are often positioned within competing cultural narratives: motherhood is framed as incompatible with high-performance sport, yet successful return-to-sport stories are frequently celebrated through ideals of the sporting ‘supermom’. This paper explores how motherhood is experienced by three Chinese Olympic medallists who returned to elite competition following childbirth within the Juguo Tizhi (Whole Nation System). Drawing on a feminist Foucauldian framework and narrative analysis, the paper examines how athlete-mother subjectivities are negotiated through disciplinary power, affective governance and technologies of the self within China’s state-sponsored sport system. The findings suggest that the maternal body becomes a site of bio-psycho-political tension, where postpartum embodiment, caregiving responsibilities and elite sporting demands converge. Participants’ narratives revealed how feelings of kuiqian (guilt and indebtedness) operated as a form of affective governance, transforming maternal separation and sacrifice into powerful motivations for continued athletic achievement. Simultaneously, motherhood functioned as a rupture that enabled athletes to renegotiate their relationships with sport, family and self, giving rise to processes of re-becoming and renewed forms of agency within, rather than outside, institutional power relations. The paper offers a culturally situated account of athlete motherhood and illustrates how maternal agency is continuously negotiated within a highly institutionalised sporting environment.