A 63-year-old Chinese man who only started learning ballet a decade ago has gone viral on social media as a living example that you are never too old to follow your dreams.
Growing up in a poor family in a village near Baotou, the largest city in Northern China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Liu Ziqing’s main focus was always on helping his family and putting food on the table. For him, dancing was a luxury. He ended up becoming a farmer but also worked as a street cleaner in order to make ends meet. But he never got over his love for ballet, and at age 53, he decided to become a ballet dancer.
Most people in their early 50s call themselves lucky if they can lightly jog a few times a week without suffering any pain, but ballet requires a degree of fitness and flexibility that are almost impossible to attain at a certain age without a lifetime of training. But Liu Ziqing wasn’t going to let such an unimportant thing stand between him and his dream.
Becoming a ballet dancer at age 53 wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, especially since most of his friends and acquaintances just didn’t understand why he put himself through this tough training at his age. But Liu Ziqing ignored them all with the help of his family, who always supported him.
Not only does ballet make him a happy man, but he is convinced that it has done wonders for his health as well. “In the past, I had stomach problems. After dancing regularly over the past decade, the stomach issues have mostly gone away,” the 63-year-old ballet dancer said. “When I am in this class, I feel like those young students, as if I have become young again.”
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