You are walking through a Beijing hutong at 8 a.m. A delivery driver has parked his scooter, unclipped his insulated bag, and is now in a full deep squat on the sidewalk, eating a steamed bun. Across the street, an older man in slippers is in exactly the same position, watching the alley. A cleaning lady, a security guard, two college students, and a man on his phone are all within ten meters, all in deep squat, all perfectly comfortable.
If you grew up in the United States, Britain, or Australia, you cannot hold this position for thirty seconds. Your heels lift, your calves burn, and you fall backward. The Chinese call this posture �(dūn), and most people across East, Southeast, and Central Asia grow up holding it the way Westerners hold a chair.
Quick answer: full-body weight on flat feet, heels down, hips below the knees. Chinese people who grew up sitting on chairs as children and teenagers can do it; most Westerners, who grew up sitting on chairs with feet flat, cannot. The squat is also a public posture because Chinese street life is built around low seating, sidewalk stalls, and tearoom and mahjong tables that are short, not tall. Today the posture is still everywhere, even in cities where chairs exist.
A short history of why this posture became universal
For most of Chinese history, ordinary people did not own chairs in the modern sense. They sat on raised platforms (� tà ), on woven mats, or on the ground itself. From the Tang dynasty onward, chairs became common in the south and then slowly moved north. Even after chairs were widespread by the Ming dynasty, the floor was still the default for working, eating, and waiting. The deep squat kept the spine aligned, kept the feet flat for balance, and worked for almost any height.
Several other cultures developed the same posture. From rural India to rural Russia, the full squat is the universal “I am here for a while” pose. The difference in China is that the posture never went away in cities. As recently as the 1990s, factory workers squatted in their breaks for lunch, taxi drivers squatted while waiting for fares, and street cooks squatted over charcoal stoves for ten hours a day. Each generation still teaches it to the next, even if the modern city mostly has chairs. The same low posture shaped old courtyard homes and siheyuan life, where the floor was where most of the daily work and waiting happened.
The fitness angle, which is honest, not mystical
Physical therapists call this the “deep squat” or “Asian squat.” Three things make it possible:
- Ankle dorsiflexion. Your shin has to travel forward over your toes while your heel stays glued to the floor. People who sit cross-legged, kneel, or squat as kids keep this range. People who sit in chairs from age two lose most of it.
- Hip mobility. The hips need to drop below the knees with a neutral spine. Most Western adults can no longer do this without tilting the pelvis.
- Calf and hamstring length. Tight calves are the most common reason Westerners fall backward when they try.
Western fitness coaches have spent the last decade re-adding this exercise to mobility routines for a reason. It opens the hips, mobilizes the ankles, and reaches muscles that chairs do not use. A thirty-second hold has been shown to improve balance in older adults and reduce the risk of falls. The posture has become part of the wider Chinese fitness and wellness boom in parks and gyms, sitting alongside qigong, jogging circles, and square dancing.
Where you will see the squat in modern China
In daily life, you see it in:
- Construction sites, factory floors, and farm fields, where workers rest and eat
- Sidewalks and street corners, especially for delivery drivers, retirees, and cleaners
- Train platforms, where it is the polite way to wait if the platform is full
- Outdoor mahjong and chess tables, which are usually under 50 cm high
- Around school gates after pickup, when parents wait in groups
- Old neighborhoods at dusk, when older residents gather to watch the alley
You usually do NOT see it in offices, malls, or modern restaurants, where chairs are normal. The squat lives in the spaces between formal seating.
Common foreigner mistakes
Three things worth knowing before you try or comment on this:
- Do not film it for laughs without context. To an older Chinese person being filmed in deep squat, it can read as mockery of how they live. They are not performing. They are resting.
- Do not call it “primitive.” It is a posture used by surgeons, athletes, and yoga teachers. The word is condescending in any setting.
- Do not try to hold a deep squat in brand-new shoes on a wet tile floor. The first attempts often end with someone sliding. A yoga mat or flat ground is a kinder place to practice.
What to do if you want to learn the Asian squat
If you cannot hold it yet, the path is short.
- Start with feet shoulder-width, toes turned out fifteen degrees.
- Hold a doorframe for balance and let your hips drop, aiming for heels down.
- Ten seconds a day, three times a day, for two weeks. Most adults get to thirty seconds after that.
- If your ankles are the limit, walk-outs and couch stretches help.
- Once you can hold it for sixty seconds, the public posture will start to feel natural.
Travel tips that come from this habit
A few practical notes for visitors:
- Public squat toilets are common in older train stations, parks, and rural areas. The posture is exactly the squat you just practiced.
- Sidewalk breakfast stalls often have no chair. The vendor expects you to eat standing or squatting with the bun in one hand.
- You will often see lines of squatting delivery drivers outside restaurants at meal hours. They are not protesting anything. They are waiting for their next order and saving their knees.
The squat is one of the oldest body postures in East Asia, and one of the most useful things a tourist can pick up in a week. It is also one of the smallest, quietest cultural tells you can learn without a word of Chinese.
Related reading
More on this topic from TodayChinese:
- Square Dancing in China: How Public Parks Became Evening Dance Floors �same public-park culture, different rhythm
- Chinese BBQ (Shaokao): Skewers, Smoke, and the Night Market �most evening skewers are eaten standing or in deep squat
- Chinese Night Markets: Street Food, Shopping, and Social Life �the culture built around low stools and ground seating
- Chinese Festival Calendars: Lunar Dates and Traditions �where crowds gather, sitting space vanishes, and squatting takes over
Useful from the TodayChinese family:
- Chinese Tattoo Checker �check the real meaning before you ink a Chinese character
- Chinese Personal Name Checker â€?make sure a Chinese name’s meaning and pronunciation are right
