Vino teaches yoga at 5:30 am every morning at Changxing’s Plum Blossom Park

"Inhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; exhale..." Early in the morning, in a yoga studio in Changxing county, Huzhou city, an Indian man named Vino is teaching yoga to students in his clumsy Chinese. The studio was fully packed with yoga students, all of whom had been attracted here by Vino’s reputation.

Vino is a senior yoga instructor in India and has been working as a yoga instructor in New Delhi before. In 2014, he was introduced to China via a friend. He has worked as a yoga instructor in many cities, including Beijing, Xiamen, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. Two years ago, he came to Changxing on the south shore of Taihu Lake and was instantly attracted by its beauty. The clean and tidy streets, the warm and kind citizens … everything made him feel comfortable.

Vino is a vegetarian. Because he did not know how to speak Chinese, he found it most difficult to feed himself when he first came to Changxing. Fortunately, his colleagues and boss at the yoga studio helped him a lot. They would accompany him to eat out at a restaurant or buy food from a shop, and they taught him simple Chinese. “In India, it’s impossible for employees and bosses to go out shopping together; there is a very strict caste system in place in India,” said Vino. In Changxing, on the other hand, Vino feels that he is treated equally with everybody else, and he hopes to stay longer here. Vino says the two years in Changxing so far is the best time of his life.

When he first came to China, Vino was not used to eating Chinese food. After arriving in Changxing, he slowly learned to eat hot pot and found that vegetables such as eggplants and tomatoes were also delicious with curry. He now cooks two dishes for every meal, one Indian and one Chinese. “The cultural integration between China and India starts with breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day,” he said jokingly.

Vino loves Tai Chi. In his free time, he always wakes up at 6:00 a.m. and goes to the downtown square to learn Tai Chi from the elderly. Vino believes that yoga and Tai Chi have many similarities and they both are aimed at “gathering strength”. He hopes that through his efforts, he can combine Tai Chi and Yoga into a popular kind of sport.

“Nowadays, Delhi has been heavily polluted, and I prefer the clear waters and lush green mountains of Changxing.” This is often repeated by Vino whenever he teaches yoga to his students. He feels that yoga must be practiced in an elegant environment in order to achieve the perfect state of “unity of heaven and man as one”.

In China, many people think that yoga is a girls’ thing. Actually, yoga was invented by Indian men. In India, men do yoga every day, and that is why Vino was determined to become a yoga devotee since he was a child. After Vino came to China, he learned about the ancient and glorious Chinese civilization and became its admirer. Through yoga teaching, he is willing to introduce Indian culture to more Chinese people, and he also hopes to deliver the original Indian yoga to Chinese people, a sport played with emotion and close to the heart.

It has been no more than three years since Vino came to Changxing, but he has already fallen in love with the place. He likes every piece of grass and every tree here, and he loves the people here. He hopes that one day he is able to settle down here in Changxing.