RHYTHM BY THE RAILWAY: Residents living near the railway station in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, gather at the station's square every day to dance together (HAN CHUANHAO)

She heard the phrase for the first time from her grandson, who learnt it from a series of news reports about how senior Chinese women in Chinese communities overseas dance.

"I was confused when I first heard the name of the dance as we didn't dance in a square, it should be called park dance," said Lin.

There are about 30 women in Lin's dancing group. They gather at 7 a.m. in the park every morning and the organizer, who carries a portable sound system, charges 30 yuan ($4.76) each month. The organizer also gives simple instructions to the new members.

When Lin joined the group six years ago, the music they danced with were mostly old songs from the 1980s or even earlier, though now they even dance to modern pop hits.

Square dancing can be traced back nearly 30 years to public discos in the 1980s. With the introduction of the reform and opening-up policy, dancing in public gained growing acceptance. By the late 1980s, this form of exercise had become a common scene across the parks of all China's big cities.

"The movements are simple and easy to learn," said Lin. "You don't need to spend much time memorizing the dance. Just go along with the music."

"Square dancing is a good way to get some exercise in the morning and it enriches senior people's lives," said Jin Xing, a famous dancer in China. "Groups of people dancing together happily in parks every morning is a sight unique to China. I think other countries could benefit from following our lead."

In fact, China's seniors seem to be eager to spread this small slice of culture. There have been reports of old Chinese women dancing in New York's Sunset Park, Moscow's Red Square, and in front of Paris' Louvre Museum in recent months and in the photographs, the dancers, who dress uniformly, are all dancing with a glowing smile on their faces.

Conflict

Unfortunately, those who have reacted to the dancers have tended not to share their smiles, but rather wear a frown. People living nearby have complained about the noise, and in New York, the square dancers were even confronted by local police to get them to turn the volume down.

Similar conflicts occur in China all the time. When dancers are unable find a park or an open area far from their residence, they choose an open space in their housing community.

"It gives me a headache every time the music starts downstairs at night," said a resident surnamed Yang in Taizhou, east China's Jiangsu Province. "They start dancing around 7 p.m. every day and it lasts for more than an hour. I can't hear myself think."

Yang said she talked to the dancers but nothing changed and then she had to turn to the local police. "They stopped for a few days but resumed after that," said Yang. "What can we do?"