Its 6am, another orange-soaked spring morning in 2008, Nanjing, China. I’m 3 feet away, gazing at an elderly gentleman who is upside down, supported only by the tip of his skull, arms crossed, legs delicately wrapped around a vertical bar. I learn that he is 84 years old, and that he often likes to hang upside down (for up to 3 hours); exercise parks, trees, rings…he tells me he often stands on one leg for 45 minutes at a time. He also informed me that for his 83rd birthday he spent the month cycling the 730 miles from Nanjing to Hong Kong, just to visit family. One of his elderly compatriots next to him is warming up into a full front splits position before she goes to see the grandkids. By now I’d come to understand that this behaviour is not anomalous amongst the geriatric population of China, but I’m still arrested by this man’s exploits and vitality. Fast forward eleven years and I am now working as a junior doctor in a care of the elderly ward in the North of England. H...