When Zhang Ping decided to become a weighlifter, her husband put up a fight.

Much to his dismay, female bodybuilders have to wear bikinis in competitions, quite risqué for conservative China in the 1987.

One day, he heard that his wife was on top of a roof, sunbathing in her bikini. Furious, he asked her to stop everything. But Zhang stood her ground.

In the face of her insistence, her husband gave in, but asked her to promise to win the bodybuilding contest in Shanghai within a year. Zhang knew that her husband's original intention was to force her to give up.

"In order to live up to the promise and, more importantly, to win his approval, I set up an intensive fitness schedule," she said.

Zhang's daily regimen was daunting: three kilometers of running on an empty stomach, 400 sit-ups and more. On top of the two hours of exercise, she still had to go to work everyday.

"It's hard to stay on this plan," she said. "Every time when I finished my exercises for the day, I felt like I had been beat up by seven people."

Zhang said that in the toughest moments she thought about giving up.

"But if I gave up or failed, people would look down on me," she said. For her, there was no turning back.

A year later, when Zhang was standing on the stage of the Shanghai bodybuilding competition, her great muscle tone helped her win four golden medals in that contest. Having witnessed Zhang's perseverance and achievement, Wu was deeply touched and started to support her.

 "My husband started reading magazines about fitness and cooking to ensure that I had nutritious food on the table everyday."

"The successful career of a woman comes from the support of her family," she said.

 She went on to win more than 100 medals, and was dubbed "the Chinese queen of bodybuilding." After seeing Zhang, even the king of bodybuilding Arnold Schwarzenegger, couldn't help but compliment her.

Despite all her success, including opening her own fitness training company, Zhang isn't optimistic about the development of the sport.

"Women with muscular builds don't match the Chinese traditional idea of beauty."

Redefining beauty

Song Lili, 39, stepped into bodybuilding in 2010, because she craved a slimmer body.

At the time, she was "quiet ... and always bothered by something."

She remembers being fixated on her figure.

"Despite being slim, I still felt that I was fat and needed to be on a diet," she said. "To gain a sexy figure, I ate less than I should have. That affected my health."

Song was lucky she didn't follow the same path as her friends: several became anorexic and one died from it.

Her notions of sexy changed drastically when she was watching a bodybuilding program on TV and saw none other than Zhang.

"Although the woman was 50, she had a good line - even better than many young women," Song said.

From then on, sexiness to her was about muscles.

Song started working out daily. Her parents soon noticed, and soon opposed, her new routine.

"My parents think women with big muscles aren't beautiful," Song said. But her mind was already made up.

Apart from exercise, Song had to change her food intake, too. She gave up her favorites - cheese and chocolate - but indulges in them one day a week after a week of hard exercise.

Now as a senior tutor of bodybuilding at Hosa Fitness in Beijing, she teaches young women about her sport as well as the idea of an active way of life being sexy.