Strange happenings at ChuanDa

A couple of weeks ago, Sarah and I were taking a walk between classes. Our class break normally coincides with the break the elementary students take at the grade school next door. When we leave our classroom we are forced to wade through packs of kids on our way to get a snack or something to drink. The kids are pretty fun to watch. Their class break is preceded by the blasting of the national anthem over a loudspeaker. The older kids then march off to play on a track while the younger ones stay inside the school grounds for some "exercise." What they really do is flap their arms around and sometimes kick their legs to the sound of someone shouting off the count of eight over and over again. The counting is done with the help of a megaphone, and as though that weren't bad enough, music plays over the school's loudspeakers at the same time. I heard that their exercises are actually designed by Beijing, and every grade school kid in the country participates in the same workout. I can't verify the truth to this, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Anyway, this blog isn't about kids and flapping arms, it's about something else we saw while walking one day:






As we were walking, we began to hear a low rumbling sound in the distance. As we were walking past a particular alley way we looked up just in time to see a wild herd of college students running at full tilt in our direction. Nobody was stopping, old ladies were dodging out of the way, bicyclists were turning away from the crowd and people like me were looking for the nearest cover. All the students were wearing bright colored Sichuan University tee-shirts. Some shouted slogans as they ran past, and others carried large banners. What were they doing? No idea.

Living in China is interesting: although I'm seeing a world I've never seen before, my own personal world feels very small and confined. Parades and other happenings are always a surprise to me. My life and base of knowledge is so completely out of sync with the Chinese students that I just have to resign myself to the fact that I know very, very little about what's going on most of the time. I guess that's what makes it interesting though. If I knew everything that was going to happen, I probably wouldn't last very long here.