Frosh week in China

[First published Nov. 10, 2014] School started the first week of September (and I'm seriously behind-hand with my blog posts). I was still living downtown when school started, so I took the teacher's commuter bus to school. There is a regular commuter bus as well, but if you take the teacher's bus, you get to watch the guards at the gatehouse salute as we pass through.

To my surprise, I saw a long, long, seemingly-never-ending column of young people in uniform marching across the plaza. I learned that they were the first year students, who spend the first two weeks of college life doing military drill. Every plaza, basketball court and sports field was taken up by the boys and girls who were marched back and forth to the strains of martial music for hour after hour.

Ross and I were riding our bicycles around the West Campus and came across a gaggle of girl soldiers. We decided to snap a few pics and the next thing you know, the girls were swarming us and asking for pictures with us. We are minor celebrities on campus, because there are so few foreigners and some of these girls might have come from towns where there were no foreigners to be seen. They posed happily with us, and as Chinese kids do, flashed the "peace" sign. One of these days I'm going to do a power point to explain to the kids who the hippies were. I have no idea why the peace sign became so universal among young people in China.

The boy soldiers were drilling in front of the South Campus building where I teach, so for a few days, we had to contend with the music and the drill sergeants shouting while we taught our classes. But the hours of drilling probably creates an esprit de corps among the newly-arrived students. 

Coincidentally, one of my brightest students left school a few weeks later, having been accepted into the Army. She had applied to join at her parents' urging. We haven't had an update from her since she went into basic training. I hope her good English skills help her find a good placement somewhere.