As I look out my seventh floor window this drizzly day, the soccer field just across my little road is empty, as is the large basketball playground next to it. The week long October 1st holiday is upon us and many students have already left for home or other destinations. For the past month, however, this same basketball court has been full of students, dressed in camouflage uniforms and caps, marching in formation under the command of either other students, or officers of the PLA (People’s Liberation Army), I’m not sure which. “Yī! Èr! Sān! Sì!” “One! Two! Three! Four!” I would hear ad nauseum, first emphatically called out by formations of young men and then responded to by equally emphatic squeaking blasts coming from formations of young women. It didn’t matter what time of day it was, there didn’t seem to be any fixed schedule. Sometimes, walking back to my building at night, I’d go past the playground and only be able to hear them in the darkness-they couldn’t possibly see that much more than I could, yet I could hear the thick, regimented sound of their sneakers on the pavement, marching in time to the barked directions of their instructor. Every fall this goes on, from the beginning of the semester until National Day-compulsory military training for all incoming freshmen. Because of this, four of my classes won’t begin until the second week of October. When I first became aware of this training, last year, I had no idea what was going on. At that time, I lived in an apartment on the second floor and one morning heard a low rumble of noise just below my living room window. Taking a look, I saw a group of about twenty, for the most part, skinny little girls being taught what looked like some sort of modified goose step by their instructor. As I’ve now had a longer and better opportunity to observe this from my higher vantage point (and have also recently had the chance to see, after many years, The Bridge on the River Kwai), I’ve concluded that what these students are attempting to master is not so much the old German marching step as what Alec Guinness’s Colonel Nicholson and his boys were doing as they whistled The Colonel Bogey March at the beginning of that old classic. Nevertheless, I do see this as a manifestation of the national fervor that I think is taking hold of the country (at least what little I’ve observed of it). Maybe it’s just me, but I can sense a sort of excitement, an anticipation of big things happening soon, of China finally fulfilling its potential and taking its rightful place as a world power. Earlier this week, I watched as one spic-and-span officer stood nattily in his shiny shoes before his seated group, in their ill-fitting uniforms, and taught them a call and response. This didn’t sound like some “Yo Mama” running cadence, it actually sounded like a real tune. It didn’t matter that his four subordinate instructors were hanging back under a basketball hoop, quietly chatting with each other. What mattered is that he, they, and their trainees were out there at all. I’d bet my next month’s pay that the song they were practicing was some sort of rendition of PRC The Beautiful. As I’d like to stress, I’m far from being an expert-I don’t even speak the language, but from what I’ve been able to observe in my time here, this is the feeling that I’m left with. Whether or not this amounts to anything meaningful, I don’t know. I am relatively sure of one thing, though. When my freshman classes do begin, everyone in them should be able to count to four.

One early evening last week, I went to catch the bus at an unfamiliar stop near the corner of Zhōngshān Běilù and Shānxī Lù. Approaching a small cluster of people standing on a narrow median strip dividing the main street and the access road running parallel to it, I joined them and waited for a brief moment before taking a closer look around. Zhōngshān Lù is the main drag in Nanjing and I was sure that this little sliver of pavement couldn’t be the whole stop. Stepping out into the street, I saw that I was correct. In Nanjing, a typical city bus stop will have a large, illuminated sign at either end of it displaying the route numbers, street stops, and hours of service for each bus passing through. By my rough estimate, the two signs here were at least thirty yards apart, book ending several other packs of commuters. It made sense. This particular stop had at least half a dozen routes listed on its signs. If several buses were to arrive at the same time, they’d need all of that room to fit. I hadn’t seen that the stop was so long because, for some reason, my little group hadn’t even been standing within its boundaries and a tree had blocked my view. I figured that they must’ve been waiting for one of the private buses that sometimes pass by. Leaving them, I went to find a better place to stand and soon realized that the entire stop was a free zone for any bus that came through-the drivers could stop wherever they pleased. I hedged my bet and chose a place right in the middle. Speed is important in catching buses around here. The drivers stop just long enough for people to get off and if there isn’t a line forming by the front door, they’re gone with a sputter and a belch of smoke. In other words, covering fifteen yards at a very brisk walk (I refuse to give them the satisfaction of running) is no guarantee of going any further. Throw in the added challenge of having to weave through whoever’s getting off of the bus that you’re trying to get on and your odds get even worse. I waited. A bus came. Not mine. It stopped about ten yards before reaching me. People got off. People got on. Those who had picked the wrong place to wait rushed past me and into the crowd already forming by the doors. Another bus came. Again not mine. It pulled in right behind the first one, which still hadn’t left because of the group still sorting itself out there. More people scurried past, enlarging the already growing jam of commuters now squeezed into the area next to the first bus. A third bus came. My bus. It pulled in behind the second one, right where my former traveling companions were standing next to the tree. The doors opened. Still others who had guessed wrong made a hopeless dash into the fray. I didn’t bother. I watched my bus, the last to arrive, pull away, followed by the second one and then the first. I caught the next one that came in a few minutes later-it stopped fifteen yards past me. Almost everyone who had been standing near the spot where it had finally come to a halt had by now moved to the opposite end of the stop, leaving me an open path, but I still had to bang on the door for the driver to re-open it and let me on. Hanging onto the overhead bar as my bus rattled along, I was angry and depressed. Just about everybody in Nanjing has to take the bus on a fairly regular basis. Although, at first glance, it may seem ridiculously funny, having to go through this kind of obstacle course is unnecessary, inefficient, and dangerous. The fact that this is the way the system is designed to work makes it enraging. The fact that it probably won’t be changing anytime soon, because this is the way it’s always been, just makes it sad.

Bowling. One day, going around the rotary at Gŭ Lóu in a taxi, I noticed a ten-foot high duckpin standing in front of an otherwise non-descript building. Some time later, when my friend Juān and I were at a loss about what to do on a Saturday afternoon, I had just the suggestion. We had such a good time that we decided to go back again. The bowling alley, down a long flight of stairs, wouldn’t look at all out of place in the States. Its large lobby holds a vending machine, a foosball table and a front counter, behind which stands a compartmental rack holding many pairs of tired looking harlequin bowling shoes. Next to the counter, a short row of seats, on the opposite side of a plexiglass barrier from the lanes themselves, sits waiting for customers to don little white socks before exchanging their old shoes for new ones. It had been awhile since our last visit and we did not do as well this time as we had before-gutter balls aplenty. I did make one pretty good spare though, eliciting a solemn thumbs up from one of the guys in the group next to us-the only other customers in the place. He’d been doing really well; he had a beautifully smooth delivery, and his gesture was appreciated. His group had about five people in it, most of them middle-aged men, with one middle-aged woman, probably somebody’s wife. There was also a younger man in the group, wearing eyeglasses. As the evening wore on, we didn’t pay much attention to them as they loudly talked amongst themselves and boisterously cheered on those bowling. But at one point, when I was standing at the ready, ball in hand, peering down at the pins, their noise became loud enough for me to look over, not out of irritation-I’m not good enough to be irritated by noise, but out of curiosity. One of them, a pot-bellied man in a tank top undershirt who had to be in his late forties...at least, was pointing and shouting at the younger man in the group, who was staring back at him. In the States, this would, on its surface at least, appear to be a volatile situation, but in China, screaming at each other is a primary means of communication, right up there with the telephone, which everyone also screams into. I went back to what I was doing, rolled one into the gutter, and turned just in time to see the older man wave a poorly aimed right-cross that missed his target (the younger man) and then arduously try to tackle him. The whole exercise in futility ended with both men, rolling around and then coming to rest in the lane, creating a small pile of arms, legs, one angry face, and one confused one, now sans eyeglasses, as the other men began disentangling them. The woman stood back a few paces, sternly looking on, hands on hips. If they ever erect a statue commemorating the Chinese Woman, it should look like this. I can’t say how many times I’ve seen this pose in shops, street markets, and doorways, almost always directed at some unfortunate man who wishes that she would disappear as he sheepishly tries to. Oddly enough, the fight had been quieter than the argument leading up to it, with everyone taking a sort of ho-hum attitude towards it. The pot-bellied man now sat down, collecting himself but still hurling unfriendly sounding words at his opponent, who stood near the ball chute, calmly examining his retrieved glasses for damage. I rolled again and our game continued on peacefully until we heard shrill, angry screams coming from the front desk area. Looking through the plexiglass, we saw the boss lady (who was doing the screaming) frantically pulling at a heap next to the foosball table-the two men, still upset with each other, were causing another disturbance. Eventually, with the help of everyone in the place except us, they were again disentangled, the younger one sent off, trudging up the stairs, banished for the evening. Order restored, the now disheveled, pot-bellied man sat, hands on knees, grumpily explaining things to his bowling companions. We left them soon after, handing in our shoes and socks to the boss lady/referee/bouncer. As we now turned for the stairs, she very pleasantly chimed “Màn zŏu!” as the sound of pins crashing began again.

Several years ago, there was a little girl who would often go with her father to visit her granny in the countryside. This girl and her granny were each other’s favorites, and they greatly enjoyed their time together. Living alone, the old woman kept a rooster and some hens, more for the company than anything else, and she became very attached to them, treating them almost as if they were her children. During her visits to her granny’s home, the girl would go outside to the yard and watch the rooster strut around in all of his self-importance as the hens paid him appropriate deference. As if that wasn’t annoying enough, at feeding time they would dutifully stand back and wait for the rooster to eat his fill before they themselves would begin eating whatever was left over. As her irritation continued to grow, the girl determined to put an end to this bird’s bullying, chauvinistic behavior and came up with a plan to liberate the hens. At feeding time the next day, she took a broom and cornered the rooster in order to allow them to eat first. The rooster, in a confused, indignant rage, flapped his wings, squawked, and tried to get past, but was unable to get at the food…his food. And the hens? Instead of eating first as the girl had wanted them to, they just passively stood by as they always did, now watching the struggle unfold before them. Frustrated at seeing that they had no intention of eating before the rooster, the little girl finally gave up on her plan and stopped blocking his way to the food. But after letting him go, the rooster didn’t feed. Nor did he feed the next day. The little girl’s granny, now worried for him, held him in her arms and tried feeding him, one grain of rice at a time, but it made no difference. He wasn’t interested in eating anymore. His image had been broken. Face had been lost. Despite all of her coddling and care, the rooster never recovered. When he died some days later, the little girl’s father laid the blame for what had happened squarely on her shoulders. Her granny, however, never did.