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.