I have secretly always wanted to be part of a mass Communist-style rally -- the pageantry, the kitschiness, the marching. I think the closest I'll ever come to that goal was on Saturday morning, when I got roped into participating in the opening ceremonies for the school's annual track and field meet. Only Communists would schedule opening ceremonies for 7:30 in the morning, and only Communists would require everyone to meet up an hour beforehand, to "organize". The few Americans who managed to crawl out of bed and show up at 6:30 AM, upon finding out that the thing wasn't going to start for another hour, immediately revolted and escaped to go get breakfast. When we made it back to the staging area, we discovered that the teachers in charge of the Foreign Students Center were giving everyone balloons (the idea was to have every department in the school march in as separate teams, everyone wearing different uniforms). If you want to see a picture of all the foreign students holding balloons, and the athletes wearing our warmup uniforms, check out this page, and scroll down to the fourth picture from the top: http://news.hit.edu.cn/articles/2007/05-26/05184915.htm. I'm easy to spot, as I'm pretty much the only person with blond hair.
People kept asking me if we had this kind of track and field meet in the US. It really wasn't that easy a question to answer, as we have plenty of track and field meets in the US, but none at all like the one I participated in yesterday. For instance, you would NEVER get Americans out of bed at 7:30 in the morning to come watch an opening ceremony like the one that was held on Saturday, but yet the stadium here in Harbin was packed - all because everyone who was there basically had no choice. Faced with dire threats of course failure and doom, you're going to be in your seat in the stands at 7:30, even if you're there reading a newspaper (as many students were). That being said, there were really a number of students who got fairly into it, and a lot of people cheered for me when I was out running (which I really needed, especially in the last leg of the 4x400) -- all in all, it was pretty cool to get cheered for, even if running in front of all those people did make me really nervous!
The best part about the whole thing is that I think we're going to get to keep the uniforms they gave us - at least, they haven't said anything to us yet about turning them back in. I was one of the fortunate people whose uniform fit, and while the shorts are really really a bit too SHORT, the top is fine, and the warmups fit great. It just seemed like an incredible amount of energy spent on organizing what in the US would be a pretty routine event - just minus the marching-filled opening ceremonies and the tug-of-war (which we didn't wind up participating in because we all had class - who schedules a tug-of-war for 8:30 in the morning on a Friday? Communists).
I am now off to head back to my room, and possibly venture out this afternoon in search of presents. My departure date from Harbin is all-too-rapidly approaching, and I'm realizing now that I've got to figure out what I'm going to bring back to give to people! off to see what's out there...
