Taking part in Military Training

---

We jokingly asked some Chinese student friends if we could join in with their daily routine of military training, and before we knew it they had sourced out two uniforms (with the biggest size of shoe possible still being too small for Ben's feet) and told us we start the next day at 5.40 in the morning.

At 5.40am when we arrived at the meeting point under the palm trees by the campus sports ground, it was still dark, and all we could make out was a mass of hundreds of people with crew-cut black hair and camouflaged uniform. It was a bit like a 'Where's Wally' game trying to see which two of these student soldiers were the friends who we were supposed to be meeting. The advantage of the darkness was that no-one realised were were foreign for a while, or that we were wearing the uniform wrong (so much so that our trousers were falling down the whole time when running) and Ben was wearing pink socks.

Soon enough we were ordered into formation, and from then on it was a case of copying what everyone else was doing, because the orders were such specific Chinese that we couldn't understand any of it. All of a sudden, everyone would crouch down on the floor, or start running, or stop running suddenly. Embarrassing moments came during the marching songs. These songs, which consisted only of the words ONE, TWO, THREE and FOUR, lured us into thinking we knew the words, but then suddenly the rhythm would change and we'd shout out FOUR at the top of our voices when everyone else was silent.

After the running and turning and shouting, the press-ups and fist-fighting moves started. One interesting thing is that the Chinese version of 'at ease' is when they are allowed to squat as though squatting over a chinese toilet - that monkey-like pose that we inflexible westerners can't easily do without falling over, because we've had the luxury of sitting on toilet seats all our lives. So while everyone else was sighing breaths of relaxation and enjoying the squat, we were straining to keep balance in that position and counting the seconds until we could stand up or do press-ups again.

One day we even got ordered to the front, to take the role of commander for a few minutes each, reciting as many orders (in Chinese) as we could remember, with the whole troop 'repeating after me'. It is very strange feeling, standing as a foreigner in Chinese army uniform, commanding them all. 'AtteeennnnTION!' , 'Tuurrrrrrrn RIGHT!', etc. etc.

On one rainy session, the physical training was swapped for a mass singing session in the seats on the stadium. Each troop had their own songs which they would sing directly at another troop in a kind of competition, a bit like two football teams' fans taunting each other. Then individual people were called out to sing a song to the whole troop, and I was dragged out by a Chinese friend in the troop and by the commander, to stand in front of them all and sing an English song! Very reluctant, nervous and unprepared, and with the whole 'audience' having gone quiet waiting for me to sing, I plucked up the courage and balled out a solo rendition of 'what shall we do with the drunken sailor', to which they all started clapping along and wolf-whistling. A guy then jumped down from the stalls and forced me to give him a press-up competition in front of them all... When I went to sit back down, everyone in the front row was reaching out their hands to shake hands with me like I was some sort of celebrity.

In some 'motivational' two hour-long sit-down speech from an important member of staff to the whole school year one evening, our troop's commander came and sat next to me and whispered in my ear ''this man is so boring, I've heard the speech three times already''... then we started joking and drawing cartoons throughout the whole speech and became friends.

What a strange experience, start to finish.

---