Opening Ceremony

Well, I have now marched in the opening ceremonies of...something. To be more specific, the 13th Changzhou Sports Meeting. Which is some sort of a sports competition, that really is about all I know. Changzhou is hosting some sort of big sports competition in two years, so a gorgeous stadium and a few other things have been built. This, along with the fervor of the recent Olympic Games, encouraged the local government to make this sports competition into a big deal. So, as a foreigner I got to attend. I thought we were just going to watch, but as soon as we arrived and received a sheet with marching instructions, I knew it was for real.

This was the most "whiteys" I had seen since the Shanghai airport. They seemed to have rounded up all the foreigners in Changzhou to march in together. Teddy (my advisor) said it was to make in more 'international' or internationally friendly. So we all were given a min-flag from our country (which helped sort out all the similar looking Europeans) and marched into the stadium together. The stadium was packed full of all the school teams participating in the games, who were all enthusiastically using the noise makers provided in each seat. It was awesome, odd, exciting, and a bit surreal walking into the cheers merely due to my status as a foreigner. One drastic cultural difference I noticed was during our marching and while we stood centerfield during a speech. All of the Chinese groups marched perfectly and often had chants, and during the speech were in line, rigid, and quiet. As polar opposites, us in the foreign group moved along as a mob during our lap of the track, and moved about during the speech, took pictures or video, talked with each other, some of the French and Italian young teens were playfully stealing hats and purses from friends. There really is no way that a bunch of Americans, Europeans, and Australians are going to stand at attention during a fifteen minute speech unless we are in the military. I am not saying one or the other is right, but it was just interesting to see.

After making it to our seats, we watched the ceremony, which was pretty spectacular. Daniel aka 'Danthemanstan' another teacher from Washington D.C. and I were convinced that all the elementary schools in Changzhou have had group dancing and formation creation as the two sole subjects for the last two months. There were just so many kids moving in so many ways with so many costumes. Honestly, I can easily say that it's something I will probably never see again.