Jump, push, run

Just like last year, as the cool fall weather came, so did the buzz about the campus wide track meet. Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten any clear indications about the basketball tournament, as Sean, Jordan, and I all are interested in bringing some red, white, and blue skills to the Foreign Language Department team. But, the track meet (or sports meeting as it’s poorly translated) is a staple here, and went down a few weekends ago. Sean, Sarah, Peter, and I all got up early and got dressed for the opening ceremony on Friday morning. It was just the same as last years, but still provided me with plenty of entertainment. Seeing ‘volunteer’ female students standing, slightly dancing and holding flowers at attention as all the teachers march by reminds me again of the value of equality between the genders and onerous duties of students in such a hierarchical system. I was able to skirt around the dark suit requirement for the teachers in the School of Foreign Languages because I am, umm, not Chinese.

After the ceremony, I hung out on the track for a bit talking with students about how much they didn’t want to be performing in the ceremony but how little they could do about it. I then met up with Sean and Sarah and Steve (吴雪松)to watch the faculty high jump. Now, Sean high jumped in high school, and was very good. But, as he noted, he graduated high school ten years ago. Nonetheless, this strapping Irish lad from small town Michigan put on quite a show. There were two apparatuses available for the competitors to use. One was the high jump set up you’re thinking of. The other was a pole on top of two supports along the side edge of a long jump pit. Instead of the Fosbury flop, the majority of the competitors (and all of those eliminated early) would run parallel to the bar, and when reaching it would kind of scissor kick over it. This meant many would fall into the sand pit if they didn’t get their feet set. Many did. Much more grave was the possibility that a jumper (mind these are men) wouldn’t get his second leg over the bar, thus landing on the bar with the part of his body he least wanted to land on the bar with.

Sean, on the other hand, didn’t look like ten years had passed him by since his high school jumping days. Unfortunately, he didn’t quite understand what was going on (although the students volunteering were pretty helpful) so he didn’t get to skip the early heights. Despite this tiring him out, as the bar got higher, he outlasted every other jumper. One of his last competitors gave some valiant efforts, and had track spikes and a water bottle and shoe to mark out his approach, but Sean wasn’t having it. He ended up not only winning, but literally raised the bar and set the new faculty record by 15 cm or something ridiculous like that. At some point, the other departments are going to quit letting the school of foreign languages use the foreign ringers.

My only event of the day was the faculty 4x100m relay. One of the secretaries from the foreign language department had approached Steve (most likely because he is known as ‘that one Chinese teacher always hanging out with the foreign teachers’) and asked if he could get a team together for the 4x100. Of course, Sean, Peter, and I have nothing better to do, so we all consented. Steve took the lead off, Peter in second, me third, with His Airness Sean anchoring. We ended up getting fourth in our heat and eighth overall. We didn’t practice handoffs because if the U.S. Olympic team isn’t practicing them, then I feel no need to do so. Peter stumbled a bit out of his handoff from Steve, but otherwise we did all right. Now, in general, the school of foreign languages isn’t too well known for its athletic prowess in the faculty competitions. Apparently the type of people holing up to write their thesis about Leaves of Grass or Wuthering Heights isn’t exactly the athletic type. So, just having a team, and on top of that beating more than half of the competition is much appreciated by our Chinese colleagues.

I got up early Saturday morning for my main event, the faculty 800m. I had big shoes to fill as last year Dave not only finished first, but also set a new faculty record. As the picture shows, I wasn’t messing around this year. I was the only ‘merricun running in the race, and I was representing. I was sad to see that there were only eight or nine competitors, as last year Dave ran in a pretty good pack. After the customary dead sprint (Chinese people seem incapable of pacing themselves) at the beginning of the race, I settled into first place. Which of course, is the worst place to run a race in. I was aware of some footsteps behind me, and as we turned the 600m corner, two other teachers were right behind me and slowly drew past. The crowd started to cheer and as they passed me they either yelled 加油(jia you) meaning ‘let’s go’ or ‘come on’ or 中国 (zhong guo) meaning China. I couldn’t quite tell, although I’d like to imagine they yelled China as they moved past the foreign devil. You can see from the picture that they really did run past me, but fear not; I gave it the old Ken Ferrell puuuddsch (inside joke) and came by in first place. Of course, my fast jog didn’t set any records, but I ran it in 2:26, no more than ten seconds off of what I was running in high school. Sean mentioned that all the students around him were cheering really loudly when the other two runners passed me, but that after I won the photo finish, they all just went quiet, looked down and walked away. I wasn’t really trying to ruin people’s day, there just aren’t a lot of times for me to rock the red, white, and blue bandana over here.

My other competition was the push-up competition. Peter was also competing in this competition; he placed in the top eight. I ended up getting second, which was disappointing, but you can’t win them all. There was incredible irregularity among the various forms of push-ups allowed (mine was admittedly not the best). As I watched the rest of my competition I got kind of worked up about what I considered unacceptable form. Danthemanstan reminded me that “this is a faculty push-up competition at a tier three college in China.” He was right, so I shut up. So, a first and a second isn’t two firsts, but it’s not too bad. Of course, some of my competition was twenty or thirty years my senior. All in all, the great weather and great competition made this year’s track meet lots of fun, and once again made me wish that somehow, even without the power to wield a giant authoritarian stick, schools in the States could pull something like this off. (The middle picture is of me with some random admirers after my win.)