It’s easy for me to forget how much I stand out here…but usually not for long.
I was wandering around taking pictures of campus (next post!), when I found the freshmen out in camo, on what might be the last day of their two-week military training, I knew I had to finally get the pictures I’d been meaning to take since they started. And I wanted to get them stealthily. But stealth, I soon remembered, isn’t really a possibility when you’re one of a handful of foreigners on a Chinese campus.
I snapped a picture of a group waiting to be photographed on the risers that had been set up in front of the main school building, directly behind the statue of Confucius. I put my camera away and walked around to try to get a better angle when I was spotted. On the edge of another group, a couple boys gestured at me, began talking excitedly, and took out their cameras. I pulled mine back out and pointed it at them in retaliation, eliciting a collective “oooohhhhhh!” When they didn’t back down, I did the only proper thing: posed and flashed the victory sign. Everyone applauded. As I turned to leave, an older man who’d been walking up the other side of the road came running over with his camera-bearing wife in tow, and gesture-asked me if his wife could take a picture of the two of us together.
Then, I went to see if I could snap a decent shot through the fencing of the freshmen practicing marching in step on the track, but I wasn’t even close when a group of girls all started shouting “hi!” at me and waving furiously. I waved back and ducked my head, a little sheepish, as the officer at the head of their group barked for attention.
