The University Army

I first showed up at the running track at 3:30 pm. I had come for a jog, but was immediately shocked to find hundreds of soldiers on the running field. Every summer large numbers of students become soldiers for a few months. They put on generic green soldiers’ fatigues and bum around on campus sports fields day in and day out.
It is quite the sight to behold, all of these green ants basking under the sun, surrounded by a drab concrete stadium with an inner wall painted to depict massive red and yellow tulips. I sat down and took it all in. Three troops in plastic riot gear helmet were the focus of the exercise. Marching back and forth across the field with a flag, they resembled a high school color guard.
The leader of the young army was a balding Chinese man with a ferocious face. He also happened to be the technical expert for this regiment and in between barking orders at the three tormented students, he switched around the CDs of the generic military music that blared from speakers placed all over the field.
Most of the students had been placed in little battalions that would haphazardly march around the field. When they stood at attention they looked like cub scouts mimicking an army, everyone out of line and half the kids pushing each other or hesitating to stand up. The marching was undeniably ridiculous. I thought of the made-for-TV movies I often saw bits of on CCTV. A small group of Chinese soldiers is running from an imposing Japanese or Kuomintang patrol, they bumble around frantically, throwing stones at opportune times or make semi-comical attempts to hide behind bushes or overturned canoes. A whole army of children being prepared to be unprepared.
In sneakers and old boots the kids moved up and down the running track in staggered lines, feigning a disciplined step and stifling smiles. A few of the columns of girls that passed me were visibly embarrassed at being spotted by a confused laowai gawking at their silly exercises.
A crowd of other students with soccer balls waited at the side of the field, biding their time until the soldiers left so that they could take over the inner green to play soccer. I asked what time the exercises would finish. This was to be the final day of exercises, one of them told me, and they should be done by four or five in the afternoon, if not sooner.
In the back of the field some students broke rank and chased each other down the track. No one seemed to care. How long could this honestly go on for?
At 5 p.m. I came back and found the field pretty much the same. The plain-clothed leader was still fumbling with counterfeit march CDs and yelling at the color-guard through his microphone. The flag-bearing threesome were visibly distressed at this point, wondering what they had to deserve the worst job in the university military. The soccer players had lost their patience and were now playing in one corner of the field, their balls occasionally hitting the troops sitting along the track.
Of the hundreds of students laying wait in giant seated squares on the track, one or two groups would occasionally stand up and kick their legs up and down. Seldom a group would march a little, and upon colliding with the always-mobile color-guard, would clumsily return back to position. The other squads remained leaderless and directionless, and sat sweating under the hot sun, throwing empty water bottles at each other and engaging in other schoolyard shenanigans. I was expecting the fearless combed-over leader to call order and reprimand his farcical army, but instead he was scolding the flag-bearer for not swinging his left arm with enough gusto. Some kids ran into the field and mock goose-stepped with a pitiful mass of soldiers. No one seemed to notice the distraction. I decided to come back later.
The next day I came back to see if the troops were still there. Perhaps they had to practice a camp-out maneuver and where still there, sneaking up on each other tents and scratching them with their fake guns in an attempt to scare the girl soldiers. No such luck. Instead I found the summer-end graduation ceremony coming to a close. The ranks were still in tatters and some of the soldiers were posing for photographs and crying. Their parents descended onto the fields to whisk them away. The army was on leave for another ten months.