There are Stars Above China

I went for a run tonight at about 10:15pm tonight which meant that the lights around the athletic track had already been turned off. When I got down to the end of the track near the foreigners dorm I saw that about 15 students were practicing diligently with nun-chucks. It was almost pitch black so I could barely even see their silhouettes, but I could hear them. Half a dozen pairs of metal nun-chucks whistling at once with the black-grey outlines of martial arts moves performed in incredible precision. Each student not practicing sat on one knee with both fists on the ground, silent, watching the others. The sound they made was rhythmic and beautiful. Eerily high notes and fast flurries of twirling, swooping melody carried their way all the way around the 1/4 mile track. Each lap I completed I watch them while I ran past, still disciplined, still focused completely on what they were doing.

Whatever else I can say about Chinese students, they are disciplined in a way I never seen American students anywhere. Of course it is partly government and military instilled, but it is also parental, cultural, peer-expected, and the result of 6,000 years of social discipline. I hadn't expected such a small detail as this to be so infectious, to stick so resoundingly in my mind. It gets into your bones. It makes you want to do every little task in your day singularly and mindfully. Every run should be the most conscious run I have ever completed. Every step taken in perfect stride, at perfect pace, in harmony. When I finished my run I laid down on the turf to rest. With the echoing notes still dancing around the air I noticed that Beijing's sky looked purple tonight, and that it was perfectly clear. The smog was gone and sitting there above my campus were the stars.

In due honor of the nun-chucks I tried to see the stars mindfully and completely. Laying on the turf it felt like a normal night in any city on any campus in the modern world. Students were going about their lives, exactly as we did in the States. Life progresses with all the same ebbs and flows here that it does for students at home. When the context of the social and governmental problems in China rollback, like the smog, even if only for a day, it isn't hard to see China's potential beyond them. A country filled with optimism, hope, confidence, and especially discipline. It isn't hard to see that there are stars above China, just like there above the rest of the world.