Late last night, on my way home, I came across a huge crowd of Tsinghua students next to the campus stadium. More than a thousand. There was no event at the stadium. All of them were dressed in a casual uniform, in varying colors. “What’s this about?” I asked one of them. “It’s a secret,” she said. Another one told me they were practicing for the upcoming National Day (October 1), which is China’s Fourth of July. This particular National Day will be the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the current system so there will be an especially big celebration. The uniforms said “60″ on the shirt. There were going to be at least 9 practices. This particular night was the first night they would practice in Tiananmen Square, where the event would take place. Every one of them had a square with different colors on the two sides; like a giant LED display they would make different displays. “It lasts all night,” the student told me. “It ends at 6 am. We don’t sleep.”
And, indeed, at 5:30 am the next morning, a police-escorted convoy of 45 buses, each with about 60 students, came through the campus gate near my apartment. An article about the Tiananmen practice says it involves about 200,000 people. That’s a lot of buses.
While I’m certain this is exciting to a degree, I must ask if the Chinese are really this ignorant of their own recent history as this suggests? Personally I find it somewhat macabre.
“they were practicing for the upcoming National Day (October 1), which is China’s Fourth of Julyâ€
that is a really good explanation for American who do not know National Day ,hehe, joking~