Yelling English, Military Training and Losing Weight

Today was really cold for the first time. It was raining this morning and instead of getting warmer as the day went on, it got colder. By the evening it was cold enough that I was wearing a scarf and 3 shirts when going outside. (It wasn’t actually that cold--I’ve just been spoiled with nice weather.) Outside, “Crazy English” (as I discovered the groups practicing English by yelling every night are called) continued to go on in spite of the cold. Only this time, the students were all dressed in camouflage military uniform. To a person who wasn’t familiar with the Universities in China, it was pretty intimidating looking—a large group of young people dressed in military uniform repeating loudly after a single leader: “If!” “IF!” “I!” “I!” “were!” “were!” “WERE!” “WERE!!”....
But to those of us who now knew how things worked, we saw that the entire group, based on their military uniforms, was made of freshmen who had just arrived at the University. All the freshmen were required to have a week of military training before starting school. So we would see them all for a week or so, all dressed in their camouflage uniforms, starting from early in the morning yelling chants, marching in time, and sitting on little stools listening to some speaker yell something through a loudspeaker in Chinese. Even at 10pm they were all walking around in their military clothing. Most of them are a fair amount smaller than I, but that didn’t stop me from being spooked when I went around a dark corner and a person dressed in camouflage comes striding around the bend. I had to remind myself that they were the same students who when I was running in the morning, parted a path for me, called out a timid, Hello? and then whose faces broke into big, smiles and laughter when I smiled and said hi to them. They all looked really young and quite in wonder at everything, including the exotic foreigner running by them.
Later tonight at the underground supermarket I ran into one of my English majors. Another side of these young people’s lives was exposed when I asked her about what she was up to tonight. The slender girl replied cheerfully that she and her roommates were going running because she needed to lose weight. I almost gagged, but I held it in, “But you are so skinny!” I exclaimed instead. “Maybe in your eyes” she said with a smile, looking my body up and down, “but in Chinese people’s eyes, I am fat.” Oh, I thought, well in that case, I am obese by Chinese standards. But I said nothing, smiled and listened to her finish talking about running being good for losing weight. I was happy when she changed the subject to the upcoming vacation.
I have realized that everyone thinks I’m running because I want to lose weight. It seems like the idea of running for fun is quite foreign here. Just like me and my body type.