A college classmate once grumbled in our group chat that at his school, if teachers used their free time to exercise, the principal would summon them for a “conversation.” ⊙▂⊙
By the fashionable logic that the more you crave something, the less likely you are to get it, a manager who wants staff to give up every other hour for work may end up with people who quietly do less. In an age when everyone is supposed to be exercising, seeing exercise suppressed still feels absurd. If I ever get the chance, I’d like to sit down with that principal somewhere quiet on a sunny afternoon, order tea, and have a proper talk.
Our own atmosphere is much more relaxed by comparison. After the last class in the afternoon, anyone without a task can go work out. Football, for instance, requires at least one four-on-four small-field match a day, and the school union occasionally organizes inter-school friendlies. From that angle, we have no excuse for slacking. And in practice, our performance on various indicators compares favorably with similar schools.
On WeChat Moments, young women post gym photos, older handsome men post cycling photos, young guys post basketball photos, literary bloggers post badminton photos, and officials post football photos. In short: every kind of sport. But in terms of logistical difficulty, football is relatively hard to get going.
First, you need people. One or two is pointless; at minimum six, for three-on-three. Second, you need good weather. Because of staffing quotas, the school hasn’t brought in new teachers for years, but fortunately we have nearly twenty serious football fans. We also regularly work on basketball fans with milder interest, trying to convert them to football. So numbers aren’t the issue. Weather is. Wuxi sits in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze, and every June and July brings the plum rain season, a stretch of gray skies and persistent rain. Since the 21st century, there’s also been the nuisance of smog. I once wrote on my cousin’s blog that autumn and winter in Jiangnan are a misty, rainy desert beyond the pass. Playing football when PM2.5 is off the charts takes real courage.
I haven’t played for nearly two weeks, busy with the thing I like least, which is frustrating. I had planned to stretch my legs today, but the forecast was wildly off: it said a 60 percent chance of rain at noon, then rain started at 9:30, killing the no-rain hope early.
At home, the family leader’s lunar birthday passed a while ago; I gave her an iPhone 6s to curry favor. Her solar-calendar birthday is coming up soon, and I’m planning for us to see Point Break—that kind of film only works in 3D.