China: The Track

When my aunt offered to show me the school track, I was skeptical. The last time I had tried to run in a neighborhood, even a well maintained one with proper occupants, it had felt awkward and restricting. People stared at the American, moving too quickly to blend in, but too slowly to be an athelete.

She reminded me that Nanning's heat had a dangerous power. The heat radiates from the ground, she said, even at night. Your uncle died three years after moving here, because the air turned his body into cancer. This was on her part, a scare tactic, but it was also in part true. The ground was glass, and the world was its greenhouse. Nanning swelters in a wave of fieriness that only grows bigger.

 In the dark, the track was lit by only by the city stars, lights from apartment buildings towering above. I could barely see the lanes, but could feel the bodies around me. About 50 people - mostly students, some parents - were walking, jump roping, or beating their shoulders. My legs itched (from mosquito bites, but also...) to join them. I dove into the circling crowd.

My aunt was right. The track was a searing pan, and it was hungry for braised humans. I ran very fast - as fast as I have ever run, and passed every single person at least twice. I ran to feel the heat seep into my body, toe to head, and then ran faster to create a wind to cool off. On my 12th lap, I heard the smack sole to rubber - two boys, around my age - catching up. I sped forward, and they followed suit. So we raced.

Twice, my pursuers communicated to each other, "hao kuai!", the second time with emphasis, in some sort of delight surprise. I didn't respond, because I felt the anaerobic effort seizing my stomach, emptying my lungs of oxygen. I was, for the first in a long time, sprinting. In the last hundred meters ("zhui hou yi bai mi!") we ran for our lives. We tied. Or maybe I won. Or maybe I lost. I didn't know and couldn't bring myself to care. The boys slowed to a reasonable pace and I settled for a leisurely, knee buckling walk. My first race, perhaps my only taste of what it would be like to join track. One minute, two connections, on Nanning University's campus.

The next night, another runner and I kept pace with each other. In another couple days, my cousin brought me to Guangxi University's badminton gym. There, I was able to play with two graduate students. They weren't particularly skillful, but they were fast and strong. Communication was hard; I'd often begin shouting something out of enthusiasm and stop mid-sentence when I realized that I didn't know the vocabulary. Regardless, we played for two hours in near silence. Our soaked shirts clung to our skin, butt there was little room for judgment. We led vastly different lives, but for two hours, we were synced to flying birds and blind ambition.

This is what sports are about. Not diplomacy, not victory. Sports are about that moment of connection. A single moment for a single goal; to find people like myself in a country across the world.