The running foreigners

After some exhausting, smart-ass history plus geopolitics comments, the time has come for letting you know about my recent triathlon effort. For your information: I used to be a sporting ace in high school, doing mountainbiking and running every other day. That was before Berlin and studying happened. Who could’ve known live had so many more interesting activities on offer, like going to bars or simply cramming your day so full of social activities that you didn’t even get home between 10am and midnight (another factor is that Berlin’s topography leaves mountainbiking without mountains, which is a pretty boring activity – also your bike will probably get stolen after a few months). So I kept running every now and then out of a sense of duty and despite my suboptimal lifestyle health-wise, my cardio remained on an acceptable level thanks to my age and the years of previous training.

That being said, things got even worse since I arrived in Beijing. As mentioned before, this is not a city where you want to move around by foot. After a while I managed to find a decent running track, but soon after winter arrived. Call me a pussy, but I do sports for fun, not because I think what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. And there are more fun things I can think of than running in -5°C climate, like staying at home. So besides swimming and playing some badminton, I’m lazy right now.

But when I got the offer to participate in a triathlon, fully paid for and with the prospect of even getting some extra money for finishing, I obviously couldn’t resist.

Little digression: White Monkey Job – Chinese love white people, at least in specific settings for specific occasions. Whenever something has to appear worldly, international or chic, you better have some white faces on it! Sometimes black or arab faces do too, but the relationship is there is more ambivalent, while as a white person, you nearly exclusively experience positive racism. White people are also great English teachers, no matter if they’re from the States, the Netherlands or Russia (but try getting an English teacher job with an Asian face, no matter where you were born). Because of these circumstances, there are numerous so-called “white monkey jobs”, some more, some less dignified. You can be a background actor, maybe a model or an attraction at a night-club. I even heard of some white people attending a wedding celebration as hostesses. I’m not keen on any of these activities, but I really appreciate that rural sports events these days like to invite and equip foreigners to look less rural. In this case, being cold-blooded capitalist pays off, because you’re going to the unlikeliest events, do things you usually wouldn’t and end up not paying for that or even earning some money.

Two weeks ago I attended the first and hopefully not last event of this kind, a triathlon in Jiangxi (江西) province near its capital Nanchang (南昌), about 1500km south of Beijing. The distances weren’t too hard, 13,3km running, 2km kayaking and 22km biking, but not having been in a competition for years, I was still very excited. Upon arrival at the train station (night trains truly are a blessing), I was picked up by the organizer himself and then taken onto a bus with a few curious volunteers that were helping at the event. After arriving in the tiny city of Jing’an (靖安县) I registered and then waited for hours until more foreigners arrived, among them Olya, veteran foreign participant at Chinese running competitions and organizer of “foreign delegations” to them. Many of the foreigners are regulars at those events and thus know each other, so the competitions also function as get-togethers for them. On this one, 14 of us participated, some of them pros running as a means to earn their living (through price money), others just like me – making use of the paid-for policy to have a good time. After checking into the (pretty nice) hotel and preparing bikes, equipment etc. for the run the next morning, we all went to bed quite early.

The competition took place the next day at 8am, so that the slowest participants would finish around noon. The running part came first, starting on a typical newly build (means huge) street and then diverting into a river valley. The race was officially cross-country, but actually all the biking and running took place on paved roads, it was only a bit hillier than normal competitions. I was very surprised to see that my pace wasn’t all that different from my best times some 5 years ago (about 1km/h slower – but given the terrain it would probably even be less under normal circumstances). I was even more surprised that I managed to finish the kayaking in an acceptable time and without falling into the water – it was my first time. During the last section, I constantly competed with and eventually lost to a really dogged Chinese lady, but was still fairly satisfied, because by teaming up during riding bikes we both improved our pace. The end result was 30^th out of 120 or so participants. Since my humble goal was not to bite the dust and finish somehow, I’m super happy about it.

Representing "international" in the events title

After finishing, I could feel like a superstar for once in my life. I really don’t envy them. Hundreds of Chinese, most of them in school age, were gathering at the city square where the race started and ended. They probably just came because there weren’t that many others things to do in Jing’an on a Sunday, but once they saw foreigners, they knew what to do. If you didn’t move for more than a minute, someone would certainly approach you with a smartphone asking for a picture. Once that happened, around 20 others (usually girls) who previously had been to shy to ask broke their silence and started queuing up for a picture. I tried to stay patient and friendly - after all, there are no evil intentions whatsoever - but after 2 hours of taking pictures, you really start to get tired of it. Even more annoying are the usually middle-aged Chinese women (sometimes men too) who just film you for minutes without asking for consent or even looking at you. If you happen to be black and have nappy hair you sometimes come across particularly brazen locals who just start to pet your hair like it was someone’s dog. That’s when you realize again that most of China is not Beijing or Shanghai (where this stuff doesn’t happen at all anymore), but places that barely see people from other countries. But for exactly that reason I’m really keen on participating at more of these events – you’re seeing a part of the country you otherwise definitely wouldn’t.