The Crazy Boys

Usually I don’t include detailed explanations about my photos. But, everyone has been wondering about my most recent series of crazy seven year olds.

Once every couple of weeks Chris and I go and sit in a quad space on Nanjing Normal University’s campus. I like to do this for a couple reasons. One is because the interactions between the kids is fun to watch. Another is that the interactions between the adults and the children is interesting. The last reason is that there is something relaxing about it for me. Maybe because I can just observe and don’t have to worry about any kids putting their hand on the wet grass where another child just urinated. And I can quietly laugh when the kids throw dirt in each other’s hair.

Also, sometimes I catch gems while just sitting there listening and watching. For example, once while sitting in the quad a few little boys were fighting. Not too seriously. Another one ran up to them and pointed at me, he probably thought it was quite covert but it wasn’t, and said “You shouldn’t fight in front of the foreigners!” I think it says a lot that a small kid would have the awareness of foreigners and their perception of China and the Chinese to do that.

Another reason is that it is relaxing is the greenery. All of my friends tell me that Nanjing Normal’s campus is the most beautiful in China. It may be true and it is definitely the nicest campus I have been on in China. I have to say though, Northeastern’s campus is still the best urban campus I’ve been on. And I’m not just saying that because it is my alma mater. Take a walk around Curry Student Center in the middle of May. It’s amazing. Anyway, NNU has old style wooden roofed buildings, lots of trees, a small pond and this quad area. Everyday during the work week Grandparents and parents bring their children, from barely walking babies to maybe ten years old to this quad. Because the grassy area is squared in by tall bushes and a short brick wall used for sitting, most of the kids literally just run in circles around the area. The younger kids are fine with just running around by themselves, not really too interested in playing with other kids. Maybe next to other kids. Then there are the older kids. The boys are just as rough and crazy as American boys. I saw the crazy boys that I photographed last week long before I started taking pictures. One of the kids was on another kid’s back pretending to ride him like a horse. Seriously.

Eventually they came closer and when one of them saw that I was taking photographs, he started to come closer and closer. Posing the whole way. Then the rest of the kids ran over. They started screaming, laughing and jumping all over the place. I took a few photos and showed them what they looked like. They howled. It seemed like it was the most hilarious thing they had ever seen. So, for the next five minutes they just went absolutely crazy for me. Making faces, jumping on each other, pushing each other out of the way. The whole time I kept telling them they were too close to me, but they were too hyped up to move back. Or they would move back for a millisecond and then be right back on top of me to see my LCD screen.

Then I asked them how old they were. In Chinese. They could NOT believe we spoke any Chinese. This caused even more chaos. You can check out the entire set on Flickr, well the entire set of the nonblurry shots. Those are hard to come by when you are dealing with crazed seven year olds.