9/08/2005 12:06:00 AM|||The Zen Master|||Since I haven't quite yet adjusted to waking up at 7:30 every morning in order to be at school awake and ready to teach my three-year olds by 8:45, sometimes I'm still dozing to the intermittently jarring call of my snooze alarm at 8:00. It is then, however, that I pass irremediably out of the realm of sleep and into that of the unfortunately awake. A few hundred yards down the road is a track, which apparently plays host to the morning exercises of some local school--perhaps the middle school that I've noticed on Baijiazhuang Lu, an intersecting street. In any case, at 8:00am the blare of loudspeakers blasting a recorded rendition of some song that recalls the Chinese national anthem, "The East is Red," without actually being it reaches my wall of windows, imploring me to press against the glass, lean to the left, and witness the spectacle that is the tardy schoolchildren running to their respective places in the straight lines that have formed within the bounds of the track. It has become a tradition to mark the commencement of my day, as I find myself flush against my windows every morning, propelled by the dampened blast of music despite the fact that I know what awaits my gaze. I can't help but repeat my attendance at this striking event, emblematic of all of China's regimented past.|||112611024707946952|||My regimental alarm clock