Popular colors at parade village: white marks on sun-tanned face

In order to guarantee the perfection of every movement, they practice hard under the harsh sunlight. Every group has provided sun creams and other skin care products to its members in a vain attempt to keep off sunlight. Pale skin has been tanned and become coarse. However, no one complains about this because they all know that they will have pale skin again two months after the military parade.

Zhang Junmei is a member of the NO.1 squadron of the female militia group. She works for a property management company in Chaoyang District. 1.74-meters tall Zhang has a slim figure. She is beautiful, just as her name implies. She is the image ambassador at the property management company. While she was in school, for promotion purposes, her school once issued post cards with her image printed on them.

A desire to look beautiful is second nature to a woman. But Zhang Junmei does not care if she remains beautiful or not. She said with a smile on her face: "the V-shaped mark from the sun on my neck is a black diamond necklace so now I do not need to buy a necklace."'

After a hard day's work, members of the female militia group like to push away their hair to see the notable tan-lines on their forehead. They said mockingly: "now, we are qualified to advertise skin-care products."

Liu Yahong, another member of the female militia group, is a clerk at the Cultural Service Center of Jinzhan Township, Chaoyang District. One day, when she went home, her 5-year-old daughter didn't recognize her. Her husband made fun of her: "here comes an African girl." Liu answered back: "is not it a good thing to be tanned? I was tanned after I attended the 50th National Day military parade and you still married me."

There is a wisecrack among the marine group members: "look at the face during daytime and look at the back at night." In the infantry group, if you see a half white face, or a black and white back, it must belong to a marine group member.

As naval soldiers wear smaller, circular hats, the face just below the eyebrows is exposed to sunlight. Over the course of time, there is an obvious tan-line on the soldiers' faces. That is to say, the skin just above the eyebrows remains pale while the part just below the eyebrows has been tanned by the sun.

"Zebra backs" have been caused by the special shirts with blue and white stripes. The white stripes reflect more sunlight while the blue stripes absorb more heat. As time goes on, black and white stripes appear on everyone's back. After a hard day's work, all the marine group members will take a bath. When they take off their clothes and find the stripes, they cannot help calling themselves "little zebras."

Translated by LOTO