I spent last Friday afternoon doing laundry. While shuttling loads between the bedroom hamper and the balcony, I spotted something curious. Children are not curious, they are everywhere. My community has a population of 50,000 people. When annoyed I believe 95 % of the residents are screaming children.

The open space in my area of the development hold a garden, complete with a moat-like thing. A cleaner dredged the water weekly. Water, like fire, holds a never-ending fascination for kids. I watched a group of friends try to jump the moat. They raced toward it, and stopped dead before the jump. All took a turn, goading each other, saying, I’m sure, “I dare ya,” albeit, in Chinese.

I did what any responsible blogger would do: I grabbed my camera. I apologize for the quality of said pics. There’s a vast difference between my $400 zoom lens and the $1200 zoom I want, both in quality and price.

Approaching the moat, full speed.

Jump aborted.

As any good daredevil knows, you have to break up the monotony of stunts with a little kung-fu fighting.

Busted by the security guard. It didn’t stop the jumpers, they waited until he was gone.

A random man and his daughter wandered by. He stopped to offer some fatherly advice on moat jumping.

Just as the security guard busted the jumpers, the photographer on the 5th floor balcony was also busted when the random father pointed him out. The boy on the right was a student on mine two years back.

Captured: April 18, 2008. Shenzhen, China.

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