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A full day of training exhausts the soldiers. Yet they maintain strict discipline and not allowed to leave training camps.
During interviews, soldiers said they sometimes felt lonely but that they found ways to overcome the problem.
Bands composed of military vocalists and instrumentalists, speech contests and organized parties served as entertainment during spare time. When bands played popular songs, their audiences sang along.
In a separate camp, soldiers have built an intranet and selected bulletin board system (BBS) management staff. The entertainment talent of individuals is being fully exploited here.
Soldier Pan Jian has recently risen to fame by blogging the life of his companions. During training, he would instruct several fellows to pick up still and digital videos cameras to film the life of the soldiers and upload the information to his blog.
"Computer games, messaging on BBS and web surfing -- these were simply unimaginable during previous parade training," said Liu Weijun, a veteran of the parades who participated in the military review in 1999 to mark the 50th anniversary of the People's Republic of China.
The change, to some extent, is attributed to an increasing number of well-educated soldiers being recruited into the army, says Lin Limin, head of another formation group.
He said most of the participants in his team were holders of college degrees.
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