At first I thought I was hallucinating. As we were driving through the Sichuan mountains (refer to my trip to the Sichuan mountains) a kid, standing at the side of the road, raised his hand in a salute. I quickly discarded the “salute” idea and decided that he’s simply shielding his face from the sun in order to get a better look at us, until I suddenly realized that the sun was at his back.
After this happened for two or three more times, and I was pretty sure they were saluting us, I mentioned it to my companions. They seemed to be well-acquainted with the phenomenon, but could not really reach an agreement as to its reasons. Several theories were raised:
1. Once in a while some “esteemed guests” (read as: “donors”) arrive to the schools, and the children are trained to “show respect” by saluting. These “guests” arrive in SUVs (Israelis should read this word as “jeeps”). Our vehicle looked like a SUV (to my dismay it didn’t have the offroad capabilities of one) and they saluted to us out of habit.
2. Similar to the “esteemed guests” theory with the slight change that the important component is seeing me (a foreigner) in the car. It did seem that more children were saluting when I was in sight in the front seat, but perhaps it’s just because I had a better field of vision and managed to notice more of them.
3. The saluting is some advanced form of begging, in which the children believe that the people in the car would stop and give them something (candy? toys?).

For me, this remains an open question to this day.