While most laowai are probably familiar with the phenomenon of the “ant tribe,” a recent article in The Economist introduced a number of other “tribes” of stressed-out young Chinese struggling to survive in the urban jungle.

Perhaps the most unusual is the “crush-crush tribe” (捏捏族), who release their frustrations by hiding in supermarket aisles and crushing packages of instant noodles.

The crush-crush tribe first made its appearance in late 2009, vexing store owners and psychologists with their trails of crumpled packaging and furtive Weibo confessions.

(I’ve written a post taking a closer look at the crush-crush tribe here)

Since then, they have branched off into a number of different tribes, each with its own unique method of venting stress at the expense of innocent food items.

Here’s a partial list of the new tribes spreading chaos and destruction in China’s supermarkets, along with their rank on the “uncivilization index” helpfully provided by Shanghai’s Xinwen Chenbao.

Rip-rip Tribe (拆拆族)

Uncivilization rating: 5 stars

Unlike the crush-crush tribe, this group mainly targets household items and clothing.  Members of this tribe tear open packages, leaving underwear, socks, bedspreads and similar items scattered on the shelves.

Shopkeepers say this group is difficult to police, given the large number of shoppers who also open packages to get a closer look or feel the material.

Switch Tribe (调包族)

Uncivilization rating: 5 stars

Rather than destroy items on display, this tribe switches similar items in different packaging.  Small boxed items such as toothpaste and makeup are mixed up, with a tube of one brand being put in the packaging of another.

Some stores have advised customers to check their purchases of any such items to avoid paying the sticker price on the box only to discover a cheaper version hidden inside.

Taste-taste Tribe (尝尝族)

Uncivilization rating: 4 stars

This tribe is not limited to thrill-seeking twentysomethings who sneak a cookie or two out of the box when no one’s watching.  It also includes older shoppers  who like to sample their produce before making a selection, plucking a grape or peeling open a tangerine to see if it’s ripe.

Gentle reminders from shopkeepers to leave the fruit alone often go ignored – if you don’t try it out first, shoppers reply, how do you know if it’d any good?

Scatter Tribe (乱放族)

Uncivilization rating: 4 stars

A freshly roasted chicken hidden in the freezer aisle, a bag of frozen dumplings melting on a rack of underwear… the possibilities are endless.  Like the taste-taste tribe, this group includes as many careless customers as frustrated malcontents, and many laowai likely know a few tribe members from their home country, as well.

I’ve taught English to bartenders and asked them to repeat after me. Bud…Wise…Er…

I’ve taught businessmen and doctors, flight attendants and fry cooks.

I’ve taught Little Emperors in large classes, I’ve taught university students and training school students and done English Corners galore.

Yesterday was the first time, though, in nearly seven years of ESL in China, that a Western businessman wanted to pay me to teach his favorite prostitute English while he is out of the country so next time he comes to town they won’t have to bring an electronic dictionary to bed.

Yeah that’s a new one, even for me.

Keith started class. He did Tongue Twisters. He had arranged them in such a manner that they grew harder the further they went down the list, until the last student had the hardest.

“Theolphius Thistle,” Keith corrected. “Like THis. TH. Got it?”

The boy was shaking. He tried again. He got closer on the ‘th’ sound. Closer. But not correct. Keith kissed the air, drawing some ahhs from the front row, and said, “TH. Like this. Got it?”

They repeated until the bell, and the boy, now trembling, quietly slipped out of class. He never came back.

During the break, Keith found John out in the hall talking to Melanie, a Chinese teacher.

Keith slapped John’s back. “Melanie.”

She turned her face up at him. “Yes?”

“Did you know John here is from America?” he said slowly. You had to be slow; fast English confused them. If Keith had learned one thing in his time here, that was it.

“Yes. You tell it to us.”

“Did you know that he is from my alma mater?” The girl made to answer, but Keith overrode her, “An alma mater is a university from where you graduated.” His lips were puffed again. He pulled them into a smile with his thumbs.

“Yes.”

“Now, you are a new teacher here. Are you having any difficulty?”

“Why are you yell at me?”

“I’m not yelling,” Keith said. And he wasn’t; he was just talking loudly. You sometimes had to do that to make yourself understood. If Keith had learned one thing in his time here, that was it.

The bell buzzed. Melanie ran back to class. John offered a half-hearted smile, nodded and followed her. Keith kissed in the direction they’d gone. Then he returned to class.

The students were talking before he entered, when he entered, and, hey look at this, even after he’d entered. He stood there, his hands on his wide hips, his lips ready to kiss something. Still they talked. He sighed. He yawned. He sighed loudly.

And still they talked.

“Excuse me?” He cleared his throat. “Excuse me?”

The noise gradually dropped off.

“How can we have class when you all are talking?” They were quiet now. Good. Chinese students bowed to the teacher’s authority so easily. God bless Confucius. “If you all are still talking, we cannot have class.”

Now that Keith had their attention, it was time to implement a new idea. His connections at career services still had not replied to his email. It had been, what, two, three weeks now? How much more time should he give them? They must not appreciate all he’d done for them. Well, then he’d make them appreciate it. He’d make sure they never forgot it.

Turning from this, he thought about John. The young man had promised that he’d be there at dinner yesterday, and then he hadn’t shown up. Keith had been looking forward to introducing John to some authentic Chinese food—not that wannabe crap they served in America—and had spent some time rehearsing what he’d say, what John would say, and how much fun they’d have together.

Then John had stood him up.

Which just added to the funny feeling Keith had. It was the same funny feeling he’d gotten from Tom, from Matt. Like them, John had an air of mystery about him.

As if he had something to hide.

And God had put Keith here…

He had the Chinese teachers on it. They reported back to him what John did in each class. So far, so good, but…

Give it time. He’ll show his true colors sooner or later. Keith would root him out.

After all, God has chosen him to be here. It was his job.

When he had every student staring at him, he cleared his throat. It was Friday, so he taught them ‘Thank God It’ s Friday’, ‘TGIF’, and after making them all repeat it and correcting each mistake, he told them to stand up.

“We are going outside,” he enunciated carefully. Carefully. You really could never be too careful.

If he had learned one thing in his time here, that was it.

John stood off to the side as Melanie started a game. He couldn’t remember if he’d taught this class before or not; a few students looked familiar while many did not.

Melanie gathered the reluctant students to the front of the room, three girls and three boys, and she stood between them. She finished saying something in Chinese and then said loudly to the class, “Okay?”

Silence.

“Okay!” She began pointing at the six students. “Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday…” When she reached the end of the week, she said, “Okay?”

More silence.

“Okay!”

Melanie shouted, “Tuesday down!”

The boy squatted and stayed that way.

“Saturday down. Tuesday up!”

Saturday, a short girl with a round face, squatted while Tuesday rose.

They went on through all the days of the week, several times over, in different combinations. Through the barred windows, John got a view of the courtyard. Gray was collecting at the horizon. Not a good sign.

He saw Keith.

Keith was walking his hunchback walk, his lips turned up in a mighty kiss. Trailing him, slunched, were his students.

Where the hell are they going? John wondered.

People stared. The locals here always did, no matter how many times they saw a foreigner. A few girls even giggled. But Keith paid them little mind. He was used to it, really.

Thunder clocked in close by. As they entered the backstreet, the first raindrops began to fall. By the time they had gotten to the fork in the road, rain was pouring. A few students had umbrellas. Those who didn’t collected either under the others’ umbrellas or as close as possible. Keith had no umbrella. Wuhan’s gray rain soaked him.

“Attention!” he shouted, the skin on his face cracking. He tilted his head. Behind him was a big trash heap, used bowls and plates and chopsticks and half-eaten food, half-drunk drinks. This school’s excess. Keith held out his hand and shouted as lightning flared and the girls screamed. “Attention! Today we are doing poetry!”

The students spoke Chinese to each other.

“Quiet! Quiet!” Keith shouted. Some water ran into his mouth. He spat it out. “Quiet!”

“Teacher,” a boy dared say, “it’s raining heavily out here.”

“I said quiet!” Keith’s hands were raised high, like an ancient prophet. Everyone in the nearby shops, safe in their places of work and living, had dropped what they’d been doing to watch. Passers-by stopped as well. All eyes were on Keith. “Quiet now! Today we are doing poetry! Get out your notebooks!”

One girl sneezed. The students under the umbrellas took out their notebooks, pens.

Keith felt dizzy. What were the words? Keep it simple and stupid, he told himself. Simple and stupid.

Simple.

“Poetry describes beautiful things.”

Stupid.

“Use the words of English to describe what you see!” he stepped over to the side, revealing the trash pile as a bike went by and crushed a puddle, splashing some students, who yelled and went running to the other side of the street.

“Quiet now!” Keith shouted. Lord, he had never had a class this disobedient. What were Chinese parents teaching their kids these days?

“You may take notes. Describe the beauty of nature! Write a poem!”

Lightning flared again. One girl screamed and hugged her friend.

“Teacher…”

“I said QUIET!”

The break came and Melanie sent John on his way. The rain had quieted to droplets here and there, and John jogged across the courtyard and crossed the street.

Coming up the other side was Keith. His students behind him. They had their heads down. They were shivering. Keith himself was soaked, his shirt sticking to his enormous belly. One girl coughed deeply. Several sneezed. They marched on like prisoners to the death, poor souls resigned to their horrible fates. John watched them go, wondering just what the hell they had been up to out here.

Though Wuhan later becomes an existential swamp for John, here at the beginning, everything is new and exciting.

This is John’s first day of teaching, where the incumbent dancing laowai, Keith, schools our hero in how to stay in rhythm and step effectively.

John had gotten Keith’s email about the teaching schedule the day he arrived. Attached was a badly formatted Excel spreadsheet but among the lines and half-lines and blocks of text and letters missing their most vital parts, John had caught three pieces of information: 9:50. JOHN and MELODY.

Keith had told him over the summer that they had a casual dress code. It was one of the many things that made teaching in China great. John had brought some formal clothes anyways, but he put on a T-shirt and jeans and headed out the door.

The smell of construction lurked everywhere and as he descended the stairs, he found out why: work crews were out in the little gravel patches between each stairwell, laying down hollow concrete blocks and planting trees. A few took the time to stare at John but the rest of them just went right on with their tasks as if nothing else existed but the work.

He was sweating by the time he reached the building. A mass of students was flowing in. Wuhan’s haze had parted today, and now the sun came on full-force. Some girls carried umbrellas. The boys didn’t. John moved in with them and made no eye contact with anyone as he stepped inside.

In the middle of the building were trees and grass and sunlight beamed down upon it like a solar garden. John leaned on a green rail with patches of rust.

A loan moan turned his head.

A fat old man with a white beard lumbered towards John, a tie slapping against his belly. He stopped, caught his breath, and said, “Hello.”

“Hi.”

“Are you…” He glanced at his palm. “John?”

“I am.”

“I’m Keith.” He offered the same hand he’d looked at. John took it and when he pulled back, he saw little black smudges across his palm.

Keith was sweating. He wiped his forehead with one hand and steadied himself on the rail with the other.

“How’s that heat treating you?”

John lifted a sweat-stained part of his shirt.

“Yeah. I said Wuhan is one of China’s three furnaces.”

“Oh yeah? What are the other two?”

Curtains fell over his eyes for a moment. They went back up, his eyes wild and pokey. “I don’t really remember. Kunming and Qingbo. Hey, did you know I am publishing a book?”

“No.” He blinked. “Really?”

“Yes. I am still in the planning stage, but when I finish, I am going to take a trip to Random House. I have some good friends working there.”

John nodded. If there were a proper thing to say in response to this, he didn’t know it.

“Here,” Keith said, reaching into his wallet. “This is for you.”

Keith handed him a card.

“Show this to any taxi driver.”

There were Chinese characters on one side, smaller characters and their English translation on the other. Both sides shared something else: ‘Dr. Keith Dorgen, PhD’. Below this, ‘English Programme Coordinator’ and below this, scribbled in sloppy ink, ‘Doctor of Education’.

John reread that last part. Keith’s voice cut in.

“If you are ever lost, all you have to do is show that.” With a grunt, he stretched his arm and pointed with his middle finger. “And the driver will bring you right back here.” His arm retreated. “I cannot tell you how many times that card has saved my life.”

“Interesting,” John said, looking at the characters. Then Keith. “What’s this school’s Chinese name by the way?”

The curtains fell, rose.

“I…you can just show them that card I just gave you.”

“Yeah, but if I wanted to tell them the Chinese name.”

“Why do you want to do that?” Keith’s face had gone slack. “Just show them the card.”

John juggled sounds with his tongue. He organized them into, “In case I need to know. That’s all.”

“Well if you insist.” He jabbed with his middle finger. “It’s right there on the card.”

John returned to the characters. He was smiling several seconds before realizing it, right on the edge of a laugh. He snuffed out both.

Keith was staring at him. Hard.

“Cool,” John managed. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” He wheezed. He coughed. “Ready for your first day?”

“I think so. Yes.”

Keith chucked out some sort of laugh.

“We all get nervous the first time. You’ll do fine. We got you paired up with a Chinese teacher. Your job is to assist, so…there is no pressure.”

“Okay that’s good,” John said, trying to catch sight of the passing students. One girl went by, long black strands of hair reaching down to the small of her back and denim shorts and right under this her white legs, long and—

“There is this theory I have developed.”

“Huh?”

Keith had his breathing under control now. He picked up his tie and flapped it against his tongue and John saw that it was decorated in grimacing sheep.

“I said, there is this classroom education theory I have developed.”

John waited. Keith stood hunched over, his legs white feathery things sticking out of cut-off jean shorts that looked like someone had done the job with a pair of scissors.

When Keith did not go on, John said, “What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“Your education theory.”

Keith made a kissy face at John.

John jumped.

Keith didn’t notice. He kissed at John and said, “Kiss. K-I-S-S. Keep It Simple and Stupid.”

The bell rang.

“That’s us. Remember.” He kissed at John again. “Simple and stupid.”

Melody was a short Chinese girl with curled hair. She was saying something in Chinese while the students texted, but as soon as John came in, everything stopped. Melody went quiet. The students went quiet. Every eye in the room turned to him.

John stood near the door. A heat of different origin than that of the day was creeping over his face. He forced himself to look at Melody.

“Hello,” he said.

Some students laughed. The teacher flashed a smile.

“Hi. Please. Come in.”

John stepped in further. Some students ooohed and aaahed. One guy called out, “Where are you come from?”

“I’m from America,” John said in the direction of the voice, to a group of guys in the back.

“Excuse me please.” Melody came close.  She thrust out her arms. “Please say hello to Tom from America.”

“I–”

“Hello! Hello! Hi! How do you do?”

“I’m John,” he whispered to her. When she only looked at him blankly, he faced the students and that heat did a double-flare.

They were staring at him. Every fucking one.

“I’m John.”

A few nodded. The rest didn’t.

“Students!” Melody chirped. “I was just telling you some of the rules for this concentration camp. Please tell our new and handsome foreign teacher, Tom, please tell to him please.”

Nobody spoke. John tilted his head. Did she just say—?

“Okay. The first rule of this here concentration camp is please be on time. IF you are late, you must tell me why you are late. The number two rule of this here concentration camp…”

Concentration camp. John looked at her like he were hearing things. He had to be. Concentration camp?

“The number seven rule of this here concentration camp…”

But no, he heard her correctly. She read the rules directly from a piece of paper, then lowered it and smiled at John.

“Maybe our lovely…and so handsome foreign teacher would like to tell us a little about his hometown, maybe. Perhaps? Yes?”

“Oh. Okay.” He began. And stopped at the part about being a French major.

“So why are you in China?” a girl asked. She looked pissed. And she asked the question as if John’s mere presence here was a personal affront to her.

John thought it was a stupid question to ask. Stupid or not though, she was waiting for an answer. He said the first thing that came to mind.

“My plane crashed here.”

After a second or two, the class cracked up. Except for that girl. She had some tempered little grin on her face, her eyes filling up with something.

John’s first thought: it was contempt.

But he wasn’t too sure.

Once John’s bio was over, he took questions from the students. After several seconds of pressuring, including a harsh lecture in Chinese from the teacher, John got the following questions, in order:

- Do you like Chinese food?

- Do you like Wuhan food?

- Can you use chopsticks?

- What do you think of China?

- What do you think of Wuhan?

- How do you think of China?

- How do you think of Wuhan?

Melody asked these last two, the same as ‘What do you think of China/Wuhan?’ Q & A over, she began the day’s lesson. John asked what he could do to help.

“You can stand over there!” she said with a big smile. It was a friendly smile.

John went and stood over there.

She lectured directly from a powerpoint to a silent audience. John sweated. When the bell rang, both she and John stepped out into the hallway. The building, quiet seconds before, now filled with a deafening Mandarin din.

And near the window, a low English ting.

“Hello Tom!” Melody said, smiling. “How do you think of your first class?”

“It’s…it’s okay. It’s real hot in here.”

“Oh!” She drank from a thermos, the contents of which appeared to have…

Steam?

“It’s so hot!” the teacher said as John studied her thermos.

“What’re you drinking?”

“Green tea. It’s very good.”

“Is it…hot?”

“Of course! It’s very good.” She tugged absently at her shirt. “Do you believe it’s hot inside here?”

“Oh yeah, it’s hotter than hell here.”

“You…can go home.”

She said it with such finality, but somehow, she was giving him another friendly smile.

“But aren’t I supposed to help?”

“It’s so hot. You can go home.”

The bell rang. The students filed in. The teacher recapped her thermos, put it back in her purse and said, “I will see you later!”

She hurried into the classroom as John said bye.

At his apartment door, Jack crushed his fourth cigarette and took the fifth inside. He checked his phone messages. Then he stepped back out and lit number six and headed to McDonald’s.

Although Jack loved Mcdonald’s coffee, he did not much care for McDonald’s itself, or KFC for that matter. 5,000 years of continuous civilization, blown away with the frying of hamburger patties.

Shanghai was full of such places, just as it was full of laowai who wanted to be Chinese, and Chinese who wanted to be laowai. Jack had tried to talk some sense into two pretty young girls he’d followed to a Starbucks, laying out in simple terms how that capitalist fraud Deng Xiaoping had stolen Grandpa Mao’s classless, agrarian utopia and sent it hurtling towards mercantile oblivion. Alas, his words fell on deaf ears; they sipped their frappucinos and ignored him. Score two more for the capitalist roaders.

As Jack entered McDonald’s, he thought that his trip to that polluted Paris wannabe had permanently put him off traveling to China’s Westernized cities. If anything, it just reinforced what he’d long suspected: Wuhan was the real China. Since surviving Shanghai, he had not left Wuhan. That had been four years ago.

Inside McDonald’s, a cardboard Ronald McDonald cradled a plastic box of toxic toys. Kids ran to, they ran fro, they just ran everywhere, yelling and screaming. A group of lovely girls was eating ice cream, and in front of him, a newly bourgeois Chinese couple took their little daughter up to the counter and let her choose from the menu, allowing her to betray her five millenia heritage. Jack knew. The corruption was complete. It was already too late for her.

“Bà,” the girl said, tugging at her father’s sleeve and pointing at Jack. “Wài guó rén!” Her mouth opened wide. “Dùzi hǎo dà!”

“Hi!” Jack called, and opened his own mouth wide, in a big smile. The girl screamed and hid her face with both hands. Jack chuckled as the parents shielded their daughter. Chinese girls were just so shy.

It had to be genetic.

I remember clearly what it was like the summer before I left America. Those initial emails, the excitement, the trepidation. The realization that my options were a) go to grad school, do the same thing I’d been doing for the past four years, or b) go to China. Do something new. I circled B.

It was the best decision I ever made.

The weekend before I left, in the midst of heavy partying (most of which I don’t remember); time spent with friends, some of whom I still talk to, a few of whom have not spoken to me since; it did dawn on me: I’m really doing it.

I’m really going to China.

When I was leaving China, it dawned on me, but not in the same way. I made the decision to leave, and then actually left in two different mind states, at two vastly different universities.

In late 2009, I was waking up five mornings a week at five am or so, grabbing bowls of re gan mian, catching the bus and then sitting in traffic an hour or so to take Chinese classes at Wuhan University. After this, I got to teach twenty hours a week at an … average Wuhan university. Perhaps that’s being too nice, a bit of “face-giving”, but what can I say? While I did enjoy walking five minutes on a Friday afternoon only to find that three students out of thirty-six had shown up, chatting for about ten minutes and then going back to my apartment with a crate of beer and/or rice wine, the whole schedule was really ripping me apart.

So I took the first step: at the United States Embassy in Beijing I took my oath, got my certificate to marry. We later went to the Hubei marriage bureau, and by the time we mailed off our visa application, it was the end of the semester.

I guess if I’d really wanted to, I could’ve stayed at that university despite my ranking among teachers.

“You are thirteen,” my boss told me.

“Oh?”

“We have fourteen teachers,” she added, with great distress.

To this day, I’m not sure how they ranked us. Whatever it was, I sucked at it.

I asked my Chinese teacher if she knew of any jobs, she directed me to a former teacher at Wu Da, then to someone else, and then I interviewed for the job at Wuhan University.

I believe my old school gave me a bit of face. My FAO sure didn’t want to. His exact words to me were “you were late to class”, and he thought this necessary to not only tell Wuhan University, but also to put on my reference letter.

He didn’t, and thus the head honchos at Wu Da never knew that their new acquisition had been late a couple times for a Friday afternoon class. I guess every foreign teacher in China does have a skeleton in the closet. That’s mine.

It was in doubt that my wife would receive a visa. We just didn’t know. Some sources said it was easy, others said near impossible. One blogger in fact said that when his wife got her visa there were a lot of Chinese women outside crying. It’s funny now, given how smoothly everything went, but at the time it’s not hard to see how something like this can make you worry, especially coming from someone who’d been there, done that and probably had the t-shirt in the wash cycle.

At Wuhan University, I had wonderful students and even better working conditions. I had a great apartment by the East Lake, where aside from some nosy housekeepers, no one bothered me. I had free time to pursue anything I wanted, and had access to all the re gan mian I wanted, plus beer, scotch and of course, rice wine. When they say rice wine is an acquired taste, they’re not lying, but if you’re able to acquire it, you’re in for a treat.

This is part of the reason that I signed a new contract. Unsure of my wife’s visa, I renewed for a full year. This was in June.

My wife’s interview was in July.

We did not sleep the night before her interview. I could go in with her, but only to a point; I had to sit in a cafe with my fifty RMB cup of instant coffee while she stood in line, shaking. Then, if at no other time, I was thankful I had renewed for a full year. I told myself, as I had told her repeatedly, that no matter what happened, we would be okay.

The women were coming around the corner. I knew her reaction would tell the tale, and her smile and bouncing step said it all.

I’d be lying if I said my heart did not sink a little bit at this news. I was happy for her, but at the same time…

It took me awhile to accept that I was leaving. Awhile, as in up until the morning of.

A lot of things happened during this time. I began writing for Lost Laowai; I finished a novel about a foreign teacher who falls in love with a Chinese woman; and most importantly, I finally felt that I could say something about China, actually say something other than a banal observation or some poorly worded kindergarten temper tantrum on how such-and-such annoyed me. I guess what I’m really trying to say is, I finally felt at home.

I entered the fall 2010 semester knowing that I might be leaving China. Might. I say ‘might’ because I still was not sure. People I’d talked to had warned me about the condition of the American economy; most fearful, though a few (read: disgruntled, divorced expats) gleeful that finally the great tanker labeled ‘unsinkable’ had hit a financial iceberg. I don’t know if it will sink, but there’s one thing we can agree on: they’ve locked the poor down in the bottoms and are going to let them drown in their sleep. What else is new?

It wasn’t until early December that we bought our plane ticket, leaving at the end of December. My wife was the voice of reason in all this. She convinced that we had little to lose by trying. After all, she had gone through all that to get the damn visa. We couldn’t just throw it all away based on others’ opinions.

Along the way, someone contacted me from America and I ended up gaining a wonderful new friend, a cool guy and a talented writer. I met many people during my time in China, many of them wonderful, all of them interesting.

I said at the start that going to China was the best decision I ever made. Why is that? It could be my own growth; it could be the people, the culture I got to know; or it could be a beautiful young woman, working in the foreign affairs office. Standing there by the window, asking me on a 35 degree Celsius day if I wanted tea or warm water. It could be her, and the extended family I am now a part of.

I’ll end this with a write-up I did my second day in China. These are my very first impressions:

• Driving here is insane. On the way from the airport, our driver nearly hit several people, pedestrians included.
• Drivers here are not hesitant to honk their horns at you. Even if you’re a pedestrian crossing at a designated crosswalk. But I have the right away! No, you do not.
• The dollar is worth more than the yuan (RMB). It will carry you far.
• My apartment is brand-new, furnishings included.
• The internet is of course filtered, so I cannot officially access wordpress. Right now, I’m using a web-based anonymous proxy.
• At our welcome dinner last night, the food packed quite a punch. The Wuhan delicacies tend to be on the VERY spicy side.
• There is a street close by, I don’t know the name, full of street vendors selling an assortment of items.
• Try to learn some Chinese before coming here. That way, when you order noodles from a street vendor, you know the price they are quoting and are not stuck with handing them a 10 and hoping for the best.
• However, now that I have internet access, that should change. There are lots of online tools that assist language learning.

That’s it for now. I’ll be back later with clearer, more in-depth posts.

August 29, 2008

I’ll never be able to relive those first days. So I’ll just have to make do with great friends, a wife and memories I’ll carry until the day I die.

The title is a little misleading. It’s not goodbye, or farewell. More of an attempt to summarize in 1500 words what would take 100,000.

“And American love isn’t?” Nick said.

“Western love,” Walter said, “is not real love. Not in the Chinese sense. It’s not. Their love is deeper, truer.”

“Yeah,” Nick said, “I can see what you mean.”

He could too. One night at dinner he had casually remarked that he had worn holes in a pair of socks. The next day his girlfriend brought him a new pair. And he hadn’t remembered mentioning it until she handed him the box.

Nick had been with his girlfriend for five months now going on six. Already talk of marriage. Already she had taken him to her hometown, which just about fitted his finger for a ring. He did love her, he did, but marriage? Marriage was a large step. At least, it ought to be.

“It’s quite a bit to learn,” Walter said.

Walter also had a Chinese girlfriend, had been with her for as long as Nick had been with his. Except while Nick and his girlfriend were only two years apart, Walter and his were thirty-seven. Or thirty-five, depending on what age Walter felt like giving you that day.

Nick knew Walter had taught his girlfriend in freshman English, and that he no longer taught freshman English. Past that…Nick preferred not to think about it. Leave that to the other teachers. Nick preferred not to judge, as he would hate for anyone to judge his relationship. Love was love, and if they were happy, then what of it? So despite the usual warning bells, Nick kept his feelings in check.

“I’m far behind on how to love,” Walter said.

“Well you’d think with three marriages under your belt, you’d have picked up something.”

“I did. High blood pressure, a couple heart attacks.” He laughed, crushing his cigarette and lighting another. “I am behind though.”

Nick took a cigarette from the pack, lit it. “In what way?”

“Well just here the other day see, she was out on her way to my apartment and she texted me,” he lifted his phone and shook it, “and said it was hot out. Well me, I just sent her a message saying okay, see you soon. Now, do you know what her response was?”

Nick shook his head.

“Asshole.”

Nick blinked.

“Yes, that’s right. She called me an asshole, then she turned around and went back to her dormitory.”

Nick blinked again. “Why?”

“Because I am an asshole,” Walter said. “I did not offer her any water.”

“But…she was outside.”

He shook his head, gently, and said, “If I cared, I would have offered her water, see, she said she was hot, which means she was thirsty, and if I truly cared, I would have offered her some water.”

Ash fell from Nick’s cigarette onto his pantleg.

“Do you see?”

“Yes,” he said. Slowly. “Yeah. I do.”

“Right, now, here’s another thing that happened. She came over here the other night to…” His eyes shifted around. “To do her homework, right?”

It took Nick several seconds to realize Walter was looking for confirmation.

“Right,” Nick said.

“Right, and she got comfortable over there on the bed while I made myself a coffee. I sat down with my coffee, and she folded her arms. I asked her what was wrong, but she didn’t speak. She did not say one word to me for the rest of the night.”

“Why?”

“Because if I cared, I would have fixed her a coffee.”

“Yeah, but she didn’t ask for one.”

“It doesn’t matter. If I truly loved her, I would have just made her a coffee. No asking needed. It’s Chinese love.

“It’s like, ‘hey you stupid asshole, where’s my fucking coffee?’,” Walter went on, looking truly horrified. “And the thing is, she’s right. If I were not such an uncaring asshole, I would have fixed her a coffee.”

Nick stubbed out his cigarette.

“It’s a fantastic way of doing things,” Walter said. “With a Chinese girl, you must always prove that you love her. Whatever I do is good for one time, one time only. Next time, I have to prove that I love her all over again.” He lit another cigarette. “Yes, it’s absolutely fantastic.”

Nick soon left. And later on, he thought about Walter’s words and wondered what type of life that was to lead, to have to always prove your love. But he reminded himself that it was not his place to judge. Leave that to the other teachers. If they were happy, then good. After all, he did not want people judging his relationship.

But seeing Walter’s horrified face, he had to admit that sometimes, sometimes, it was just so hard to keep your feelings in check.

After Tom, that was it for me. I decided not to “renew the contract”. I applied for math-teaching jobs at international schools in many different cities, but come September, I was across Wuhan. In another university.

Teaching oral English.

I never cut down on my drinking. In this place, how could you? I need it. It’s as simple as that. I know I’m not alone in this feeling, but perhaps I’m the only one who’s okay with it. Sure, you could argue that I should not be okay with it, that I should seek help, that I should just do so many fucking things. But I won’t. And that’s okay, too.

I did limit my drinking to my apartment. I drank one bottle after another, browsing the internet. Googling people I had once known, seeing where they were, wondering where I could have been, which turn lead me here, which turn would have led elsewhere.

I found my daughter.

It wasn’t the first time I’d gone looking for her, but man, the internet must’ve grown a lot in the past few years. There were several pages on there. The first was a LinkedIn profile. She’s working in finance now, but that’s all there was. Just information on her career.

Nothing about her.

The other page was a Facebook profile. I’m not a member of Facebook, so I only got to see the initial page, but there it was, right there in the upper-left-hand corner.

My daughter.

All grown up.

I went outside for a walk. I only looked at the picture for a second…but maybe that was enough. I had always had this image of her, as she may be now, and I liked it. A beautiful young woman who took after her mother in the looks department but after her father in the brains department, who still liked Math puzzles. She played the same ones, and I played them too. We even talked. We had a lot of fun.

But that picture…was that even her? I’ve spent a lot of time telling myself that it might not have been her. I know how many people have my name, God knows other people share hers.

Then again…

It was her. I can’t bullshit myself about it. You know certain things as a parent. As a father. No matter how old your kids get, no matter how far they go, you still know them.

*******

Keith is dead.

He’s been dead for about a year as I write this. Pneumonia took him that next December. I didn’t find out until the June after, when I just happened to be on QQ and a former student messaged me.

Am I happy about it? No. Am I sad then? No. I don’t think you should be happy when people die, even if they wronged you. As for being sad, I think the tragedy of Keith’s death is the tragedy of his life. He died an old man in a cold Chinese hospital an entire hemisphere removed from everyone and everything he had ever known. Surrounded by strangers, he couldn’t even have read his own obituary. He died serving a corrupt, low-tier university. He died, his life one in which he’d always left people worse off. He died trying to justify his failures, trying to convince a lifelong audience all of whom were deaf to his words. He died.

In his emails, Keith had called Wuhan a “real Chinese city”. Jack echoed a similar sentiment. I’ve spent a long time thinking about what they really mean by that.

They don’t like Shanghai and Beijing because in those cities, the fish bowl is a lot bigger. In those cities, they are reminded of how inadequate they truly are, and that is the absolute worst thing to remind someone of. How inadequate they are.

You come 12,000 miles to forget about it…but the more you try to forget, the more you remember.

I made a lot of mistakes, but I’m happy to say I never harassed or bullied my younger co-workers. No matter how shitty I felt, I refrained from doing that. I can’t say the same about the others. What can I say about them, other than what I’ve said so far?

Right before I left that second university, Jack told me he was getting back into “business”. He had been tooting that horn for as long as I’d known him. Told me he had lots of ideas for business ventures between Chinese and UK universities. Called himself “the visa agent for the UK”. Teaching had gotten old, the office still hadn’t given him his “summer pay”…so it was time to leave. It was time to get out.

He’s still teaching oral English.

Jack had another reaction to something Tom had written, this time via Facebook. Around the time he told me about his new business ventures, he discussed a story Tom had posted, about a foreign teacher who gives private lessons to a rich Chinese girl, but as it turns out, her parents are making her do it. The character in the story has little common ground with her and wonders whether it is worth 350 RMB an hour.

“Her parents are handing him this money, and it’s like ‘dance, dance you white fucking monkey’, you know, just fucking dance. I wanted to hit this stupid cunt right in the face. He just doesn’t understand anything. Typical fucking tourist bus laowai, finding refuge in Starbucks and McDonald’s, culturally inept to a mind-boggling degree.”

Jack talks, he keeps talking, and long after I’m gone, he’ll still be there. Talking. Teaching oral English.

And discussing his future “business ventures”.

*******

Well, here we go again. I began this a few weeks before I left China and here I am, sitting in a hotel room with the same notebook I bought for 1.5 RMB…sitting here under a smoke detector. A working smoke detector.

I’m back. I knew things would be different, but I never imagined how different! When I left, Survivor was on and Big Brother was just starting. Now it seems like every show is a reality show. Who watches this shit? Is this what we have come to as a society? It seems like our entire country is living in the shadow of what it once was…a shadow that shrinks as the sun sets for the final time.

No one cares about anything, except what they’re told to care about. Ground Zero Mosque? Everything is so divisive now. I was when I left, but Christ almighty, it’s just so. Much. Worse. Hearing about it just doesn’t to it justice. You have to be here to really understand.

But…I guess what I’m really doing now is stalling. The longer I write, the longer I can put it off. I once heard Wuhan referred to as “the graveyard of all ambition”, and as I stall, I think of what my options were, and it comes down to how I want my ambition to die. Slowly as I try to convince myself that I’m so happy, that all my screw-ups were not all for naught, that by coming to China and indulging in the fringe benefits of being white I am somehow vindicated.

Or I can come here. I can try.

I think that’s what it comes down to. Surrendering to a life of quiet desperation…or…

I have an address. A couple hundred bucks in my pocket.

I don’t know if she’ll be there. She may not even accept me if she is.

I think what I’ll do is have a drink first. For Matt, for Tom, but especially for Jack. Keith, and all the others who went to China seeking a better life, and all those who will go this year.

Then I’ll head out over there. I can try, that’s all I can do.

The rest is out of my hands.

I had an English class once where this girl interrupted me to ask what I thought of Japan, and without waiting for an answer, proceeded to tell me that Japan had killed many Chinese people, that they hated China, they were jealous of China. Then she went into Korea. Korea “stole our culture”. You’d think imitation the sincerest form of flattery, but not this girl.

I didn’t know what to say. On one hand, listening to this recorded message, it dawned on me that I was 12,000 miles away from everyone and everything I had ever known…and that according to some people, this, this, blind allegiance, blatant censorship, and self-checking all in the name of “harmony”…this is the next superpower.

On the other hand, she was speaking. I take what I can get.

While not typical of my students, thinking about Tom reminded me of her.

Of Nicole too.

I don’t know Nicole’s Chinese name, nor do I know exactly how her family was “powerful”, suffice to say that she had an aunt in our university’s administration. That despite having no Bachelor’s degree, she was enrolled as a postgraduate student…and that she did not particularly care for laowai.

Or anyone else for that matter.

When Keith wrote “…you can guess what happens next”, he refers to the harassment and subsequent vandalism carried out on Tom’s apartment by our school’s fenqing.

Like Matt, Keith saw fit to give Tom a special farewell. It began slowly at first. Keith started by telling some other teachers that he had read Tom’s blog, that it was “offensive” against China, and with no segue, went into what a “poor” teacher Tom was and how his contract would not be renewed.

Then it gained speed.

I was walking on the backstreet one evening when from behind me I heard a wheezy moan. I turned in time to see Keith rumbling up towards me.

“Did…you hear me calling your name? Where are you going?”

“Just to get some dinner,” I told him.

There was a silence lasting several seconds stretched to forever. I smiled and went up the street.

Keith followed.

We ended up in a Muslim noodle place.

Over dinner, Keith asked me if I had read Tom’s blog. I said ‘no’, although I had, and he told me what he’d told the other teachers, except this time with a little more tacked on.

“He just writes these things…his teaching’s just very ineffective,” Keith said. “We won’t be asking him back.”

I didn’t ask why his teaching was ineffective or how Keith knew that without sitting in on his class. I didn’t know, but what the hell, that made two of us…

Around contract renewal time, Tom got an email:

Subject: YOU

I have read all your disgusting blog articles. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You have no one to blame for your own problems but you. You clearly do not fit teaching in China. I strongly suggest you resign, effective immediately. I am so disappointed in you.

I shared with the young man what I’d heard, and then got this bit of news:

They wanted Ashley back.

From what I gathered, Keith caught Ashley out alone one day and lassoed her into an early lunch. Over fried rice, Keith kicked things off by telling her that he had secured admission for Xia Yu’s daughter to Middle Tennessee State University. He had accomplished this feat with one simple email, sent to someone very powerful over there. What a coincidence too, as Xia Yu herself was awfully powerful, as was her husband…and of course, Keith knew all of them so well.

Keith also told her what he’d been saying about Tom. Wondered aloud why Tom was getting so angry, as Keith was “just trying to help”.

Because the office didn’t want him back.

Because “they” did not want Tom back, none of this “we” business anymore, and though Keith could do nothing for Tom…he could keep Ashley safe.

Ashley informed Tom. Liking China as they did, the two of them decided to apply for jobs elsewhere. They sent their resumes to some local universities.

Then Ashley got her own email from Keith, reprimanding her for sending her resume out after he had told her she was safe. Admonishing her for not “understanding” China.

I guess getting let down sucks at any age.

They did not tell Tom his contract wasn’t being renewed–he had to call. So he calls our FAO up, and she tells him…

“We cannot renew the contract. Your teaching is ineffective.”

Ineffective. Where on earth did she pick up that word? Ineffective.

Which raises the question, what exactly is effective teaching? Do they know what that is? How do they know his teaching is ineffective? I asked these questions–Tom asked these questions.

After the vandalism.

You see, Tom went to the office and complained about Keith. Xia Yu told him what he wanted to hear, then relayed the information back to her fat, wrinkly, running dog. And Keith?

Nicole was one of Keith’s students. Tom had posted Keith’s email on his blog, mocking it…and Nicole, she “just found” Tom’s blog by googling Keith’s name…like she just found Tom’s “uncomplimentary” writing.

They vandalized the wall outside Tom’s apartment.

“Tom, you suck. Go to hell!” was splashed in black paint. “Jerk Ass”, on his door.

All over some writing, most of which they could barely understand? Warm. A racist attack? Getting warmer. Horrendous xenophobia, with an inferiority complex to match? Exactly! Don’t knock the Century of Humiliation. It gives your life direction, purpose. Miserable little emperors have so much time on their hands.

As do foreign teachers.

Keith sent Nicole the link to Tom’s blog and told his classes that Tom was writing “bad” things about China. This, several students readily admitted. Nicole, little nationalist, little racist Nicole, she organized the whole thing on the BBS. The school said they would investigate what happened, so of course they did not. Tom raised hell. But Tom…

He forced a meeting. With Xia Yu, our FAO, and Keith. It was like forcing a meeting with the principal and his son, when the son had beaten you up…and the principal had helped him. In the meeting, Keith started wagging his finger at Tom, accusing him of writing “bad” things about China. When it came to Keith’s email, why, he was “just expressing” his “disappointment” with Tom. As for the blogs, why, Keith never mentioned them in class. He “just replied” to the “many emails” he’d received about what TOM posted on HIS BLOG about Keith. You know, the blog, where Tom had written such “bad” things about China.

Later, Keith simplified the story: Tom wrote bad things about China, the students googled him, found it…and you can just guess what happens next. Poor Keith just can’t understand why Tom keeps blaming him. As Keith put it, “It’s so typical of a young American. He made all kinds of problems for himself and by himself – leading to nasty comments posted outside his apartment by some irate students.”

And would you know it, right after this, Keith caught Ashley outside, and said they wouldn’t be renewing her contract after all. “They say you’re mean to your students,” Keith told her.

So what was Tom to do now? What could he do? Who could he turn to? No one is here to help foreign teachers in China…but I couldn’t tell the kid this.

Keith “recruited” through university career services email lists in America. So I told Tom his best bet would be to email the career services Keith had recruited him through and file a formal complaint. Include pictures, write everything you can remember. I told him all this, keeping my suspicions to myself, and Tom did it. He wrote a lengthy, professional email, detailing what happened, Keith’s behavior, how it represented a threat to the teachers he’s supposed to be “helping” in this very foreign country. Tom even mused on what would’ve happened if he or Ashley had been hurt. It was long. It was professional.

It was cathartic.

And that’s all it ended up being. They sent Tom back an email saying they would “keep it on file”. That was it. Tom and Ashley are in Shanghai now, Ashley interning somewhere, while Tom’s doing a Master’s degree in Chinese.

As for Keith, well, he got to recruit “twenty” new teachers, “real” teachers as he called them. Not young Americans who just don’t know how to teach, who just don’t belong here.

Fortunately, I missed this particular extravaganza.

With Matt gone, nobody really did anything. They bitched. We all avoided Keith like the walking kindergarten plague he was…but none of us did anything. I won’t say that I tried but had no support, but really, what were we to do? We were English teachers in China, lucky enough to have these jobs. God knows we weren’t going to jeopardize it.

Keith was also put in charge of coordinating the English courses for postgraduate students, and while his predecessor had been content just to throw together a few lessons and be done with it, Keith had far grander ambitions. For him it was an actual program. So it needed a name.

He named it Concentration Camp.

You may ask “why?”…among other, more pertinent questions.

Antisemitism? Senility? I take the latter and raise you one more: a display of power. He called it ‘concentration camp’ because he could. Because he could get away with it. We did complain about that, but to little avail; as long as Keith licked their asses properly, this university was his playhouse, and he would do what he wanted. Anyone who disagreed could get out.

Like Tom.

Keith’s three “recruits”, as he called them, were Tom, Ashley, and Peter. Peter had been a business major at Louisiana State University. Not exactly a background that produces many winners at the game of life, Peter had piled up enough losses to make ESL in China a viable option.  He lasted two and a half months, though not because of Keith; he pulled a midnight runner, after weeks spent bitching about how “stupid” everyone here is and how “annoying” his students were. Good riddance.

The other two were Tom and Ashley. They were a couple, and the first teacher they met was me.

The second teacher?

“I had a very violent past you see, right,” Jack said, his eyes watering. “I used to just go up and grab people.”

We had lunch at the backstreet. Tom had the menu, but Jack snatched it out of his hands and pretended to read from the menu. He said things to the waitress, who repeated them. The waitress said them in Pu Tong Hua, Jack said them in his… unique brand of Hua, and at last he turned to Ashley.

“They have trouble understanding standard Chinese.”

“But isn’t that like the official language here?”

“It is, but not everyone understands it, you see, among the local peoples, there is a good deal of pride in the local dialects, by refusing to conform, they keep their culture intact. It’s actually quite brilliant.”

No one said anything.

“So you’re from America then?” Jack said to Ashley, his mammoth frame pointed directly at her.

“Yes…we both are.”

Jack waved a hand of dirty, uncut fingernails at Tom. “He’s American.” Jack did an exaggerated eyeroll. “So you know what that’s like, but you, for you I will TRY and make an exception. I will TRY.”

“Oh,” she said to her rice bowl.

I asked them some basic questions, where they went to school, how long they thought they’d stay. Stuff like that.

Then Tom said he was keeping a blog about China.

“How is that possible?” Jack said. “How can someone who exists on the fringes of a society understand that society? You’re a laowai, a wai guo ren, an outsider. You can’t understand pigs without shoveling pig shit, you shouldn’t even fucking eat bacon. How can you be an expert on death without taking the occasional life?”

“So…what?” Tom said. “You’ve taken lives or something?”

“I was a hitman.” Catching their looks, he added, “It’s normal. It’s all over the world. Everyone does it. It’s just so normal.”

Whereas I had learned to avoid Jack except when necessary, Tom and Ashley had little training in that area. As such, they ended up at Starbucks with him.

After Jack had informed Ashely that he’d been a bodyguard for women in the UK, that was, before he’d traded away his BMWs for a “simpler” i.e. “better” life here in China, they’d begun talking about one of Ashley’s projects. The girl was a death penalty abolitionist, not just for the United States, but for the whole world. Tom nodded, reciting a story he’d read on the internet about the infamous “Chop-Chop” square in Saudi Arabia.

“Well what the fuck are you supposed to do with all these pedophiles?” Jack roared.

“Uh,” Tom began.

“What the fuck are you supposed to do with all these pedophiles?” He smacked the table. “They had this case here recently, I think it was Fujian, where this kindergarten teacher was touching little girls, so they just took him out back during recess and–” He pantomimed shooting a kneeling man, “–BAM!”

Ashley jumped.

Tom tried to speak again. “Well–”

“What the fuck are you supposed to do with all these pedophiles?” He smacked the table. “They had this case here recently, I think it was Fujian…”

When he’d finished, he informed them that the school owed him “summer pay”, and after that, the tale of his affair…and how he’d made her “scream”, of course.

“He talks about killing pedophiles and his affair like all the fucking time,” Tom told me one day. “He’s even started telling his classes. What can we do about it?”

“Nothing,” I told him. “Just huddle up, pray, and thank God you’re not him.”

Not that Jack saw it that way. One of the man’s favorite remarks was, “You’re American, but I’ll try not to hold that against you”, and when he wasn’t breaking the creative barrier with that one, he was generally putting down Tom and the other young Americans as much as possible.

“I read this stuff he writes,” Jack said right in front of Tom one day. “Yeah, okay…” Jack reached out to pet Tom as he would a dog, a smirk on his face. Tom jerked away. “He’s American, he tries, but he is American.”

To Tom’s credit, he never dropped down to Jack’s level. It would be so tempting, especially since it’s so easy to see Jack for what he really is. I think Tom realized what we all knew: that with Jack, and people like him, it’s futile to hate them. Yes Jack, he’s American, and no, he just can’t understand China the way you do you Critical-Thinking-Hitman-Adjudicator-Alpha-Male-Extraordinaire…but tomorrow when he wakes up, he’ll have his youth. His sanity. While you’re rambling about your “violent past”.

As for the stuff Tom wrote, that’s what pissed Keith off. On the surface it seemed like no big deal: westerner comes to China, grows dissatisfied with teaching, writes about it. No big deal. I read Tom’s stuff, and lots of foreigners come to China…and say a lot worse than Tom ever did.

But Tom questioned the naming choice. He mocked the name Concentration Camp.

He questioned Keith’s authority. In Keith’s Playhouse.

And as Keith himself later said, when assassinating Tom’s character on an ESL blacklist, “…you can guess what happens next.”