Job Discussion Forums

[Egas]

In honor of a pervasive insult I directed at all we ESLers in China, I devote the following thread. Here is a chance for a bit of self-depricating humor, or just a chance to take the p.ss out of someone really weird. Let's keep all names and personal details out of the conversation so as to protect the indolent.

There are some pretty strange people you meet out here in China. What are some strange experiences you have had here with the wistfully weird wackos of China? I will begin with a story here. This one actually comes from Taiwan, but it's close enough to home.

When I was in Taiwan and doing my bit as the head teacher of a bushiban, my first teacher training assignment was a guy from ***** (country name deleted to avoiding pi.sing off all his compatriots) Let's call him Frederick, as that is an uncommon name, and unlikely to offend anyone on Dave's. He had just arrived in Taiwan.

The Director took me aside and told me to train him up before we shipped him off to a nearby branch of the school. Anyway, when I met him, we sat down and he told me he had been studying philosophy for two years. Then he proceeded to tell me about his theory of love. All very fine, but I couldn't help but noticing that his knuckles were swathed in bandages.
"How did you hurt your hands?" I asked casually.
"I ... hurt... my hand," was his response. No points for spotting the circularity in that answer. It looked to me like he had tried to beat the crap out of something... or someone.

I took him into my class, and he observed for a while. He had this kind of benificent Buddha smile on his dial when he spoke with the kids (7-10 year olds). Anyway, that's no crime, so I shall continue. That afternoon I was called into a curriculum meeting, so I left Frederick to take care of the class. When I returned an hour later to see how he was doing, the classroom was in chaos. There were kids wrestling on the floor, drawing on the whiteboard, yelling at each other... basically they had seized control.

I went up to Frederick who was kind of just standing in the middle of it all with that aforementioned Buddha-like grin on his face.
"Ah, how's it all going in here?" I asked.
"Really good!" he said. "The kids are lovely."
Frederick had to leave after that, saying "I love you all!" as he did so.

The next time I met him I explained that his classromm management style needed a bit of work. He seemed a bit offended, and told me he thought he did really well. Anyway, there was not much more I could say, and he was shipped off to the other branch.

About six weeks later, I was not terribly surprised to hear something more about Frederick. One of the Chinese staff at the school told me that he had spent most of his time chasing skirt in rather un-Buddha-like fashion down at one of the local bars. Then one day he had come to school and taken to several motor-scooters outside the school with a knife, and cut up their seats. Some parents had seen it, and so he was immediately fired. They drove him to the airport to make sure he left. When they examined his apartment, he had basically destroyed it. Two mirrors had been smashed. It was commented that it looked like he had punched them.

We really shouldn't make too much fun of Frederick, because he obviously was not mentally well. And of ourse he was rather more an extreme case of odd-balls in China. Anyone else got a tale or two...?

[Susie]

I can't say that two EFLers I met recently are misfits, I mean they seemed very polite, professional, helpful, and their English was definitely better than mine, but they just looked strange in mainland China where people's figures are generally quite slim (no rolly polly hugh bodies with small heads), where the majority of them don't dye their hair, where many don't were earrings pierced through their noses, below the bottom lip, all along the ears, and perhaps other places besides, where girls don't usually have shaved heads.

So the two EFLers didn't look like Chinese people at all, they didn't speak English like the Chinese do, they used hankies to clean their noses, they ate their food quietly, they didn't talk when they ate, one was a vegetarian and so didn't eat snakes, fish heads, chickens' feet, civet cats, pigs intestines, etc.

When I think about it now, perhaps the two EFLers looked strange because they were not like many Chinese.

[Roger]

I have a recollection of one lawyer turned TEFler. The school did not treat us particularly well, and we were still waiting for our visas to be processed. The principal once hinted to me conspiratorially that my lawyer friend was an impostor. The lawyer wanted the right salary for someone with a Master's, which was at that time 50% higher than slaries for holders of a Bachelor's.
The lawyer seemed to have weak nerves. She even bragged about her good shrink she used to see back home.
This would go on for over one month - the school sounding the lawyer's expat colleagues out about her, and the lawyer complaining about the machinations employed by the principal...
One day, a limousine arrived at the school gate. The lawyer walked in to her flat, packed up her belongings and disappeared in that limousine.

[MonkeyKing]

Yeah, but the thing is, I've met a few violent sociopaths who actually seem to be thriving out here in the Orient!

[Peter]

I have met quite a few who were very odd indeed; kicked out of their own country into China:"Thanks God he's gone!"

The one that took the biscuit: A Frenchman with a pronounced accent, pretending to have teaching credentials, on the booze every night,a series of girlfriends which were called monkeys, a tendency to whip out the family jewels and yell in bad Putonghua that he had a bigger one than the local lads.....

[Seth]

I've met several Nigerians in China, all of them incredibly cunning. They were constantly figuring out ways to find loopholes in Chinese law to make a quick kuai. The guy I knew best knew all sorts of ways to get visas illegally and even knew how to survive Chinese prisons and court systems. He showed me where all of the clothing warehouses were and where the black markets were, all conveniently located near the trainstation in Guangzhou. We also went to all of the clubs frequented by Nigerians and Ghanaians. A few times he tried to recruit me to his brother's shipping business as a 'white face' to show to international customers. He also had some scheme going making counterfeit brand-name clothing. So if I ever decide to be an underworld criminal in China I have the means and the connections, I guess. He's actually a good friend and a great guy but has a criminal mind.

In Luoyang I knew a rather sleazy Parisian, much like the guy Peter described. Some of the other foreigners in town thought he was a criminal on the run. He would drift from school to school as he really couldn't speak English all that well and schools eventually figured out that he wasn't really what he said he was. Once a he and a coworker (Nick) of mine went to Shanghai for a weekend, and since neither had a lot of money they got a double hotel room to share. The French guy asked Nick for some money to get a prostitute, regardless of the fact that they were sharing a room. Nick gave him 200 yuan, knowing that no Shanghai prostitute would accept such a sum. They hit the street and Nick watched the Parisian try to haggle a deal with the prostitutes. He said it was one of the most pathetic things he had ever seen.

Another guy I knew was from New York City. There was nothing that odd about him but he spoke in that booming voice and accent that New Yorkers are known for. Everywhere we went people would look around, wondering who was shouting. Sometimes children would even cover their ears.

[Roger]

There was that American (you guys started identifying nationalities, not me!) that was on the run from America's laws for embezzling funds in the multimillion US dollar range. He ended up teaching at Shenzhen university, only to be "discovered" rather accidentally one year and a half into his sojourn there, because his name had cropped up in various international publications.

Then there was that other American guy, probably not bad, just a little insecure - he told me he had a stun gun to chase obnoxious Chinese away. I do not know if he ever used it, but he did not last long in that place.

The Nigerians are known to be active in more ways than just the legal one. In Shenzhen, they became quite some kind of local minority, especially when Hong Kong decided to require them to apply for a visa, which they as nationals from a Commonwealth country did not have to do until 1999. They used to hang out near the Heping Hotel, and now have taken root in Guangzhou as well.

[Kurochan]

So, here's something I've been thinking about a lot recently --
How to get over it if you've had bad, violent co-workers in the past.

I know I've mentioned this before, but last year at my school was a total nightmare. On the recommendation of this other jerk who worked here, my school hired this guy who had been fired from his old job in another city for bringing hookers into the dorm. I don't know if they didn't know about this incident, thought it didn't matter or what. This guy turned out to be an alcoholic and a total nightmare. He was a violent drunk. He got drunk and groped the *beep* of a waitress on campus, he beat up a taxi driver outside the school gate, he started this fight with a bunch of foreign students on campus by telling them their country was sh*t, and then ran away when they wanted to fight, leaving one other white guy behind to deal with the situation (he got beaten up), and when he didn't get in trouble for any of this, he beat the crap out of this secretary. He punched her in the face and choked her, and the woman was so badly hurt she had to go to the hospital.

This is the same guy I mentioned before who slugged me in the arm and said I was disgusting because I would date Chinese men. I had earlier told the dean of our school about the molestation of the waitress and the beating of the cab driver, because local people were complaining about it, but he refused to believe me, so I didn't report the hitting incident to him. I thought it would just get turned around somehow to make me look bad.

Throughout the year, when this guy wasn't getting in trouble for the stuff he had done (the school knew about the fight with the foreign students, but just told him not to drink as much on campus), some of the other white guys started getting REALLY obnoxious, because they knew they could get away with it. They were doing stuff like throwing paper wads at the matrons of our dorm, insulting and mocking them in English, which they can't understand, writing racist stuff about Asians on the bulletin board of the dorm, etc.

Well, to make a long, unpleasant story short, all of those guys are gone now. I was able to contribute to that. The guys were babyish about it, and complained that it wasn't "fair," but I don't think it's fair they taught badly and treated people like cr*p.

The thing is, I can't really get over all this. I feel really wary of the new teachers, even though they seem to be very nice people. I don't even want to try to make friends with anybody, because I tried last year and it was a big fiasco.

Oh -- another thing -- the violent guy claimed in this phone call (and THAT'S a whole other story) that he would come back here and "clear himself." If this guy came back, I feel like there's a good possibility he would try to hurt me, or some of the other people he blames for his getting into trouble. I don't know if he was formally deported or not (would somebody be over this type of incident?), but if he was, how easy or hard would it be for him to come back?

I dunno. How can I get over this? The guy really gave me a big scare, even though he didn't hurt me badly. Sending the other woman to the hospital is even scarier. The other guys put a bad taste in my mouth. I don't want to be a bitter person, but I think I am sort of bitter about everything.

[Oki]

Dear Kurochan,

Just remember to always carry a stun gun around to scare away the obnoxious white people

[MartinK]

...

[Egas]

Kurochan,

Just hang in there. While the rest of us may be a little weird, most of us pass for OK. As for the violent guy, I'd say there is virtually no chance he'd come back. Why waste the time and money? But if you are really scared, maybe you can contact your embasssy about what to do if he reappears.

Another little story. In Taiwan a couple of Newfies had a crocodile in their living room. It was a baby and they kept it in a fish tank. It had already taken a fair nip out of one of the Newfies' hands. I asked them what they were going to with it when it got really big. They told me they were going to throw it in the local lake. So now I am just waiting for the headline from Taiwan "Man/woman/child taken by croc in Taiwan."

[MyTurnNow]

I voluntarily removed a post. Pointless. It's been a tough week...
MT

[smalls]

I work in a pretty small city in the South, so rarely see other foreigners, and when I saw an older guy from the states, welcomed him to the city and bought him some beers. Great conversation and a decent guy, until I met my two Chinese friends and their family for dinner. He came along and just started to pour down the baijio. After a few minutes, he started yanking on the girls hair behind us, hit on my friends mother (he was 65), called me stupid, accused me of being in China with a secret agenda, and that I really wasn't American, said that my friends were only business ventures, and can't remember the rest. When my friend's father could see me about to lose it, asked me to eat some more, when I did, the old man called me 'their dog' doing what they ask. Don't know why, but actually tossed him in a cab and tried to get him to his hotel, felt a little responsible (and, didn't want him doing anything negative that would reflect on my country and on foreigners in general.) At this point, he threatened to kill me, and when I politely (or impolitely, can't say I really care) told him to '#@! off!', he said I passed the test and asked if we were friends. I left him outside of a night club taking a leak just about in the street. I would have snapped if I tried any longer to help this unbalanced fool. That was the angriest I have been in China, and the saddest thing was that it was because of someone from back home.

[Libertarian]

Has anyone ever met a certain 53 year old American in Shenzhen named M**K W**f. You know, the guy who`s supposedly wanted by the CIA, claims to be an original member of the band Mountain and consistently picks fights with everybody he comes in contact with. If you`ve met him, you`ll know what a disturbed foreign EFL teacher really is.

[Chairman Roberto]

Speaking of Mountain, is Leslie West still alive?

Felix Pappalardi lives!

On a Nantucket Sleighride,

The Animal Trainer and Roberto