Job Discussion Forums

bradwelljackson · Joined: 29 Aug 2004 Posts: 75 Location: Shakhty, Russia

Can anyone give the lowdown on the story going around about the English teacher who was fired in China for writing down "Taiwan" in a category of different country? Is this just an urban legend, or did it happen? Please share the details, and please share with us, as best as you know, where the line is drawn and what you can be fired for regarding any comments on Taiwan.
As far as I know the story, the teacher asked the students to shout out different countries, and when one kid said "Taiwan", he wrote it down as a country among all the others.

nickpellatt · Joined: 08 Dec 2006 Posts: 1522

Never heard the story...and from the way you have told it - I would suggest its definitely an urban legend, probably made up from someone who has never set foot in China!

Zero · Joined: 08 Sep 2004 Posts: 1402

The closes I heard was a guy who worked as an editor for state media -- probably China Daily, but possibly one of the others, I can't remember -- and included Taiwan in a list of countries participating in some event. The person, as I recall, was almost fired, but not actually. The sentence was changed to say "countries and regions participating."

Gilka · Joined: 22 Jun 2010 Posts: 54

I've heard that one a few times, though the poor teacher always ends up deported. The first, it was on a blog. Can't remember the name now, but I took it as concrete fact. Now, I'm skeptical to say the least.

Woopwoop · Joined: 18 May 2010 Posts: 29

There is a story on this forum (non job related) from an FT who got yelled at by a student for having written Taiwan in a list of countries on the board. Only he'd actually written Thailand.

struelle · Joined: 16 May 2003 Posts: 2372 Location: Shanghai

Teatime of Soul · Joined: 12 Apr 2007 Posts: 905

"One World One Dream"

bradwelljackson · Joined: 29 Aug 2004 Posts: 75 Location: Shakhty, Russia

Thank you all for your answers. I did smell an urban legend when I heard it. Do you think someone would ever get fired for this action? Where is the line drawn anyway?
By the way, I wanted to post this on "China - non-job related", but I can't find that group anymore. Has it been deleted? I also wanted to ask a question about Google pulling out of China on the non-job group.

MisterButtkins · Joined: 03 Oct 2009 Posts: 1221

I got in one really nasty argument with a Chinese woman (not one of my students, but fluent English) about this. She made the comment "Well China is the third largest country in the world, after Russia and Canada". I said, "Well actually the US is bigger if you don't count Taiwan as part of China". She got very angry and began yelling at me for several minutes.

Officially the people here seem to believe that Taiwan IS part of China and part of PRC, but is controlled by a different political party, which is one of the political parties which is part of the PRC.

The politically correct way to refer to Taiwan/Republic of China as opposed to PRC is 'Taiwan island' and 'mainland China'. Chinese people fully recognize that Taiwan and mainland China are very different and you can talk about them as such as long as you don't explicitly say that they are under different systems of government or are different countries. For example, when Chinese people ask me if my Chinese teachers in the US were Chinese, I say yes, they were from Taiwan. The implication here is that they are Chinese speakers, but aren't really from quite the same area. Chinese people understand this, I think.

johntpartee · Joined: 02 Mar 2010 Posts: 3258

I doubt seriously that anyone would ever get fired for saying something like that; it could be used as an excuse to get rid of someone, although the powers that be don't need a "reason" to get rid of a teacher. I recently met a teacher who told me that he criticizes the Chinese government and denigrates Chairman Mao in classroom discussions. He said he'd been teaching here for seven years. I didn't believe him.

sharpe88 · Joined: 21 Oct 2008 Posts: 226

Yeah I seriously doubt that story happened simply because a student would never suggest Taiwan as another country.

If a teacher did so, he would be speedily corrected by the class.

And if you insisted on it, yeah I could see you getting fired.

Woopwoop · Joined: 18 May 2010 Posts: 29

THe "Non- job related "forum only appears when you're logged on.

xiao51 · Joined: 06 Feb 2009 Posts: 208

I was witness to this exact situation in a university located in a poor province in the interior of the PRC in or about May, 2005 (perhaps 2006). Other members of this board who are no longer very active also were witness to this very event so that it is far removed from the realm of urban legend.

Two teachers, who were related to each other, and who came from an English-speaking country that is not considered one of the larger and more populated of the English-speaking countries, both of whom were quite qualified, university graduates, with at least several years of experience in ESL outside of China, were given the dubious honour of having to teach a geography class in English as part of one those formation-type programme classes. The book was printed by Beijing Foreign Language Press and contained a chapter on the various "entities" of China, including islands, ex-British and ex-Portuguese possessions, etc. One of the two (I don't remember which one now) stumbled rather noticeably in handling the "island" issue, including a self-determination speech, albeit a short one, and was summoned to the director of the programme, suspended for two weeks without pay, etc., etc. For reasons to which I am not party, when the party returned to the classroom two weeks later, the teacher-in-question, at least as to what we were told, repeated the self-determination for the island speech. The teacher was terminated ipso facto, escorted to the police, had the Z visa/resident permit cancelled and was deported within 7 days, I think. The relative of the teacher accepted a voluntary surrender of passport and also exited but without a formal deportation order. The university cancelled the classes of the one and the other for the rest of the term.

All in all, it was a very unpleasant experience for those involved. And the passport of the one was stamped, or so again we were told, with a five-year no return to the PRC, although this is was the teacher emailed us later, but none of us actually saw the stamp in the passport.

AnomanderRake · Joined: 06 Feb 2011 Posts: 29 Location: Beijing

I teach at an international school and despite the title about half of our student body are Chinese citizens. We have and will continue to talk about such subjects as Taiwan, Tibet and the Tianan men incident. I approach these subjects with tact and try to give all sides of the issues and let my students make up their own minds about them. It is not the subjects that are off limits, it is the way you talk about them.

wangdaning · Joined: 22 Jan 2008 Posts: 3154

Interesting because most Chinese youngsters don't know what happened at Tian'anmen. The best way to talk about this is to not talk about it.

As far as Taiwan, well, I doubt you would get fired, but you might have to play ignorance and apologize. In class last term a student mentioned Taiwan as a separate country. His classmate quickly said (in Chinese), Taiwan is part of China. The original student simply replayed that to foreign people it is its own country.