Children

On days when eating Chinese food seems less appealing than eating the ever-growing cluster of shit stains on my toilet bowl, there are few places to turn in Changchun. Two restaurants owned by the same people, named Grandma'a and Grandpa's, take recipes and suggestions from foreigners and as a result offer passable burgers, burritos and such. When I have the cash to spare and the inclination to travel thirty or forty minutes, one of these is where I go to satisfy my lust for a Western meal. The other options are KFC and McDonald's.

KFC's inherent nature as a complete joke makes it the perfect contender for success in China's fast food market. Observing the addition of delivery bicycles parked outside and makeshift playground within, one might even mistake it for a chain Chinese in origin. A student once asked me if I like Chinese food. I began to list my favorite dishes. He cut me off, asking "Kay Effur See?" I spent the next five minutes trying to convince the class that KFC was not, in fact, Chinese. I'm not sure whether or not I was successful.

Although McDonald's doesn't have as big a presence in Changchun as KFC, there's always a much greater density of foreigners inside. Because of this it's a nice place to visit both to remind yourself what the lowest quality beef on Earth tastes like and what a natural blonde looks like in real life. It's also a great place to strike up a conversation with the jolly Dutchman a table over, exchange numbers and then days later receive a part-time job offer that he insinuates may quickly mature into gainful full-time employment.

Now, whenever I walk into or out of a room the first thing I do is take a deep, confident breath, scan the place and ask myself, "is there any way I can capitalize on this situation and turn it into a profitable business venture?" I asked myself this question as I stood before the second-level seating area of McDonald's, two Big Mac(Donald's hamburger)s, fries and drink in hand. I spotted a slightly overweight man with spiked hair and a leather jacket relaxing in the far corner by himself and knew the answer to my question was yes.

By carefully ignoring the man for the duration of my meal, I successfully caught his attention. "So how do you like Changchun?" he suddenly inquired. Martin, as he introduced himself to me, has been living in Changchun for about six years. He told me about a website called "Changchun Friends," a Facebook clone for foreigners in Changchun. He has a wife here in Changchun and teaches English to the young children of Changchun. We talked about Changchun winters and Changchun roads and argued fervently over whether or not it was possible to get a real piece of steak in Changchun, which I still contend is impossible. His wife called and demanded his return home so we exchanged numbers and parted ways.

I got a call from Martin a few days later. He asked me about my current job and salary and very bluntly stated that I could make a lot more money teaching at a school called Rise. I mentioned that my contract was a year long and I'd keep it in mind. A few days after that phone call, he sent me a text message asking if I could teach for an hour on Saturdays for 120 yuan.

My contract with JIACE prohibits me from working part-time at other schools. Andrew once asked Summer why this is, to which she replied that it's dangerous; people might take advantage of us and they wouldn't want anyone to do that unless they too were profiting from it. I thought about my contract and how the school had violated nearly half of its terms in under a month, then gave Martin my reply that I would be happy to teach a class on Saturdays.

I showed up for an interview at Rise on a Wednesday around 5.  I had no idea what kind of school it was or what kind of classes I'd be teaching, except that I'd have around ten students. From the outside Rise looked like a second-rate indoor amusement park where children urinate in ball pits and hibernate at the top of plastic slides, kicking and biting others who try to make proper use of the recreational equipment. A giant multi-colored sign atop the entrance read "RISE: Subject English," which didn't entirely convince me that the place was actually a school. My suspicions only worsened when I walked in to see crowds of parents huddled around the perimeter of an enormous sandbox, watching their children shriek with pleasure and pain.

I asked a receptionist where I could find a woman named Christina. After giggling, she pointed toward a hall of cubicles. A chipper woman at the far end flagged me down when she saw me slowly making my way through the room, attempting to make eye contact with the women  to gauge whether or not one of them was expecting a confused white guy. On my way over, I noticed an area near her sectioned off by glass occupied by two foreigners.

As I approached Christina, I was under the impression that I should take my interview seriously but I quickly realized that it would progress in a manner similar to every other professional meeting I'd ever had in China. Christina spent most of the interview alt-tabbing between a spreadsheet document and a libidinous QQ conversation. The interview pertained more to my availability than my qualifications. I was asked when I could start, if I'd be available to attend their Halloween party and if I'd be able to teach more hours once the fall semester at JIACE finished, but not why I thought I was capable of holding the attention of a class full of five-year-olds for any length of time, let alone teach them anything. But if Christina didn't see a problem with anything, why should I?

Rise employs a staff of several dozen Chinese girls in their twenties and early thirties to dress up in fuzzy pink sweatshirts and teach English to children aged 4-12. Rise employs a staff of maybe four or five foreigners to attract customers with promises of weekly foreigner fun time for their children. Christina dressed this up for me by telling me I'd be reviewing material the kids had learned every week. She told me she'd send me a class summary later that night so I could prepare a lesson.

Christina neglected to e-mail me the summary that night. She neglected to e-mail me the summary on Thursday as well until I called and reminded her that I needed it. I received the following Microsoft Word document:

Summary

Classroom：405

Time：8：20-8；50

Teacher：Phoebe

Level：Pre-K

Topic： seasons

Key words：Weekdays

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

（here the important part is Monday and Tuesday；kids just learn these two days by heart is ok；）

Key sentences：

Today is Monday.

Today is Friday.

I spent the better part of a minute trying to come up with a passable half-hour lesson plan about seasons that somehow focuses on the days of the week, especially Monday and Tuesday. I figured since the kids were only four or five years old, they probably weren't the most adept conversationalists and at this stage in their English careers the most important thing would be repetition and memorization. I'd been having some successful hour and a half long college classes with minimal planning, I didn't think a half hour could be very painful.

I took a cab to Rise and got there a few minutes before class started. A tiny girl in one of the pink teacher uniforms beckoned me and led me up a few flights of stairs. Her name was Cici (pronounced Sissy) and she was Phoebe's Teaching Assistant. She would act as disciplinarian and remind the kids not to speak Chinese while I delivered my dense course material.

As I entered the classroom, Phoebe was leading the children in a delightful sing-song chant. The room had impressive resources. Resources that dwarfed the chalk and blackboard setup at JIACE. Resources Christina deemed too insignificant to mention when explaining to me how classes worked. The classroom was fitted with a fairly modern computer hooked up to a projector. The image was projected onto a screen that connected back to the computer via what looked like a serial port.

Rise has a large bank of flash games and learning material stored on a server that teachers can access from the classrooms. The screen had a serial port because it's a giant touchscreen, which is really an incredible teaching resource. If I had been told that there were computers in the room with Powerpoint installed, I could have made a presentation and navigated through it without making trips to the computer every ten seconds to change slides. If I had been told that there was an enormous collection of games, I could've bribed kids with the chance to play a game if they participated.

Phoebe immediately asked me if I prepared a powerpoint. I suddenly realized how badly this was going to go. I told her I had no idea I'd have so much at my disposal, I was under the impression that I'd just be showing up and having the children parrot me. She laughed and turned toward the class. "Gogo!" A boy who had been staring at the floor looked up solemnly. "Have a conversation with Paul!" He shook his head and looked back down.

"He's the smartest kid in the school," Phoebe said. "He's acting weird today, don't worry about him." She then chose another student named Stephen, an ogre of a five-year-old.

Stephen happily marched up to the front of the classroom and Phoebe left to go on her break. Phoebe mentioned that in addition to the seasons and days of the week, I could talk about months and weather. With that in mind, I began my conversation with Stephen, who sounded like a jackovasaurus.

This will not be my first post without any images

"Hello Stephen," I began.

"HELLO!" replied Stephen.

"What day is it today?"

"SATURDAY! SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY--"

"Great! What day was it yesterday?"

"--THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY!"

"What day was it yesterday, Stephen?"

"FRIDAY!"

"How is the weather today?"

"SUNNY!"

"Is it cold today?"

"THE WEATHER IS SUNNY!"

This continued for about a minute before I asked someone else to come up. Every time a day of the week was mentioned, Stephen would chant them all from Sunday to Saturday to the tune of a slightly dissonant melody that no one else in the class seemed to be familiar with. Most of the kids stared at me in horror for the rest of the half-hour without saying a word but a few of them were happy to participate. One of them was named Superman and had a rat tail. The class wasn't as painful as I imagined it would be, in part because it eventually came to an end. In the event that they wanted me back, I would make sure I was prepared.

Christina was busy in a meeting, something that I had a feeling could take a lot longer than I was willing to wait. I asked a guy named Bill, who I had befriended after my interview and lives in Zhonghai, if I could trust Christina to pay me the 60 yuan I earned (one and a half round trips to Rise by cab) when I cam next week. He didn't doubt it, so I left.

I received my next call from Christina Friday evening. Not only would I teach the same class I had the previous week but another one as well. Phoebe's new class summary seemed a bit more helpful than her last one, if only because this time around I knew Powerpoint was an option. The topic was phonics. B says B. At says at. B-at. Bat. Kay taught the other class I'd be visiting.

Summary

Time: 10:30----11：00 am. Sat.

Classroom: 3-5

Rise: RIB1

Name: Kay

Age: 6--8

Numbers of Students:13

Review

Practice how to use verbs and adverbs.

Have kids make some sentences

Key words: verb adverbs

Run walk jump fly sleep …

Quickly slowly fast loudly…

Key sentences:

I walk quickly.

She speaks loudly.

Simple and straightforward. There wasn't much ambiguity and the example sentences gave me a pretty good idea of what level the students were at. I also noticed that the students would be a little bit older than the ones in Phoebe's class, part of an age group that has a reputation as hard to control. I spent the rest of my Friday night making slideshows for my classes, an effort that I hoped would pay off the next day.

I tried to wake up early enough to catch a bus downtown but I slept through my initial alarm and three or four snoozes. I split a cab with Bill and we arrived about thirty minutes before my class, so he showed me some nearby places of interest. I also got a chance to meet Richard in the foreigner office. Richard looked about twice the age of Bill and I and hails from the UK. He showed little to no interest in meeting me, however, he did also mention that friends were arriving at his place at three in the morning with fifths of liquor and he was "just going to let this happen." An attitude I admire.


Phoebe's class went better this time around. When I entered the room, my man Stephen interrupted a class sing-a-long by pointing at me and shouting, "PAUL IS COMING!" Phoebe agreed that I was indeed coming and ended the sing-a-long. She and Cici helped me kill about five minutes of class time by chatting with me and ignoring the kids whose parents had paid good money for me to interact with their children. Phoebe offhandedly mentioned before leaving that the words in my Powerpoint presentation were going to be easy for them but that it was okay. I started to think that maybe I shouldn't be taking the summaries at face value anymore.

Gogo was in a good mood that day and I got to see firsthand that he actually is a brilliant kid who made insightful observations throughout the class. While we were playing an alphabet flash game he remarked that the game was too easy and we should play something else. He seemed to understand when I mentioned that not everyone had a turn yet and it wasn't as easy for them.

After a ten minute break I had Kay's class. I walked into the classroom and basked in the warmth of the ensuing chaos. The children were running around, screaming and throwing shit at each other. I felt that my classes, at JIACE and Rise or anywhere else, would be great as long as the students had some energy. Now I was able to put that theory to the test. The TA was calmly sitting in the back of the classroom. When she saw me she called the kids to attention and they got in their seats almost immediately. A few stragglers came in from the bathroom and I started up my presentation.

I went through a collection of images that depicted verbs and asked the kids to guess what they were. Most of the kids were jumping up and down with their arms stretched over their heads shouting out the answers. Every time one of the kids labeled a picture correctly, the TA drew a tally next to the student's name written on a white board. When we moved on to adverbs, I incorporated a flash game. I opened up the folder that held the games and the children, recognizing it, let out a roar of approval. I was scrolling through when one of them said "OH I KNOW," ran up to the screen and double-clicked on a game. They all cheered again.

I would then shout out a verb and call on a student to make a sentence with an adverb of their choice. If they were right, they could come up and play a round of the game. Except for the only two girls in the class, who looked like they might die of terror at any moment, everyone participated.

The object of the game was to launch a penguin into the air and keep him up as long as possible by clicking on him and collecting turbo boosts. That's pretty fucking awesome when the mouse is your hand. The TA and I both got just as involved in the excitement as the kids. When we played the game again two weeks later she even hit the turbo boosts a couple of times when the kids failed to notice them.

I left the classroom in one of the best moods I'd been in since arriving in Changchun and headed down to the office to collect my pay. Christina asked me if I could work a trick-or-treat station at the school on Halloween. I replied that I'd be happy to.

"So what will you say after the student asks trick or treat?" she asked.

"I think we usually just give them candy." I said.

"Do you have a costume?"

"Well... no... I--"

"Yeah, he's got a fucking costume," commented Richard from the foreigner office, grinning, "because he knew this would happen." I decided Richard is the man.

Christina said they had a good costume I could wear. She took me up to the top floor of the building into an attic. After digging through piles of things that people only keep in attics, she pulled out a witch's hat peppered with glitter. She held it up proudly. I told her that men generally don't wear those hats but I did take the gender-neutral cloak that accompanied the hat.

We went back down to the office and Christina grabbed a Scream mask that was sitting on top of a filing cabinet right behind her desk. It was the kind that has a pump so you can make fake blood flow down the face. I always wanted one of those masks when I was a kid. I don't remember whether I wasn't allowed to have one or if I just never asked for one but I always wanted it. I expressed my approval to Christina and showed her how awesome the blood-pumping mechanism was. She said the blood would be too scary for the kids and I shouldn't do it. I promised that I wouldn't do it in front of the kids. She either didn't believe me or didn't want to take the chance so instead found another mask that to be honest, was a lot more unnerving than the Scream mask.

Christina sent me my summaries for Halloween weekend. Phoebe's class was learning about Halloween-themed stuff and Kay didn't give her a summary so she said I should go over the same stuff as last week. Bill asked me if I wanted to take a cab again because he was bringing his dog Mika to the school dressed in a Superman dog costume. Mika is an adorable tiny dog, incapable of spreading anything but love, joy and playfulness. Everyone, save for a select few, in the Rise office called her 大狗(dagou, meaning big dog) and shot her dirty looks. People would approach Mika and stare her down as if they might have to fight for their lives without a second's warning while she trotted around licking and nuzzling everyone. Christina and the big boss, a guy named Jeffrey who looks like he might have descended from a species of salmon, told Bill he might have to take Mika home if she scared the children.

Phoebe's class went well, as Halloween-themed activities often do. There was a pumpkin-carving game on the server, so we spent a lot of time playing that. When I went to Kay's classroom afterwards, the kids were running around and screaming again but Kay was still in the room. She and the TA seemed confused by my presence.

"I didn't ask for a foreign teacher today," Kay said.

"Okay. I'll leave."

"Did you receive the summary?"

"No, Christina said to do the same thing as last time."

Kay left the room a bit annoyed. The TA smiled bashfully. She apologized a few times.

I sat in a tiny chair and let some kids try to stomp on my feet until Kay returned. She said she checked to see if she requested a foreign teacher but indeed did not. She apologized and I said it really wasn't a problem, Christina must have just made a mistake. Kay glared at me and replied, "she always make a mistake."

I spent the afternoon at a nearby library reading and when I came back, Bill had been asked to take Mika home. Martin was in the office as well, the first time I'd seen him since my trip to McDonald's. I learned that he either enjoys or can't help making people feel uncomfortable, so it was fun to talk with him. Bill convinced me to go to a restaurant and drink a few beers with him about an hour before the Halloween party started. I got a slight buzz, returned, put on my costume and was directed to a room.

I was paired with a teacher named Lily, who may or may not have exceeded three feet in stature. She explained that children and parents would be arriving in waves. Three waves of trick-or-treaters would come to our room. The kids would enter one by one, inquire as to whether they'd fall victim to a dastardly trick or acquire some sort of delightful treat, receive a bag full of candy and possibly cheap plastic shit, then continue inside the room. Each group had twenty minutes in the room before moving on to another activity. The filing in and trick-or-treating took roughly one minute. The next nineteen minutes would be devoted to foreigner interactivity time.

"You should entertain the children," Lily suggested.

A lot of the children were sitting on their parents' laps but some of them danced around me and stared at my mask. A few of them were clearly disturbed and confused by its repugnant nature. A tiny child dressed as a cowboy looked like he was about to cry. I lifted my mask to show him that I was just a harmless white guy and he attempted to shoot me with his fake pistols. I stumbled around groaning while the kids ran away shrieking. After a while some of them mustered up the courage to inflict imaginary harm upon me. I threw myself to the ground and feigned a melodramatic death and there was much rejoicing. They continued to assault me after I was already dead.

I resurrected myself and feigned my death repeatedly for the rest of the night. Eventually, every single kid was actively taking part in my brutal murders. The parents were all snapping pictures and cheering their kids on. As they left some of the parents shook my hand and expressed deep approval of the violence and foreigner abuse I was encouraging their kids to take part in. I did the same routine with the next two groups and achieved similar success.

There are many words in this post so far and I wouldn't expect anyone to retain interest beyond this point. I will recount the rest of my experience with Rise some other time. But not before I post about things far more interesting and a little bit more recent.

Allen

There are four foreign teachers at the Jilin Institute of Architecture and Civil Engineering including myself. There are also four members of the Foreign Affairs and Cooperation department. This is the office I'm supposed to go to if I require assistance with any problems. Anything from legal documents to Jesus shit on my walls. One member has been marginally helpful to me, putting forth the least amount of effort required to make sure I don't get deported. The name of that member is not Allen. Allen is pictured below.

Allen

Allen was the first person I met in Changchun, along with a student named Black Stallion, at Changchun Airport. Allen's face looks like a pancake. During the ride to our apartments, Allen repeatedly informed Andrew and me that we would not be paid the amount stipulated in our contract for the first month. He also told us that the internet connection we were promised in our contract wasn't working because the bill wasn't paid yet and wouldn't be until the real manager of the foreign teachers who he was filling in for returned from Australia. And that sweemeeng is a favorite hobby of his. I didn't really care for Allen at this juncture.

When we arrived at my apartment Allen showed me around and flaunted his English skills by using his index finger and words like "kitchen," "toilet," "bed," and "TV." If the tour lasted two minutes, I wouldn't have minded. Unfortunately Allen kept it going for ten minutes, naming every object in my apartment and, when his vocabulary would permit, describing the basic functions of the objects. He giggled when I expressed disapproval of the bible passages on the walls and when I lifted up the blanket on my bed to reveal a damp towel. Before leaving he told me we would have a meeting the next day at noon. He later cancelled that meeting because picking us up from the airport had driven him to exhaustion and he would rather spend the day napping or remaining otherwise motionless instead.

Allen struggles with the concept of scheduling. If he tells me on a Tuesday that we will meet Wednesday at 8 in the morning, I can expect to be woken up by a phone call from Allen at least an hour earlier instructing me to come downstairs because he's waiting in his car. Sometimes I don't get an advanced notice but merely a call that goes "Hello Paul? Are you beesy?" He had a knack for calling at times when the chance that I'd be beesy were slim to none, such as 7 in the morning.

Allen kept bringing up a visit we would have to make to the playstation. I eventually figured out that he was trying to say police station and the visit was a mandatory registration for foreigners who planned on not getting kicked out of the country. Although he was supposed to help us do this within 48 hours of our arrival, Allen put it off for about a week and a half. He called one day and told me he was waiting for me at the playstation. I explained that I had no idea how to get there as I'd only been in the city for a week. Allen told me to hail a cab and give the driver the phone, then he would direct the driver to the police station. Thankfully he only pulled that shit the one time. He asked if I had any photos of myself. I replied that I did not. He said "that's okay" and hung up. When I got to the police station I met Allen, Black Stallion and my landlord, a woman named Betty. Allen asked me to present my photos. I told him I wasn't lying when I said I didn't have any. Allen didn't express the surprise one would expect to come from such a miscommunication, which led me to believe that he understood perfectly well when I told him the first time. He said "that's okay" again. We got into his car and left. I thought we were going home but we made another stop at a combination hair salon/image editing studio.

It's popular in China for people to have photos of themselves "professionally" photoshopped. Naturally, some hair stylists figured out that by offering their clients the option to look like they've been dipped in a vat of hot wax right after their haircut they could pull a slightly nicer income. The photoshop department of this particular hair salon was on the second floor, consisting of two computers from the mid-90s and a bored chain-smoking Chinese man with anime hair. Allen asked me to download some digital photos of myself. I didn't think he'd respond well to a lecture about oppressive firewalls and suppression of information so instead of delivering one I tried to access facebook and feigned surprise when it didn't work. Allen said that perhaps he had some. He checked his e-mail and clicked on an old message sent from Journey East, the company I got my job through, and opened an attached file that contained a dozen headshots I sent to them months ago, presumably so they could pass them on to Allen so that when the time came for him to help me register with the police, he'd have the pictures he needed. Then he asked me for 10 yuan to pay for the printing. He told me he would pay me back, which he has not yet done to this day.

Instead of driving back to the police station, Allen took me home. I asked why we weren't going back to the police station. Allen said we couldn't register that day because the man who processes the foreigner registration papers wasn't there.

"So when you asked me to take out my pictures while we were there, we wouldn't have been able to use them anyway?" I asked.

"Yeah." replied Allen.

Also of note, he had Black Stallion and Betty both put aside any plans they had for the day so they could join us on this expedition that was ultimately doomed to end in a studio of Chinese yuppie glamor shots. Black Stallion would accompany Allen and I on several other trips for the sole purpose of holding Allen's wallet and pulling out huge wads of cash when instructed. A few days after our arrival Andrew complained to Journey East about the apartment he was originally located in, an hour drive away from the school and unfit for human occupancy. In fact, we were specifically told that if one of us was placed in that area, there was a problem and they needed to be contacted. Allen's job was threatened and he had Black Stallion run around my apartment complex looking for a vacant place they could rent for Andrew.

During the first week of school Allen would often call me into his office for "meetings." I'd arrive and Allen would be sitting at his desk, staring at his computer, his boss Arnold doing the same on the other side of the room. Allen would then ask me to take a seat on the couch, which has a clear view of his computer monitor. I'd watch him dick around on QQ (the Chinese equivalent of AIM or MSN) for about ten minutes or so before mentioning to him that I was hoping to do anything else at some point in the day. He'd offer me tea, cigarettes or whatever other consumables he might have to try to keep my mind off of the fact that I was in the office for a meeting that he called me there for and instead of having that meeting, he was being a lazy, inconsiderate, worthless dickhead. Eventually, whether Allen actually got around to having me fill out some paperwork or not, Arnold would get up and walk out of the office without saying a word. Seconds later Allen would tell me that "I must eat lunch now because my superior wants to You can go home, we do this other time." Arnold has never said more than ten words to me but I like him a lot more than Allen.

The first of these meetings was the first day of school, a Monday. I arrived at Allen's office with Andrew at 8, when the first class of the day starts. After the introductory couch and concessions buffer, Allen printed out a schedule and began going over it with me. He pointed to my first class. A class at 8 AM on Mondays. I asked if I was expected to attend this class today. He thought for a second, then said I was. I mentioned that it was 8:15. He said "yes, I show you." So then, without any preparation whatsoever, I arrived twenty minutes late to my first class. I asked Allen if I could see my schedule. He pulled it out and stared at it. I extended my hand but he didn't give it to me. I asked again but Allen didn't respond. I moved my hand a little closer but Allen pulled the schedule away. I asked again if I could see my schedule and he finally handed it to me. Allen would do the same exact thing during later encounters whenever he was holding something of mine, such as my passport and contract. When I looked at the schedule, I noticed the characters “影视,” meaning "film and television." I asked Allen if I was expected to show a movie.

"Do you have movie?" he responded.

"No. No one told me I would be teaching a film class. No one told me I would be teaching anything today."

"That's okay. You bring movie to next class."

Then he left. I returned to his office after an uninspired icebreaker class and lunch with some of my students who were so enthralled by the presence of a foreigner that they insisted on buying me food. Only one of the four students has attended my class more than once since and that one student has yet to stay awake for or otherwise contribute anything of worth to the class discussions but that's unrelated. I returned to Allen's office to see Andrew sitting in the exact same spot on the couch as when I left. He whispered to me about how he'd been there the whole time and Allen was just dicking around on QQ and giving him tea. Then the meeting was over because he didn't have Andrew's textbook.

The last of these meetings happened on a day when I had no class and was woken up by an unexpected Allen call. He asked me to come in so I could sign my contract. A red flag immediately went up in my head because I had signed a contract with Journey East and then received a contract from them by e-mail that I was told was my official contract with the school. I figured it couldn't hurt as long as nothing had changed between contracts so I grabbed the copy I printed out in case something like this happened and went off to meet Allen.

He made me wait on the couch. After several minutes, I reminded him that I was there. He grabbed two small booklets and sat down next to me. He repeated what he said on the phone about it being the official contract and that I should sign. He also suggested I sign Andrew's copy. I pulled out my copy of the contract and told him I was just going to compare them to make sure it was all the same and as far as signing Andrew's, I wouldn't do that without his permission. Allen said "okay."

I began reading my contract. For five seconds or so, it seemed like Allen understood me when I said I was going to compare the contracts. But then I caught him jolt out of the corner of my eye, like something clicked in his head. He started laughing and waving his hands in front of me saying "oh no no, it's okay you don't have to read can just sign. Same contract." I said I understood but wanted to read it just in case. He wouldn't shut the fuck up.

"Hahahaha, no it's same contract you see? We are very honest department you can trust us hahahahaha. You can sign it, it's official government contract."

He pointed to the cover to indicate that the contract was a generic form regulated by the government that doesn't vary from school to school. I tried to explain that I wasn't reading it because I assumed he was trying to cheat me, although I did think he was, but that in America we like to read contracts we are going to sign. I called it a tradition. He said "Ah, tradition. I know tradition." He continued to laugh nervously and repeat the same phrases about honesty and the government until he got the point that I was going to sit there and read the whole thing. He didn't leave my side once while I was reading. He tried one more time to convince me to stop reading when I was almost at the end. And after all the fuss he made, the contracts were just about identical. The only difference was some of the wording.

I think the reason Allen got so nervous and defensive was because of face. Some people might say that face is a concept like prestige or honor, deeply rooted in Chinese culture, a longstanding tradition and impossible to translate. As far as I can tell face is people getting away with lying, avoiding accountability for mistakes and wrongdoings and a superficial image a person wants others to accept. The very fact that I wanted to read my contract made Allen feel uncomfortable because it indicated to him that I don't trust him enough to sign anything he asks me to without checking it first. The fact that he's tried to screw us over in other ways probably made him feel even more uncomfortable.

I signed my contract and then Allen handed me Andrew's. I told him I would call Andrew and ask if it was okay. I could see Allen struggling to remain silent. I told Andrew about the contract and how they were both the same but he said he wanted to read it himself to be completely satisfied. I relayed the message to Allen who, instead of continuing with his giggling and nagging, sighed and said okay like a spoiled middle schooler asked to make his bed. Before stowing away the contracts in his desk drawer, he tried one more time to get me to sign Andrew's. He turned around and confided in me.

"It's okay, you can sign this one look." He paused and opened Andrew's to a page where a signature was clearly scribbled out. "I already sign it to send to government for foreign expert. I do to yours too. It's okay, I already sign it."

I don't know why Allen was so worried about me causing him to lose face when he does a pretty damn good job of losing it himself. He never ended up calling Andrew to have him sign the contract either.

Take 2, Allen wasn't satisfied with Take 1. Look at his hands

I took this picture of Allen on the school bus. I was the first to board that evening and he was the second. We were waiting to be taken home. Allen doesn't normally ride the bus. Something was wrong that day. I feared he was trying to find me for some reason. Fortunately that wasn't the case. Take a look at that picture. Take a look at that fucking pancake face. That's the pancake face of the man that has been the cause of almost every problem I've encountered since arriving in China. And his face does look like a pancake if you stare long enough. It's one of those things where you relax your eyes and look for the picture hidden in the blurry stuff.

Left, Commander William T. Riker looking how I felt when I first saw Allen board the bus. Right,  an Ornaran looking how I felt after conversing with Allen for over sixty seconds

Allen had been in a car accident. I asked if his car was badly damaged and how long he thought he might be riding the bus. He, having poor English listening comprehension skills and falsely assuming I expressed concern for his well-being, responded that neither he nor the other car's occupants were injured. I said I was glad to hear that and repeated my question. He frowned a bit as he nodded his head. The car was not doing too well. How'd the accident happen? Allen explained that "the traffic light was red but I didn't see" and just sort of drove through.

Allen asked me what bus stop I get off at. I said Lin He Jie, the street I live on. He insisted that there was a better bus stop that he would "introduce" me to. He asked what I like to eat. I started listing some stuff. He asked if I like chicken. I said yes. He told me he would "introduce" me to the best chicken restaurant in Changchun several times for the next minute. By this, I don't mean he droned on describing the restaurant or anything. I mean he repeated the sentence "I introduce to you a new restaurant with best chicken," varied slightly each time, for about a minute. Andrew got on the bus and made his way toward us. I noticed despair in his eyes when he saw Allen. Allen told Andrew we'd been talking about a superior bus stop and a great chicken restaurant that he would introduce us to. I asked Andrew how his classes were that day.

Allen stared ahead as Andrew began describing how difficult his freshmen have been. After about a minute Allen interrupted him.

"Yeah, they put the chicken in the pot with some vegetable."

He continued to explain how the pot sat on an open flame to let the chicken and vegetables cook as the bus pulled away. Aside from that, he didn't have much to say for the rest of the ride. He told us to get off the bus when we reached the stop around the corner from the one we usually get off at. It took us longer to walk back. When we got to a nondescript intersection that I can't remember, Allen pointed into the distance and said "the restaurant is that way." Then he left.

Luckily Allen has not played a very large role in my life as of late. When I have to deal with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation I generally speak with Summer, a woman who is slightly more pleasant than Allen. A toast of "Fuck Allen" will generally be made at some point during a night of drinking. One night Nick, Andrew and I decided the toast should be followed by subsequent toasts made to how we would kill Allen that involves him cheating us in some way.

Allen calls me and says something like "Hello Paul? Are you beesy? I have you money you come to my house and pick up." I arrive at his home and ask for my salary. He says "Oh yeah I leave it at office I go to get it now. Look, I get new sweemeeng pool. Maybe you feel it up while I get you the money I pay you one hundred yuan more." After Allen leaves I go around clearing out every nearby store of their ammonia products. I fill up his pool with the ammonia and rinse out a bucket so it looks like I've been using it to make trips from the sink to the pool. Allen pays me, neglecting the 100 yuan he promised for filling the pool. I tell him it's no problem, I was glad I could help. Over the course of the next two years he, his wife and child soak in the ammonia whenever they wade in its poisonous waters. Allen never drains the pool because it takes too much work. And no one ever accuses anyone because then people would start losing face. But this is all just hypothetical and I would never do such a thing. I'd just bitch about it on the internet instead. Fuck Allen.

Protein

While waiting for the school bus a few days ago, a Chinese man in a suit introduced himself to me as "Happy, like happy to meet you!" Happy is an English teacher at another school. During our conversation he asked, "have you adapted to the food in China yet?" When I first got here I took about five dumps a day, all of them horrible and messy. After three weeks or so, they regained a firm consistency and occurred at intervals not quite so unsettling. I told him I had adapted. He told me he thinks Chinese food is too greasy, which is the closest thing I've heard to a Chinese person badmouthing something Chinese.


It's hard to find good sources of protein here. Save for a few places in the downtown area, most restaurants won't have a chicken cutlet or piece of steak on the menu. Meat dishes are generally huge bowls of vegetables with some minced pork or beef sprinkled on top. I rarely stay full after eating at a restaurant for more than an hour or two.


Chinese people eat a lot of carbohydrates. Rice and noodles aplenty. The only satisfactory explanation for how they live off of this is that they're humanoids evolved from plants and derive all nutrition from sugar. I've tried to ask people about protein in both Chinese and English but they never have any idea what I'm talking about. They understand that I'm talking about nutrition and recommend drinks that are marketed as nutritious but contain more sugar than vitamins and protein. Good for a plant person maybe.


Since I managed to clean out the atrocity Sean left in my fridge, I keep my kitchen stocked with jars of peanut butter, eggs and boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I get my fucking protein. 


Recently, I had my first experience at an all-you-can-eat buffet in China. The place was expensive. For Nick, Andrew and I, it cost about 115 yuan in total. As one of the hostesses led us to our table, I noticed the restaurant was train-themed. The layout was a confusing mess of fake train platforms and staircases. The waitresses (although they don't actually do any waiting since it's a buffet) wore conductor's uniforms. The seating areas looked like train cars. They looked just like train cars. The chairs were like chairs on a train. There were even fake windows and curtains. It was just like a train. It was just like a real life train.


The hostess led us up about three flights of stairs to our table and hit on Andrew for a bit before leaving. She mentioned that she graduated from the school that we teach at, which was possibly a lie, then left. Throughout our meal she would repeatedly pass by our table with another waitress and once commented, with disbelief, on the fact that we were still eating more food.


Most of the food was prepared hours before we arrived, sitting out on unheated trays and getting cold. Despite this, I enjoyed almost everything I tried and ate about three full plates. The food you really come to a place like this for, though, is an endless supply of raw meat that you fry in the middle of your table. I don't remember how many of those fatty meat strips I had but what I do remember quite vividly is already being very full by the time we started eating them. Because they were sliced so thinly, however, it didn't feel like I was eating too far over capacity. It was probably as we continued to polish off tray after tray, making sure not to leave a single piece behind to avoid a wastefulness fee, that Andrew's admirer made her comment about us still eating being a weird thing.


When we got up to leave, I immediately regretted the amount of food that I ate. My stomach felt like a mass completely separate from the rest of my body. Andrew mentioned that he was also in a moderate amount of pain. We began our descent and my stomach was feeling increasingly awful. I felt like a bad thing might happen in the near future. I hoped I could prolong the inevitable spew that was to come until we made it outside. I kept my head down and without any real logical justification, placed my hand in front of my mouth.


At the bottom of the staircase, between us and the door, the entire wait staff of the restaurant lined up on both sides of our path. They waved and said "bye bye!" as we passed. Right as this was happening, a preliminary wave of vomit rushed up but I managed to contain it in my mouth. When the second came a few seconds later, there was really nothing I could do. The vomit spilled out over my hand and onto the floor as I passed by the employees. I didn't look up to see but I'm certain they were all aware of what was happening. I kept a normal walking pace to the door, hoping that maybe if I didn't act too alarmed, they wouldn't look for anything out of the ordinary. But, of course, there's no real way to walk by two walls of people and vomit without drawing some attention.


Once out the door, I jogged to the side of the restaurant and finished up. Unwittingly, I did this directly in front of a side entrance for the staff. A man came out of the door, looked down at the pile and then stood in front of it. I think he was assigned the duty of blocking the mess from view of the public.


A lot of Chinese people often bestow upon foreigners undue praise, which comes off as patronizing more than anything. I've gotten sick of it. When people compliment me on my Chinese before I've spoken any, I don't really take it to heart. I didn't get to see the looks on the employees' faces after I began to throw up but I fantasize about it every day. Sometimes I do this during small talk with strangers. While the person in front of me is paying me some manner of empty compliment, I think about those poor waiters and waitresses who looked on, probably mortified, as one of their foreign customers who they were ogling at with curiosity just an hour earlier, was spewing uncontrollably while calmly walking out the door. I like to think that they all now hold the belief that Americans do not have that all-important instinct to stop eating when it's time to stop eating. If I were to run into one of them on the street, I suspect they wouldn't compliment my Chinese, which is how it should be.


The only downside of the night was that in vomiting, I lost all my fucking protein.

Cocktail Party

My friend Andrew teaches a class on English for use in a business setting. He teaches two classes of graduate students either the same age as us or a little older. He was given a textbook to assist in creating lesson plans. Andrew indicated to me that this textbook has been slightly less useful than a satchel of urine in preparing for his teaching duties.

A man named Peter attended one of Andrew’s classes and talked with him afterwards. Peter teaches in the same department as Andrew and informed him that there was an upcoming cocktail party for teachers and students in said department. Since Andrew was not only a teacher in the department but also a white foreigner, they would be more than glad to have him attend. When Andrew mentioned this to me he also remarked that they would probably be some amount of glad to have me attend as well since I too, am a white foreigner. There would be free food and drink at the party. All who attended would be expected to dress formally.

Unrelated Engrish picture to break up walls of text

On the day of the party, I was planning on heading to campus to meet with a student of mine named Heky (Pronounced Hi-key, I think. The name’s supposed to be in English but I’ve found no evidence of that being the case) who asked me to help her prepare for an oral English competition. The TV network CCTV holds an annual competition for college students around China to recite a speech they’ve written. I think there’s a monetary prize involved. I figured editing Heky’s speech wouldn’t take too long so I’d have plenty of time to go to the cocktail party, although I still wasn’t entirely sure if I was actually invited.

Andrew and I headed to the bus stop, him in a suit, me in my everyday slop t-shirt and jeans. As we passed through the extensive roadwork along the way, Andrew got dirt and mud all over his pretty little pants so I gave him some tissues to clean up. I carry a pack of tissues with me everywhere I go in case of a shit emergency because most public bathrooms don’t have toilet paper, including those at the school. There’s always a chance that your shit will be a squishy mess. When taking such a shit in an eastern style toilet, you run the remote risk of staining your pants. A student of mine named Jacob who has been using eastern style toilets his entire life told me that he recently had such an accident. If this happens, tissues won’t be of much help. You can, however, use them to wipe the tears from your eyes as you spend the rest of your day walking around in public with poopoo stains on your pants, mocked and ridiculed at every turn.

We arrived at the campus and headed to our respective destinations. On the way, we ran into Peter. Andrew introduced us and Peter told me to come to the party. Delighted, I went to the cafeteria to meet with Heky, where I figured we’d go over the speech. Without going off on too long a tangent, I'll mention that my meeting with Heky took a lot longer than it should of, involving her telling a kid to fuck off, taking me on an uncomfortable date-like outing and suggesting that I take her speech home with me to edit on my own time. If I ever write about Chinese college students tricking their foreign teachers into going on dates with them, which isn't uncommon, I’ll be sure to include further details regarding this event.

Lots of words so far. This advertisement has something to do with abortions

When Heky suggested that I take her speech home and go over it by myself, I replied that I wasn’t very fond of that idea. We returned to the campus and went back to the cafeteria and went over the whole thing. It was about global warming. Another student of mine, self-dubbed “Snower,” came to join us. I think I’m going to talk about names in an upcoming class. When I told them I was going to the cocktail party, they insisted on bringing me to the classroom. Chinese people tend not to believe me when I tell them I’m capable of performing basic functions such as recognizing locations I visit daily by myself. We took the elevator up to the fifth floor and as soon as the doors opened, I saw a crowd of Chinese people in suits and dresses in front of me. Among them was Peter.

Peter spotted me immediately and went, “Ah. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.” He came over, grabbed my arm and whisked me away from the elevator. He led me into a large room filled with more Chinese people in suits and dresses. He continued, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” as he dragged me into the center of the room. A dozen or so students surrounded me and Peter said “Okay,” then left. One of them handed me a glass of wine. They began asking me questions.

“Where are you from?”

“Are you going to be our teacher?”

“Do you know Jackie Chan?”

“How do you like China?”

“Do you have a Chinese girlfriend?”

“Would you marry a Chinese girl?”

For the next few hours I would be given drink after drink and pinned against a wall by drunk, eager Chinese grad students. It was really fun. The pictures that follow came from renren.com, the Chinese equivalent of facebook. A bunch of students added Andrew as a friend and he managed to find a couple of photo albums.

A table of wine. The wine is a lot like Hawaiian punch in regards to both taste and alcoholic content

It's cool that Andrew is talking to all these girls. The person who took this picture is either twice his height or standing on a chair. Possibly even a table.

Eventually the initial group around me thinned out. I had arrived pretty late and people were starting to leave. I was only swallowed into an inescapable vortex of Chinese people two more times throughout the night. The first was when I pulled out the book I’m reading, The Power Broker, to show them pictures of New York and Americans. I think the motion of opening my backpack caught a lot of people’s attention.

In this picture, I'm the second from the left in the foreground

The second time was when one of the guys, the one who looks like he’s smelling my head in the picture above, asked me if I can dance. I didn’t think there could be a wrong answer but apparently “sure” was just that. He changed the song to something remarkably similar from the one that was already playing and told me to dance. The people around me began to spread out and form a circle. I didn’t really have it in me to let down a room full of well-dressed Chinese people so I said I would as long as Andrew did too.

Dohohoh

Andrew was opposed to the idea and cursed at me for a while. I started several chants of “dance!” both in English and Chinese. Eventually he jiggled his pecs. Everyone was astonished and several people actually screamed. Then, apparently, my dance wasn’t good enough and I was expected to jiggle my pecs as well, which I couldn’t.

Dohohoh

Things continued to happen. One of them asked me if I knew of the show Friends. I told him that I was familiar with its existence. This caused several of them to repeatedly nod their heads at me and ask me how I was doing. This was a reference to one of the show’s characters, Joey, who asks women how they’re doing in many episodes of the show.

My arm, although clearly bent, appears to be flush against the wall

This was posted on renren as a comment regarding the previous image

The two guys in the back are mocking us

I talked about the NBA with a group of guys for about twenty minutes. I don’t know shit about the NBA but it’s one of the most popular conversation topics. It’s a really easy conversation to have. The conversation follows this pattern:

“Do you know Kevin Garnett?”

“Ke….wen…”

“You know Boston? Boston Celtics?”

“Yes! Yes! Boston!”

“Garnett.”

“Ah!! Garnett. Yes, he very good. Ehhh. Jamesuh.”

“Lebron James?”

“Yes!”

“Oh yeah, he’s great.”

“Yes!”

“Do you know Allen Iverson?”

“Ibur…son…”

The guy on the right rules. I didn't speak to the guy on the left but I'm fairly confident I can say the same for him

Eventually, I checked my phone and saw that we had five minutes to catch the last bus home. A posse of students accompanied Andrew and I out of the building, fearing that we wouldn’t be capable of finding the bus we take every day. It seemed we were too late and the bus had already gone. The students then led us to the main gate and all at once started instructing a cab driver how to get to our apartment building. He wasn’t familiar with Lin He Jie but thought he had the idea after a while. We got in and sure enough he made a wrong turn. After he corrected it we decided we didn’t want to pay a fare any greater than the meter was already showing so we walked the rest of the way. We stopped once to pee on a building. I had to go pretty badly so I was glad we didn't stay in the cab.

Bootleg

The English majors at the Jilin Institute of Architecture and Civil Engineering don't get to pick what classes they want to take. A major is essentially a complete curriculum. When the kids choose their major, they are placed in a class with around twenty other students. For the next four years, these are their classmates and they take every single class together in the same room unless they need to make use of one of the school's few garbage resources. One of the classes they are required to take is called English Film and Television and I am apparently the resident expert because every Monday I have to watch the same movie three times in a room with garbage resources.

The last movie I watched three times in one day

My first day teaching was a Monday, so I had my film classes. I took the opportunity to assess what kinds of movies the students have seen and what I should show them. Across the board, they're used to a maturity level of roughly PG. Popular actors include Will Smith, Angelina Jolie and Tom Hanks. I didn't have to ask them to know that social and political issues should probably be avoided.  They're all squeamish when it comes to gore and violence and haven't seen many horror movies. This makes me really sad. I think every child should have at least one early traumatic mature movie experience. Some of my experiences of this nature included watching The Shining, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Last Action Hero.

With that information I began looking around. I knew that once I got the internet connection I was promised, I could get ahold of movies more easily but until then I'd have to buy DVDs. Nothing I brought with me would be suitable.

I like the way you lickin' that fetus, girl

I've yet to find any DVDs here that aren't bootlegs. A lot of them are collections of 15 or 16 movies on two discs. These movies will often have something in common with one another, like the starring actor.

It's not really blu-ray

When I found this in Ou Ya I was surprised to find that they sell collections like this for about 8 yuan (roughly a dollar and change). It's got some good stuff like Road to Perdition, which I probably won't be able to show them and Big, which I probably will. This is the most normal DVD I've found since I've been here.

A man sells DVDs from the back of a pickup truck across the street from me. I paid him a visit and saw a Will Smith collection similar to the Tom Hanks one I already owned. I thought it was interesting that I so easily found collections of movies with two actors that the students unanimously requested. I didn't buy the Will Smith one yet but I intend to. In addition to many Will Smith movies, the collection also has Beverly Hills Cop 1, 2 and 3, none of which feature Will Smith.

Like I said earlier, the last movie I watched three times in one day was Home Alone. After an initial failed attempt to stream it on Youku, the Chinese equivalent of Youtube that ignores all copyright laws, I decided to show them The Wanderers off of my USB stick instead. As soon as I plugged in my flash drive it got a virus, which was fun. With the exception of four or five kids in each class, everyone fell asleep. Probably because the audio quality was bad, the characters all talk over each other and there weren't any subtitles. I don't consider this class to be one of my most successful ones. I decided to look for Home Alone on DVD.

Do you recognize that kid? It's the kid from Home Alone 3. What about those people behind him? Let's take a closer look.

Still can't place them? The're the cast of National Lampoon's Dorm Daze and Dorm Daze 2, which everyone in America has both heard of and enjoyed. I mentioned before that the movies on these DVDs have something in common. See if you can guess what the common ground between Home Alone 3 and Dorm Daze is.

Other "Super Little Rascal Managing a Household" movies in the set are Casper, Surviving Christmas, Little Miss Sunshine, Jingle All the Way and Me, Myself & Irene among others. I found out that there are four films in the Home Alone series and French Stewart plays Marv, Joe Pesci's character, in the fourth one. That's kind of upsetting. In any case, I found Home Alone and I entered my classroom the following Monday confident that nothing could go wrong. As a bonus, the DVD had Chinese subtitles, which the students love and I'd rather have them understand the movie than struggle to follow along and lose interest. Much to my chagrin, the A/V system in the classroom decided to give me a big fuck you and stopped functioning ten minutes into the class. It worked out alright though because I got to hold my classes in the marginally superior A/V room next door where the movie played without a problem.

Pictured above: Kumar, of "Harold & Kumar" fame, with the Klumps, of "The Nutty Professor" fame

There are bootlegs in Ou Ya, there are bootlegs in the back of people's pickup trucks and there are bootlegs in a marketplace on a downtown street called Hongqi Jie. The market is a large, underground area with rows upon rows of DVDs, CDs, weapons and plastic goofy shit. This is the place to come when you want to buy a movie for yourself. The selection is enormous. I came here with Nick about a week ago to see what it was like.

If you're a foreigner, people shout "DVD!" and "CD! Music!" as you walk by. It doesn't matter whose shelf you choose to look at because they're going to sit you down on a stool and keep you there until you've seen every single product that they offer. If you're a foreigner trying to buy anything that doesn't have a price tag, you probably shouldn't pay more than 30% of what they ask. Chinese salespersons are the best actors in the world. While we were sitting there, the lady who was helping us was nothing but pleasant. She kept complimenting me on my fledgling Chinese. I picked out 6 movies and figured I wouldn't take anything higher than 30 yuan for all of them, 5 a piece. Nick picked out a few and then asked, "How much?" All of a sudden the woman wasn't smiling and pulled out a calculator to display the price because my Chinese was so good and all. She showed him something like 45 for three movies and a TV show, which was way too high. I asked how much for all of mine and she showed the same.

Haggling is a process but I enjoy it. After I said "too expensive" she got really angry and started cursing us out. I said 30 a few times but she was pretending not to listen. Nick put the TV show back and I put 3 of my movies back. We asked how much for 6 between the two of us. Still 45, so we walked. Nick mentioned that he feels bad walking since they spend a lot of time taking everything out of boxes to show us. As far as I'm concerned, fuck anyone who's knowingly trying to rip me off. Or unknowingly, incompetence is no excuse.  Sure enough, in about 20 seconds the other woman from that row came running after us and asked us to come back. We got it for 30 and that woman who was first so pleasant, then serious, then angry wore this shit-eating grin like we were still getting ripped off. A few days ago I asked a Chinese friend if 5 was a good price and he said he wouldn't take more than 3 a movie. I hope that bitch spends the rest of eternity in Hades, removing stacks of movies from a box that never depletes. That's a little rough, I'm sure she's a wonderful person in other settings. In any case, this is what I spent my time fighting for.

The aliens use bows and arrows, it's on the back of the box

                           

Based on the popular Nintendo series, Roll is played by a man in drag and the only Asians in the movie are robots

And a Werner Herzog movie but the cover isn't funny. Thanks for your time.