Any foreigner living in China now will tell you that something weird is going on. Our fellow foreigners are disappearing in great numbers. It as if wild animals are picking them off on their smoggy bike rides to work. Increasingly we feel like Mexicans just inside the American border: looked upon suspiciously, regardless of the legitimacy of our legal status. Perhaps that overstating things, but a lot of people are moving away.

Visas are not being renewed for perpetual tourist and business folks. Some of these de-facto expulsions are legitimate, like people who hang out in China, teaching in a semi-legal status. Others, like business people who are frequent visitors to China, are wrong-headed. The most peculiar trend, and a prominent one at that, is it appears anyone born 1984 or later gets an automatic rejection on new work visas.

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Stick and I are both over the age-25 cutoff, and we both think we’re working for reputable schools who can look after our paperwork… but there are mysterious rumors about the inability to renew working visas a second time, or get an L visa for over 30 days, or switch from one kind to another. From everything I’ve heard, shady visa agents are making money hand over fist, while smaller schools and businesses are losing their foreign employees. Seems like a sad situation if expats who love China are forced to head home while under the table “visa services” make more cash.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Goodbye Foreigners!

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I went there yesterday to restock, and found this instead.

Rumor has it that the Beijing subway will soon be making it’s way to Yihai Hua Yuan. It’ll be nice to be connected to the rest of the city, but I’ll have to find a new market.

More photos of the wreckage.

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Former Veggie Market

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“Sure, I’m free.” I said. “What did their regular teacher cover last week?”

“They don’t have a regular teacher.” Joe said.

“The class is in 4 hours and they don’t have a teacher?”

“That’s why I called you,” he said. (Duh! I know the engine’s on fire! That’s why I called a mechanic!)

Good thing I went, though. While I was in the midst of explaining the rules for Verb Charades, I happened to look at the wall behind my students, and noticed something odd with the language poster.

Usually these posters are something like this:

Language centers are full of these posters. A bit of a random assortment, a touch of Chinglish, and some rarely used idioms but nothing memorable. But what caught my attention — and almost stopped my class — was this one:

I wonder if they make a wallet-sized version for easy reference on the go.

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From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Adventures In Tutoring

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The menus were trilingual, and one of the staff spoke English. He was really helpful with us, especially with Christina. She remembered that she liked a curry. It was orange. Maybe it had chicken in it? He went through the extensive menu with her until she found what she wanted. (I’m not kidding)

The Chinese-speaking waitstaff were also very helpful, and accustomed to hearing second-language Chinese from customers. One of the best things about being in the city — well, besides the access to better food — is that more people have heard second-language Chinese before meeting me. They’re more likely to say “What did you say?” instead of “Yes,” which really makes all the difference.

The food was great. I actually had a culinary plan B, in case the menus were in Hindi and Chinese or in case Chinese Indian food wasn’t, uh, what we expected, but we didn’t need it. We ordered way too much delicious food, which tasted exactly like Northampton or Montclair Indian fare. Amazing. It’s not only the British who get homesick for curry.

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Ganges In Haidian

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Teacher Assistant B comes over to Christina’s and my desks, and begins an inquisition on who uses the English room and when and who was in it today and at what time. TA B finally brings the conversation around to the point in question, that it was indeed Christina and TA B’s class in the English room before break. We all agree that, this being Tuesday, such is the case.

TA B then discussed how, on occasion, TA B herself may be the first to exit this classroom. On such an occasion, it fell to Christina to be the second teacher to exit the room. Indeed, just a few minutes ago, this exact situation occured. All possible permutations of TAs and foreign teachers and class times and exit strategies were then reviewed.

I was getting the drift of the conversation by now, but it became more clear when the next topic was the convenient proximity of the light switch to the door.

Finally, TA B alluded to the great mystery of the lights being left on prior to break.

Christina instantly ‘fessed up and said oops, and I thought we could all drop the subject. But no, the remainder of break was devoted to making sure that such a grievous offense would never ever happen again, ever, under any circumstances, no matter who left the room first after any class on any day of the week. Then I, also, needed to reassure both TA B and TA A that I would not adopt the habit of leaving the English room without turning off the lights.

The American Method of Solving The Same Problem:

“Remember to turn out the lights next time!”

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There’s a Lightbulb Joke Here Somewhere…

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“60 kwai,” I said.

“10,” he responded.

“No, no, you’ve got it all wrong. You say the higher numbers, I say the lower numbers,”

I don’t think he understood my English but my confused look must have conveyed my message, because he amended his statement.

“10 Euro.”

“Honey! He thinks we’re European!” I told Stick. We’re usually mistaken for Brits* when we’re traveling… I like to think it’s the good manners, but it’s probably the bad teeth.

“If I had 10 Euro,” Stick said, “I’d buy that taxi and drive you home myself.”

We decided to take the subway back.

*Stick finds this statement misleading and so I would like to state that neither of us thinks that the UK has given up the pound and adopted the Euro.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

International Trade Relations

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It was actually a charicature of a Chinese meeting. I got to school at 9:38 for a 9:40 meeting, and I was the only person in the assigned room. My mindset was more Hurray! I can drink cold water without being reminded that it’s bad for my health! than Where is everybody? Then the level 1 TAs and Christina, the other American teacher, showed up, and then surprise! so did the director of the English department, and then the foreign-teacher liason.

Our first order of business was making sure everyone knew that we were meeting today. Yes, really. We were all intensely questioned on when and where and from who we found out about the top secret resistance organization first grade teachers’ planning meeting.

Christina’s TA doesn’t quite speak English, which put poor Christina in a weird position when the TA insisted that she’d told Christina about the meeting far in advance and Christina, shocked and unprepared, tried to explain that this was dropped on her at 9:39 this morning.

Our second order of business was making sure that everyone had their lesson plans to discuss. Another drastic failure, because Christina hadn’t written a week’s worth of lessons in 60 seconds, and the Chinese teachers weren’t told they were meant to bring suggested lesson plans for our classes. (My TAs and I all thought that we’d be chatting about the keeping all the first grade classes on the same level)

Fortunately, the detailed questioning took so long that we ran out of time before anyone could see that my lesson plans were sort of in draft form.

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Meeting Of Minds

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Yes, the fruit carts are a little less expensive, and the prices becomes cheaper and cheaper as the laowai prices come down, but I don’t know if that’s the reason to walk the extra block. The fruit is a little fresher… again, it’s not really a big difference.

Ihe main reason is that my Chinese is terrible. The guy who’s sitting outside all day with his bikecart full of grapes has a lot more time to deal with my bad pronunciation than the hourly supermarket cashier. (Sometimes they like to use this free time to bargain, which is kind of like a test of how fast I can count backwards in Chinese.) The cashier doesn’t care if she makes the sale or not. But the bikecart guy, or popcorn girl, or any other street vendor, has an interest in selling the product, so they really will go out of their way to try to understand the disjointed phrases that I call Chinese.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Street Shopping

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So we get a table, and a menu, and I THOUGHT I was ordering a chicken broth. The waiter said something about chicken in the soup and I was all “Yeah, ok, fine,” because he seemed to be repeating “chicken” and “soup pot”.

Then the soup came, and there was a headless, plucked chicken sitting in the pan! Oh, THAT’S what he was saying! Poor Christina was really creeped out by it, and I felt a bit stupid because the waiter had so clearly tried to tell me what was up! If only Chinese had an article, so that I could tell “chicken in your soup” from “a chicken in your soup”. Although I probably wouldn’t understand anyway.

Apparently Beijing hotpot comes with a little dish of seasoning to drop into your broth for flavor. The waiter, who was probably hating his job more and more as the evening went on, said something about cilantro. I knew it from ChinesePod (Thanks, John!), it’s xiangcai in Chinese, but I thought he said xiangcao, which is vanilla, and for a horrible moment I thought I’d ordered a giant bowl of vanilla-headless chicken soup

When he came back with the dish of cilantro and scallions, I caught on. Then I ordered other food for the soup, based on what I saw other people eating. It took forever to come, I’m not sure if the’re always slow or if the waiter was in the kitchen psyching himself up to deal with my bad Chinese. (Just kidding.) (I hope.)

The food was delicious. Hotpot is essentially make-your-own-soup, which means you can put exactly what you want it in. No mystery meat! Only the vegetables you want! And if you don’t order Chicken Carcass Soup, all the meat is boneless, too.

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A Chicken In Every Pot

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Um.

The whole thing went a lot better than my last school surprise, because if there’s one thing I love doing with little kids, it’s public humiliation skits! We played some games today, because I had nothing prepared, not being told that I was meant to writing a school play. It went very well, the kids are pretty good at English. Poor Christina isn’t accustomed to the last-minute-ness of Chinese schools, so the whole thing was kind of an ordeal for her. The kids are a dream, though, very creative and excited. My assignment for Monday is convincing the rest of the English department that Peter Pan is a traditional American folktale.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Peter Pan With Chinese Characteristics

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