Tag: china

This is a de-duction

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At the second university, they decided whether or not to renew a foreign teacher’s contract by observing a class twice, or for Jarrett’s class, three times. They had two lists of what they’d seen and what the class monitor had told them. They called the good stuff Yes Points, the bad stuff No Points. First time Jarrett had heard the name was in Orientation, where they gathered all the Chinese and foreign teachers in a conference room and made them watch a Powerpoint on the dos and donts of teaching English in China. This was one of the few times all the foreign teachers would be together, just as it was the only time every Chinese and foreign teacher would be together.

Jarrett’s Yes Points were as follows: nice, not late, friendly.

Jarrett’s No Points were as follows: late, strict, and once he’d given a hard assignment.

He asked about that last one. The woman in charge of giving foreign teachers their evaluations, an auntie who covered her smiles with her hand, said, According to the monitor, you make the students write some words.

Yeah, I assigned them an essay.

She looked at him.

That is, I had them write about either their high school, their families, or –

It is not a writing class, she said, shaking.

It’s an English class.

It is oral English.

Yeah, but these students are all going to study abroad, right?

She looked at him like she didn’t know what he was talking about, despite at the beginning of the semester having told him that this was a special class, for students who were going to the Czech Republic to finish their degrees. They talked up how important this class was, how these students had been specially selected to do this.

Now . . .

Never mind, he said. Is that all?

This is a . . . She sought the word. So did Jarrett, and the word she found surprised him: De-duction. This is a de-duction. Is this okay?

Is it okay?

This is a de-duction.

Now it was Jarrett who sought his words, trying on different ones and settling for: Yeah. Sure. That’s fine.

Okay, she said. This is a de-duction.

She took a red pen and made a mark on a paper. Okay, she said. Now we must discuss why you are late.

Spend-It-Not

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Covered well here, and here, let me add me 2 cents while it’s still relevant.

I find this ad more funny than racist, and not ha-ha funny either. Until Mr. Spent-It-Not appears at the end, you can’t be sure this isn’t some terrible parody. Hell, I’m still not convinced this isn’t a parody.

The best part: “we take your jobs”. As if there are actually jobs in America to take…

New short story: Ghosts

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New short story, Ghosts, appears in Terracotta Typewriter Issue 9:

“I was married once,” David said. “Guys here, they’ve been married three, four times. Just once for me.”

He stopped eating, lit a cigarette. He shook another free from his pack, handed it to Jarrett and lit it for him.

“Yeah,” David said with some smoke. “I was married once.”

They’d given their final exams yesterday and caught the first bus out of Wuhan. They were in Jingdezhen, a city famous for china, in Jiangxi province. They planned to spend a week seeing Jiangxi before heading south.

It’s from a novel I’m working on. Read the rest here.

John meets a Squat Toilet (Little Red King, deleted scene)

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John is a recent college graduate who has taken his humanities degree and fled the bad American economy for the great adventure of teaching ESL in China. His stomach gets in an argument with some backstreet food, and loses.

Badly.

He’s fishing with a local boy, when his stomach goes down for the count.

***

John had just taken the pole back when he got his first inkling that something was wrong. That gear was turning again, dragging burps with it, burps that rose and soared to the end of his mouth. He jittered. The fishing pole lowered like a longneck beast at drink.

“Zenme le?”

John’s hand fell to his stomach.

“Ni yao la duzi ma?”

The fishing pole fell. John farted.

“Ah! Ni yao la duzi ba!”

John turned, waved and shouted ‘bye-bye’ and the boy called out something else, something that chased but could not catch John as he rushed across campus.

As he raced against time.

 

He started out walking fast, his eyes darting everywhere. What was the word for restroom? Did it matter? Even if he knew the word, he’d have to know the characters too; none of the signs here were exclusively pinyin, let alone in English.

People were coming. He tried to make eye contact with one guy who averted his own and slung his backpack up tight on his shoulder.

“Excuse me, do”

“Sorry sorry.” He waved his hand and kicked up his pace.

“No,” John called at his heels with a burp. “I need to know where the restroom is.”

The man kept on going.

The gear did another turn. Heavier this time.

“Oh fuck.” John looked around. There were dormitories, tall structures with clothes hanging out of every window. Sheets and all manners of lines hung down in the courtyard, and the wind cupped a sheet and it flapped up to reveal a sign. A picture of a Coke bottle.

John ran to the counter. A woman was sitting there with a baby in her lap. The baby turned and smiled. Then the woman turned and smiled too.

“Ni zhao shenme?”

The gear did two revolutions. A burp contained entirely in his stomach tookt he whole of it and popped. He choked down its remainder.

The woman repeated her question.

“I don’t understand I’m sorry,” John said. “Bathroom?”

She didn’t understand either.

“Restroom? Toilet?” He added in some pantomiming, meant to mimick aiming his penis at a urinal, but…

She still didn’t understand.

“Shit,” he whispered, and noticed that he had drawn a small crowd. A guy pushed past, laid down a small yellow coin and left. He thought back to France. He had no trouble finding the bathroom there. Ou est la salle de bain? La salle de bain. In the middle of another great turn, he perekd up. La Salle de bain.

Or,

“WC!” He was almost hunched over the counter. The woman spoke. She pointed.
John took off in that direction.

 

John found a short building cupped in a hill. The gear was up to three revolutions now, turning and turning and he headed towards the building with its two entrances, a different red-chalk character marking each. But he didn’t know for sure until the smell.

The smell.

“Oh God,” he said, and ducked into one.

For urination, there was a single traugh that took up most of the restroom. A pipe matched it inch for inch, water trickling down from it. Both ran from a wash basin to three stalls, none of which had doors. The stalls faced out the window, up the hill. John checked the first one. It was a squat toilet, a little porcelain groove laid over a pipehole, full of paper and shit. A microcosm of greater foulness.

The second toilet was the same.

The third was empty. As if sensing a free toilet, the gear kicked up its revolutions and as he unbuckled his pants, he could feel a squishy mess poking out.

“Holy fuck,” he said, and got his pants down. He squatted, balancing on his toes. “Here it comes.”

It came. The shit was painful and loud, exploding out in bubbly, liquid bursts. At the end, the gear did a turn, he burped, and then it fell still.

John took a couple steps forward. Some shit lie on the sides of the toilet, but most of it had gotten in. A solid light brown pile lay in the middle and the smell reached up for him and he turned and looked for it.

He was looking for toilet paper.

 

John spent a minute or two listening carefully. Then he emerged, waddling over to the wash basin. There was a bucket. A mop. He turned the faucet and ran his hand under the cold water.

Then he wiped.

When he felt clean enough, he scrubbed his hand off and went back to the toilet. He looked again, this time for a handle to flush it. He pulled his pants back up and spent some time thinking. A mosquito lifted off from the sink and buzzed past him.

Okay then.

He took the bucket and filled it up and then carried it over to the toilet. He poured all the water in. Some shit did disappear down the hole, but not all. Most of the clump stuck there.

“Oh God,” he said, and flung the bucket aside.

***

Read The Seven Year Laowai, which sets the foundation for Little Red King, here.

Read exerpts from Little Red King here.

Read more of LRK’s deleted scenes here.

Questions about Teaching English in China – Health Insurance

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Do schools in China offer you health insurance?

In my experience, no. They offer “accidental coverage”, which means that if a car hits you, and the driver forgets to back over you to make sure you’re dead, the school will pay for it.

Otherwise, much like here in America, you’re on your own.