CP10: Cultural Criticisms
The tenth episode of the Chinarchy podcast. I introduce my new co-host, Jamie, and we defend cultural criticisms and judgments.
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Chinese Tests Black Eagle
This Tuesday the People’s Liberation Army successfully tested a new stealth fighter, the J-20 “Black Eagle.”
For more information on the plane, read this Wikipedia article. The only reason I’m posting this is because of the great comments the online community members (netizens) have made in response. (All translations have been done by ChinaSmack.)
Here are some of my favorites:
Sigh, hope it wasn’t just pieced together! [is real, not just a fake/ruse] — 腾讯合肥市网友
Does the country/government’s strength and power have anything to do with us? — 红玛瑙
The more advanced the PLA’s weapons are, just means the more people that can be suppressed on Changan Avenue. — 織田信長
No wonder everyone says it is easy to be a [government] leader. I’d rather see the price of cabbage fall 5 mao. — 红玛瑙
Is the poster speaking for the Party, or for the people? — 朱雀
[If the country has] become more powerful, does it have anything to do with me? I only know that our wages are N times lower than abroad, and prices are so much higher than abroad that they are unrecognizable. I won’t even talk about housing prices. This thing you’ve created, what does it have to do with the lowly common people? — 租车超人
Slaves cheering the slave-master for researching and developing an even more powerful killing machine? What kind of reasoning is this? — 正宗张江男
If there is hope, it lies in the netizens?
CP9: Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior
The ninth Chinarchy audio post. Forcing children to take care of their parents and a Chinese mother describes the experience of children.
Sources:
China consider passing law which forces youngsters to look after elderly parents… or face jail
Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior
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CP8: Subtle Abuse
The eighth Chinarchy audio post. An episode about a different, possibly more dangerous kind of abuse.
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My New School (and What’s Been Up The Past Past Couple Months)
Today was the first day at my new school. A lot has happened the past couple months, and I’ve intentionally not shared until I knew what the resolution would be.
We left off my work situation with me growing increasingly unhappy at my school. The headmaster, the Chinese teachers, the treatment of the children, and the general environment was all becoming too much.
When I started my job, I promised myself that I would put up with everything negative for as long as I could. I would help the kids in whatever way possible, and just deal with the stress for as long as possible, but not longer.
I didn’t want it to change me or affect me too much; I didn’t want to become one of those miserable, pessimistic teachers that — whether or not he intends to — ends up passing on that despair to the students.
I was at that point with my old school.
My original class that I started with in February had left for primary school. I had new students that didn’t know me at all, which essentially reset all of my progress with new teaching methods back to zero. And I had taken over a former teacher’s class, with new students and a small-minded, fearful assistant. (See Episode 7).
I told my agency (we’re technically employees of hiring agencies, not the actual schools) and asked what they could do about it. The short version is this: they basically told me to go back to work, shut up, and finish my contract.
I’m going to skip a lot of the struggle I had to go through with my agency, but I’ll likely cover it later in an audio post. It’s a perfect example of Chinese business culture, and their culture in general, but in the interest of time I’m going to skip the details.
Since my agency wouldn’t move me to another school, I tried to quit.
What do I mean by “tried?” I told them I had offers at other schools and was considering them. They told me they would — in more words — fuck me six ways from Sunday.
They would keep my most recent paycheck ($1000), my airfare bonus ($1000), my TEFL certification, and cancel my working visa.
Some of that I agreed to lose if I broke the contract (paycheck, airfare bonus) but still, withholding those things is at the company’s discretion. And it was very clear that they were choosing to enforce those parts of the contract out of spite. Many people leave the agency on “bad terms” (disappearing after payday, for example) and suffer little to no consequences. I had been dealing with them up front and honestly my entire time in China, even when it came to conflicts we had.
And it was more than just losing some money, they were going to cancel my working visa, which according to most people can cause you some serious problems.
McCoy and I came to China, and worked for several months, with a business visa. There are many, many foreigners that do this. A lot have been here for years, just continually renewing their business visas. But after a few months our agency offered us working visas.
We went with them, assuming that being as legal as possible would only benefit us. Wrong.
When you quit a company while working on a business visa, there are essentially no consequences. You go your separate ways. But with a working visa it’s different. Your legal status in the country is tied to a company, and if that company is willing to put in the legwork, they can dissolve that status.
Couldn’t I just apply for a new visa and be fine? Maybe.
Here’s why it’s hard to know:
- The visa laws are a huge bureaucratic mess. And nobody — even the middle-man companies whose service is navigating the bureaucracy — seems to have a clear answer. One visa company told me that once I lost my working visa I would be unable to reapply for anything other than a tourist visa. Meaning: I’d have to leave the country. Another visa company told me that if I flew to Hong Kong and reapplied for a business visa, I would be fine, but I’d still have complications with getting another working visa. And I’d heard stories about people who broke a contract, lost their working visa, reapplied for a business visa, and still got deported.
- Foreigners have almost no legal recourse in China. Maybe a well-connected company, but just a random guy like me would have nobody to go to. And even if I did, the outcome would be determined by who was willing to spend the most money on lawyers or arbitration. And in the end, it would still be a foreigner versus a Chinese company. The odds are not in my favor.
- Even if the law somehow was on my side, everything is subject to the rule of bureaucratic guanxi. That should probably be capitalized: The Rule of Bureaucratic Guanxi. Whoever has the most political pull or influential connections will find a way to win, no matter what the specifics of the law might be.
Because of this, I was stuck. I spent weeks trying to figure out a way to get out of my contract, but nothing that was certain, or even close to certain.
In the meantime, I had to force the agency to move me to a new school. I had no luck convincing them, so I had to resort to more indirect methods.
I called in sick until my headmaster was furious and demanded I be fired. I don’t like doing things like that, becoming a “bad” employee, but I didn’t have much choice.
My agency caved and moved me through two new more schools — each with the same bad things as my original school, if not worse. Similar tactics kept me from staying at either permanently.
Part of me kept saying “just stick it out for three more months and be done with it.” But the rest of me couldn’t take it. I was burned out, exhausted, miserable from having to witness kids being treated like crap, and angry at how my agency was treating me.
Finally, though, I was moved to a school that wasn’t a terrible, Chinese, crush-the-souls-of-children institution. And that’s where I started my first day today.
The school is a training center, not a kindergarten. And my job is pretty simple: Parents stop by the school with their kids and I perform a thirty-minute demonstration of the classes available. If the kids enjoy it, the parents sign up and bring them back for regular classes once a week.
It’s easy and simple and the kids are treated great. The people who run the training center aren’t like typical Chinese headmasters and all of the assistants are happy and gentle.
It’s not the best school I could be at — I missed out on some opportunities at Montessori schools because I couldn’t get out of my contract — but it’s a great place to wait out the remaining months of my contract.
So that’s where I’m at. Once my contract is over in February I’ll have to make some more decisions, but for now at least, I’m pretty comfortable.
