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One of two things is required of the English teacher in China: a skin like a rhino or a TEFLon coating. Without a leather hide or a non-stick dermatology, that sensitive outer layer of laowai will soon be stripped bare, resulting in all manner of psychological and physiological discomforts.

So what are the ordeals lying in wait to get under the skin of English teachers lacking the natural defences prescribed? What are the stressors associated with bringing the world’s premier language to the land of Chinese characteristics?

Let’s take a look at a few of the potential challenges facing the insufficiently protected:

1. Death

For the seriously unlucky, overly naive, or unrealistically principled, the desire for schools to earn a fast buck and exploit expat teachers can have terrible consequences. This is one instance where prevention is most definitely better than cure.

2. A damn good thrashing

Not such a desperate end, but unlucky nonetheless if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Always read the international news and remain vigilant against the volatile nature of Chinese nationalism. Alternatively, put that rhino skin to good use and stand there and take it like a man.

3. Getting fleeced

The Art of War has a lot to answer for; it justifies deception as a means to an end, as many expats have found to their cost. And locals will waste no time testing your metal upon arrival in China as you run the gauntlet of taxi drivers that make a New York cabby seem about as ‘in your face’ as a cuddly toy.

4. No pay

A contract in China is strictly for ‘information purposes only’. That’s not to say that the expat teacher should expect any correlation between the information contained therein and reality. If you find that your wages are withheld sometimes, when queried, your employer will likely point out the clause that stipulates a fine of one month’s salary for interfering in China’s internal affairs.

5. Identity crisis

Soon after taking position at the blackboard in front of their first class, an expat teacher’s understanding of their role is likely to move seamlessly through the following four stages of self-evaluation:

I am an educator; I am an entertainer; I am an exhibit; I am a babysitter

The denial of those individuals who steadfastly refuse to progress beyond the first stage usually manifests itself as inappropriate anger towards those who have moved on.

6. You’re a spy

Shame on you. You don’t look Chinese so why are you in China? You’re a capitalist roader if ever I saw one. Why choose this province when there are so many others to choose from? It’s a well known fact that most foreign teachers in China come here to spy. We would never dream of such underhand behaviour in your country.

Old prejudices and stereotypes die very, very hard for the expat teacher in the Middle Kingdom. Which leads us neatly to…

7. Disrespect

Not so much in the classroom, but more in the general view, the expat teacher faces the enduring schema of a talentless loser on the make. Here is a sample of the kind of mud that is being routinely flung in the expat’s direction, creating the kind of stigma that you could really do without:

I’m sick of white dudes like you who have asian fetish coming to china, boning girls, thinking you’re hot shit, when you can’t even get girls back home fromwhatever shithole you crawled out of. China boosts up your ego; you have western worshipping chinese peasant girls suck your dick and it makes you think you’re king. you ain’t no king; you’re slime. You’re lower than low. You’re fucking pathetic. You’re a “grade A loser,” as they say. All you’ve got to do with your time is write your jealousy filled, hater posts about contradicting someone who has done better than you. I hope you get AIDS from one of the hookers you’ve been banging, you cocksucking CIA spy motherfucker.

Made me laugh, anyway. Hat tips to Brendan and Kim for inspiring the response and bringing it to my attention respectively.

Sadly, the quote accurately reflects not only the default position of the fenqing, but also the attitude of a condescending element within the non-teaching expat community (Imagethief wrote about this a while back).

These individuals look down upon the English teacher in the same way that the Chinese businessman looks down upon street cleaners. If I was being charitable I’d say that they were ‘culturally immersed’.

8. The special guest

You are invited by your FAO to attend a lunch. Having escorted you to a decent hotel in the city and introduced you to a dozen suits that can’t utter a syllable of English. Smiles all round, FAO interprets:  “Honoured foreign guest please to visit humble company HQ. Very close. Few minutes only. Then lunch.”

Having been ushered into a waiting Buick your FAO disappears. An hour later you’re being escorted around a ramshackle assortment of buildings on the outskirts of the city that demand a rewrite of the health and safety in the workplace handbook.

Many photographs are taken while you smile, inspect, look impressed, and generally act the part of the foreign executive applying the finishing touches to a lucrative international order.

Two more hours pass before the Buick drops you off at a restaurant and all the suits begin to inebriate themselves with Baijiu. It’s another hour before any food arrives and there’s still no sign of your FAO, which is just as well because murder is a capital offence in China.

On the plus side you have now been elevated to CEO of a foreign company’s China office and there are lots of pictures in a glossy brochure to prove it.

9. “Helloooooo… laowai”

This is the psychological equivalent of  death by a thousand cuts. Under the heading ‘Discrimination’, this from Frommer’s China:

Unless you are of Chinese descent, your foreignness is constantly thrust in your face with catcalls of “laowai”, a not particularly courteous term for foreigner and a bit like shouting “Chinky” at a Chinese you encounter at home. Mocking, and usually falsetto, calls of “Helloooooo” are not greetings but are similar to saying “Pretty Polly!” to a parrot.

Only in China could an informal greeting become a national game of taking the piss. Get used to it, quickly.

10. If you can do all this…

… and more, yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, and – which is more – you’ll be certifiable, my son!

You’ll probably be blogging about it, too.

In the last couple of days I’ve had the privilege of discussing the extraordinary Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi in some of my classes. Sadly, although not surprisingly, not a single student recognised either her name or the picture that I used at the beginning of the lesson.

Myanmar’s (Burma) internationally recognised and respected prime minister-elect is a mystery figure to the people of China. And I don’t mean that they find her to be a strange individual given to dabbling in the occult; I mean they don’t find her at all. Not in textbooks, not on television, not in the newspaper; and certainly not in the politics classroom. After all, she’s not the type of girl that Beijing has any interest in providing information about.

After Suu Kyi was democratically elected in a general election in 1990 by an overwhelming margin, the military junta decided that she belonged under lock and key rather than acting out her rightful place as head of government. The people’s choice has since spent the majority of the intervening years under house arrest, where she continues to fight with grace and determination for democracy and justice in Myanmar.

I’m prepared to concede that a significant percentage of 20 year-old university students around the globe may also be unaware of the existence of Aung San Suu Kyi. But in their cases (DPRK and a few others excepted) it’s because they’re not inclined to pick up a newspaper, whereas in China the reason is that the information is simply not available. It’s not that Myanmar is never in the news, as witnessed by the recent coverage of the cyclone disaster (a favourable comparison in relief efforts for the CCP). Rather, as one might suspect, it’s because China does a lot of business with the military dictatorship and has no material interest in altering the status quo. The argument that China doesn’t interfere in the internal affairs of other countries is not valid here; it’s certainly not interference to provide factual information about the nature of Myanmar’s regime and the suffering and death they have caused.

In fairness, China is not alone in supporting Myanmar’s despots, as this article from last year indicates. But it is certain that as long as China refuses to acknowledge the military junta as violators of human rights, they cannot seriously be considered either globally or regionally responsible.

Bear in mind that Beijing has no problems when it comes to reporting on the domestic policies of other countries. Not all other countries, of course; Zimbabwe would be another example of conspicuous silence, but then Mugabe and Myanmar’s military junta have a lot in common. Leaving aside that particular comparison, Myanmar is China’s neighbour and should have a flourishing economy founded on tourism, vast natural resources, and a rich cultural heritage. Instead, the people have suffered violence and economic catastrophe under the junta’s restrictive and vengeful regime.

China didn’t invent a foreign policy based on self-interest; recent history can provide countless examples of the transgressions of other nations. But this is happening in China’s own backyard. And they are interfering in the internal affairs of their neighbour when they actively support a regime that undermines the most basic of its people’s human rights and dignities. If China wants to be respected as a responsible world power then it must show the kind of moral leadership that has too often been lacking in those that came before. All Hu Jintao and company need do to signal the end of oppression in Myanmar is to pull the plug. Do they have the humanitarian backbone necessary to do this? Somehow I doubt it.   

Before responding, please consider that last sentence carefully. I’m going to delete any knee-jerk responses along the lines of “yeah, but look what your/that/XXX country did…” 

Nothing felt less natural to me than standing in front of a class full of students when I first arrived in China. I made a living playing blackjack in the UK, so this was a bit of a career change. Not that the new job description was in itself the source of my discomfort at being the centre of attention: that’s just the way I’m made. These days, however, an ECG would struggle to register so much as a mini-spike when I present myself to a class for the first time. 

Perhaps this in part due to the paradoxical sense of anonymity I feel in China, despite often being the only non-Chinese in a room, a street, or a supermarket. Anonymity feels very calming to me. Outside China I think it would have taken longer - if not forever - to establish the same degree of relaxation in the classroom. I attribute the acquisition of this comfort zone to the greater anxiety of my students at the prospect of interacting with a foreigner; if there’s one thing I can empathize with it is verbal paralysis.

As someone who knows exactly what intense classroom anxiety feels like, therefore, I find my own self-consciousness trumped by a desire to relieve the doubts and discomforts of my students. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes these days to dispel the fears of any individual class members and establish a relaxed tone. Once a good rapport is in place the process of learning and the rewards of teaching follow more easily.

Gaining the trust and respect of your students is not enough to be a good teacher, of course. I’ve seen some truly great teachers at work who possess a real gift for imparting knowledge. It is without any vestige of false modesty that I tell you I’m not one of them. At the same time, trust and respect are not insignificant and they have been instrumental in making me more of a counselor than a tutor during the last three years.

Teaching in China is not without its drawbacks and frustrations, about which I will write more in a later post, but in my experience these are outweighed by the positives, chief of which is the affection and respect I receive from my students.