How Any Guy Gets Laid in China

It's called Maggie's.
Walk in, buy a beer, leave with "company."
Or, simply breathe. Stand on a street corner. Pretend you don't speak any Chinese (if you do.) Within ten minutes, a girl desperate to "improve her English" will come to help you. Never mind that there's a young foreign mother struggling with a baby not two feet away from you-- a woman who might need a hand getting herself and baby into a cab, for example--YOU are the magnet here. You are the one with "Mr. Green Card" stamped across your forehead in invisible ink. You have money, you have no friends here to take you aside and say, "Dude, she is SO a whore!" and better yet, culture shock is giving you a serious case of Lack of Judgment.
 With luck, you'll be engaged by New Year's, and with even more luck, you won't realize until well into the marriage that she can't really speak English, she doesn't like you, and that the likelihood that she's still seeing her true love while you're slaving away teaching English at Wall Street is strong.
Well, remember this, Bucko: I told you so.

Names

 I am by profession a teacher, and I can vouch that there are certain names I hear which immediately send a shiver down my spine, as I associate that name with a particular and particularly vile student. Chinese students often choose "names" which are merely words translated into Chinglish from their original tongue, thus I have students with names like Happyway and Swallow (not an imperative form of the verb, by the way.) Naming a pet can be a nightmare as I can't think of a typical "English" name without recalling at least one student with the same moniker.Since I have about 150 students right now, that's a large pool of names I cannot draw from, even if I DID want to name the new (temporary) puppy Ballet or Pony or Jickson.

Other names seem to indicate trouble or heartbreak. Both Sissy and I have gone through hell in our lives with men named Richard, for example. They're either teachers from hell, or boyfriends who won't commit, or drunken troublemakers who borrow money and never come back. "What is it about men named Dick who break our hearts?" I asked Sissy. She replied, "Don't trust your heart to someone named after genitalia. Remember what a bitch Aunt Fanny was?"

So there's my advice: if you're stupid enough to like and trust someone named after body parts, make sure you're signed up at a really good gym so that when the inevitable happens and you're left heart sick and reeling with pain, you can at least go to the gym and work yourself into a semblance of sanity. That's where I have been all week, throwing punches and cursing the day I ever gave the smallest slip of my heart--let alone my phone number--to a big stupid Dick. I am sure there are really great guys out there named Richard, I just don't know any. And you know what? Men named Bob are EVEN WORSE. If he's still called Bobby--run. There's always a reason he never made it to Rob.

Spring is Sprung

Spring is sprung, the grass is rize, I wonder where the birdies is...

I went for a walk today in what I perceive as "mist" but which is in truth a vile cloud of pollution. The heat is off, and won't be conjured again until mid-November, so of course the weather took a turn for the worse and it's cold and gloomy. The rainy season starts around May: until then we'll deal with it being cold and shitty for a bit, then hot and shitty for a longer bit, then have intermittent monsoons (my view, not the weather station's) alternating with hot and steamy. I have three cotton sweaters which I can wear for the next three weeks before it becomes too damn humid to dream of wearing anything more closely woven than gauze. I remember  a lovely crinkly gauze dress I had to give to a friend headed west---when the humidity rose, the fabric actually acted as a giant wick and within an hour the broomstick crinkles were gone and the dress hung limp and damp from my shoulders. I wonder why I stay--then I look at the pile of bills, and sigh, and remember that I have to pay some s#$t off before finding my freedom.

If you're headed to Beijing this spring, bring rain gear (nothing too heavy) and a thin scarf to tie over your head to you can go outdoors if there's a spring dust storm. (Not dust--sand, gritty nasty dirt, yellow in color and foul yellow in taste.)

Other than THAT, Mrs. Lincoln...

What a week. Next week promises to be, in teacher speak, "just as challenging." I'm double booked again--need to be in two separate places at one time without time to eat or pee as I challenge the forces of the universe to split myself into two and deliver two lectures in two different locations to two different groups of students. It amazes me that the same person who scheduled me into simultaneous lectures can't see why this would be a problem--I mean, she honestly doesn't understand the basic principle that a too too solid object such as myself can't work in two different buildings at precisely the same time. When I brought this up--rather nicely, for me--she stared at me with big sheep eyes and said, "Why you have a problem this?" I said, patiently, "It's impossible for one teacher to give a lecture to a group of students in Building One while also giving a lecture on a different subject to teachers in Building Six at the exact same time." The kicker? She sneered and said I was--and I quote--- "so lazy." (This from a woman whose mother lives in to do all the housework, and who farms out her three year old on a permanent basis to a family in the countryside because she's too busy with her "career" which includes two-hour power naps after lunch to take him to day care herself.) Lazy? Hmmm...silly me, busting my ass through grad school instead of mastering the time-space continuum so that I could perform twice the work for a single salary.

A colleague suggested that perhaps this woman is deeply stupid, a theory I agree with in part, but then I thought of a sneakier approach, and I emailed to say that if I had to teach TWO classes at once then I wanted double pay. Funny, when the issue of extra payment comes up, people here tend to pay attention. So we'll see what happens with this. Deeply stupid this woman may be--and yes, she is--but when it comes to money, whatever dim bulb is in her brain lights up and she works with ferocious intensity to figure out how to screw the foreigner out of the last sou. Let's see her greasy-haired pony-tail bob up and down as she sits over her calculator, frantically trying to work out how to get the most work out of me without paying extra. I hate to be a bitch about schedules,  but come on, if you have a job which entails scheduling people, LEARN HOW TO DO IT RIGHT!

Back in Black

So, I was sitting in Lily's Nails when my cell phone buzzed with a new text and it was indeed but yet another disaster in the romance department. I immediately upped my order from a quick polish change to a full treatment pedicure (with massage),  manicure,  and a new set of false eyelashes (guaranteed to last a month--no mascara needed!) As three different women worked on me simultaneously--one on my feet, one on my hands and one behind me glueing my eyes shut -- I had several different thoughts flash through my head. First, it would take a single nip of the cuticle scissors to blind me (if I jerked or moved, tweezers would plunge straight into my eyeballs.) Second, I had just paid a lot of unknown women to touch me, and third, this was probably the closest to group sex that I would ever get--or, for that matter, any sex at all.

The pedicure was great--it included a salt scrub and moisturing treatment which had my plump calves slathered with lotion, wrapped in baggies and thrust into electronic booties. The massage was to die for--I am learning to relax into the massage and not run screaming away from probing knuckles (on my feet, that is.) Eyelashes--nice, not too flashy. Manicure--lovely, but ruined within 24 hours as my nails are like cellophane and I tend to use them as tools. As I contemplated the ruin of my manicure hours later, my phone buzzed with another text: That Man wanted to see me, and I compared my fragile little nails to my soul: is it there to be used and ruined, or honored and allowed to grow strong?

I said the hell with it, and rather than replying, hit "delete" then "block sender."

Yay me.

What exactly wouldn't I understand?

One of my closest friends is either breaking off his friendship with me, or breaking down. Either way, I can't stop it. I just wish I had a definitive answer. Twice in the past weeks he's initiated contact, set up a time to meet, then texted at the last minute (the same excuse) that he can't make it. I hate this. I had a boyfriend years ago who did the same thing, only the dates were complicated by the fact I had to fly myself and my daughter halfway around the world to meet, only to have him cancel by email at the last possible minute. Passive aggressive?  You betcha.

Right now I am concentrating on being open and honest, qualities which are hard for me to employ. I don't want to point fingers and sob, "It's my Mommy's fault! My daddy mastered passive aggression!" (Trust me, there was nothing passive about his aggression: he loathed little children and let us know on a frequent and hands-on basis.) I'm trying to be honest at work, about the mess that is the situation there, without being negative or judgmental. I'm trying to be honest about my own unpleasantness and addictions, such as sulking and cookie binges, and I'm trying to be honest about my feelings for my friend, who has been a friend for many many years, a rarity in a community of expats. It occurs to me that while I am a friend to him, he's not much of a friend to me, in the sense of  "He'll be there for me at three in the morning." Hell, there are times when it takes him five days to respond to a text regarding the business we're in, or if I send something I may get a terse reply that clearly galls him to have to write. On the plus side, when we do get together it's relaxing, and charming, and fun, although I'm exhausted by the time he leaves. Our relationship consists mostly of getting together for a meal, watching some bad film no one else can stand and criticizing it freely.

If he's depressed, well, there's something I understand, having gone through two severe depressions in my life, one post-partum. Depression can be a chemical unbalance (like post-partum) or situational: sometimes depression is, I believe, the body's response to an overwhelming crisis or trauma and I think it's actually part of a healing cycle. So, Buddy, if you're depressed, I'm there for you. If you are thinking I'm bad for you and don't want to be friends, would you kindly get off your ass and tell me this? What part of "Depressed, so fuck off" or "I hate your face" do you think I am incapable of understanding?

Moon in Feces

I once knew a hippie chick who was always full of the most horrible malaprops, including "I think my sign is Feces" (she meant Pisces) and "We've passed a lot of water since that bridge." I'm looking at the death toll in Japan--now thought to be about 10,000, and I've just lost two close friends, and walked out of a long-term off and on relationship (largely off, occasionally brilliantly on) and I'm numb and I'm tired and I'm sad. Nothing that's rocking my world right now is as terrible as that triple-whammy in northern Japan-- and I'm alive and I have a job and my kid is ok--- but I feel so sad and sick at heart. I know someday I'll have other friends and lovers and bluebirds will fly over my personal rainbow--and that there are people suffering genuine disasters. But "dis-aster" has its meaning in the stars itself, and my favorite astrologer Jonathan Cainer has predicted a lot of upheaval right about now, to prepare the way for a new beginning.

Hopefully, this latest nuclear disaster will remind the asshats who run this planet that NUCLEAR POWER IS NOT SAFE, AND NEVER WILL BE, and they will turn away from this to safer, cleaner, cheaper forms of energy, such as the ocean itself. Why do so many people have to suffer before anyone listens? (If you are following the latest in the  Erin Brockovich saga, you know that big corporations never, ever do. No matter how much money they lose in the court room, they have one eye firmly set on future profits and the hell with the continued existence of life on this planet. News flash, asshats, you can't spend your money if everyone and everything on the planet is dead. Is that REALLY what you want for your grandkids?)

What's happening to the planets? According to me--not  Cainer---the moon is definitely in Feces.

For Japan

As if an earthquake and a tsunami weren't enough, now the nuclear power plant explodes. Jesus, hasn't Japan suffered enough? Truman has not one but TWO bombs dropped there almost 70  years ago and now this. I am horrified and I scared---let the damage be minimal, let people escape with minimal harm, don't let children and babies and pets suffer, please please please...

I have a deep affection for Japan, where I worked briefly as a nightclub singer and sometimes teacher many years ago. I was at my most miserable there, and also my happiest, and I keep planning to go back for more than a few days in transit, but never do. And now this. I'm not one of those people in love with Japan, but I have a sincere appreciation for the country and a lot of admiration for the transit system, among other things. People are people--I guess I shouldn't be more horrified about this than say war in any nation, or domestic abuse or any of the other godawful atrocities that can happen. But--earthquake. Then tsunami. Then nuclear plant...clouds of radioactive nastiness will no doubt circle the planet, my doggies and I will be among the millions that breathe in the yuck, but more than that--please, minimal impact on the children and the babies and the pets. (Not that I want the adults to suffer either--but let's face it, we've had our shot, and the weakest and voiceless among us need protection most.) . If you don't pray, pray. If you hate Japanese people, pray. (Pray for them as well as yourself, you big lout.)  If you have extra cash, send it AND pray. I'll do the same.

I Get Philosophical

There are always disasters in the world, large scale or personal, and it seems that a big chunk of them are happening concurrently; New Zealand, Japan, the tsunami that struck the West Coast... In truth there are always terrible events, and I'm sure anyone living in a war zone knows that better than just about anyone else. In my social network, several of my friends are battling cancer, my best friend has drug-resistant TB, my Chinese "parents" are ill and dealing with a son who married, moved his wife into their apartment, and now won't speak to them or let them see their own grandchild (who lives in their house.)  A tsunami, a fire, an earthquake: they happen,  and everyone is touched by them to some degree. But cruelty and stupidity and wars large scale or personal--those are preventable. People are the worst disasters.

There is a bully in my family and I had to grow up with this person and suffer through some real outrages as both a child and an adult. While the bully is no longer an active presence in any of our lives, the bully's poison has tainted us all and is still carried with us from event to event. I've been reading about cyber-bullying and rising teen suicides (really rising? or just better record keeping?) and I think, "I can understand this. I've been through it, and I struggle with the effect every damn day." Every time I do something stupid, such as freaking out and avoiding a social occasion, the bully has won. Every time  I do something courageous which takes me out of my comfort zone, such as this week's filming of a children's TV show, I think, "I've defeated the bully." I don't need to become a TV star or radio personality or celebrity to know that I have won, that the bully can't hurt me anymore: I just need to be able to fully forgive and forget and move on. Maybe I will know I have the ultimate victory over this jerk when I no longer wake up in the middle of the night convinced that I'm a worthless, ugly worm who is too damaged to be around "normal " people. Because that's what I took away from contact with this poisonous person, and from the lack of action from people who saw what was happening and decided not to intervene.

I do believe we need to give generously to help the survivors of disasters, whether it's for Katrina (those folks still need help) or to the local women's shelter. I do believe that sometimes you HAVE to stick your nose into other people's business, especially if the welfare of a child is at stake. And I do believe you have to clean up your own crap: if someone has taken a dump on your soul, you can't expect The Universe to wash you clean, you have to do it yourself. Whether that's therapy or counseling or prayer or meditation--that's your choice. But you have to do it, or you deprive the world of light. It is the lack of action on our own behalf that does the most damage.

What Does It Say...

What does it say about my readers that the bulk of you are driven to this site by typing "Get Laid in China" into the Google Search Engine?

Should I put in more recipes, or concentrate on the folly of dating here? I could post the most disturbing email I have ever received, which was entitled "How (Not) to Stage an Orgy" but I was kind of saving it for an Abnormal Psych class I'm taking this fall. Besides, once I start down that slippery slope of writing about other people's dark obsessions I am far less likely to write about mine, which revolve mostly around books, cooking, and singing.

A note: for a long time, Jennifer Lancaster's website, http://www.jennsylvania.com/, was blocked in China, as was Ayun Halliday's site http://www.dirtysugarcookies.com/

I finally got a VPN so I could read both. Jennifer's site was promptly unblocked--I guess the government decided that a nation of females devoted to a surly ex-sorority goddess were hardly like to stage a revolution--so now any old yahoo can read her online (and laugh--I know I do.) However, Ayun, either your site has been cleverly confounded so that your last recipe for Monkfish McNuggets is the only post we can see here (VPN or not) OR you have stopped writing your blog. Dear Lady, you are busy, but I can't tell you how many times I have scored from your pumpkin pie recipe, which I christened "Naughty Pumpkin Pie" after the movie Waitress, and I sure wish you'd start food writing again. But the spirit moves where it will, so if that's the deal, and you are not food blogging, I'll accept whatever you are writing about. Just wish I could get your books--and Jennifer's--in China. Sigh.

As for you who read the Internet to find out how to get laid in China--when I figure it out, trust me, I'll tell you.

A Funny Postscript, and a Recipe for Weenie Gravy

Got a call this afternoon from a friend who had heard  via the grapevine that That Man decided I was "too fucking smart" for him. She challenged him on this and reports the conversation went like this:

"What do you mean, Xanne is too fucking smart for you? You just mean she's intelligent, right? Or do you mean you'd like her better if she WEREN'T smarter than you?"

That Man: "Uh, I don't know. Sheesh. What's the big deal?

Friend:  "Your comment is offensive to smart women, that's what. Are you saying she'd be ok to date if she had no brains?"

Long pause. Then: "Honestly, I don't know why I said that. Maybe it's because her tits aren't very big for her size."

Ouch. 

In honor of that comment, I present Weenie Gravy. You'd think it would be one tiny weenie in a whole lot of hot water, but it's not. The water is thickened somewhat.

Now, if I had to make this a deluxe version, I'd buy high-quality frankfurters, which is NOT an oxymoron, and I'd brown the hell out of them in some sweet hot butter, and use that as the basis for my roux. But this is a dish for a stupid asshole who hurt my feelings (not to mention being my old friend's fourth stepfather's favorite dish) so I give you the horrible recipe as I learned it.

Boil a couple of hot dogs in about a cup of hot water. When the dogs are cooked, pour off the dogs and the water, and heat the now-empty sauce pan over the flame until it's dry. Add two tablespoons of fat--bacon grease, butter, oleo, what have you, and allow it to melt. Fancy cooks might use a combination of bacon fat and butter, it depends on how much you love the heart health of the person you're inflicting this on--er, cooking this for. When it melts, add two tablespoons of flour, stirring it well into the mix, and allow it to bubble all over. This bubbling cooks the roux (pronounced "roo" to rhyme with, well, "poo") and gives it a cooked taste. Again, if you were all fancy-like, you could cook the hell out of it to a dark brown and make it sort of Cajun, but you're cooking it for some weenie, like the jerk who thinks my tatas are too small to waste any time on, so just cook it a bit. (Yeah, because big tits will bail you out of jail, or cook you dinner, or be there for you.) Then add that cup or so of weenie water, mix, and let it boil 'til thick and---- I almost wrote "yummy." This thing could boil 'til hell freezes over and it would never be yummy. I suppose if I made it with good quality franks, butter/bacon fat, a thick and dense stock made from high-quality meats and a hit of cream, not to mention assorted fine seasonings, it might be palatable.

But as it is now--a thinnish greyish sauce with hunks of pink weenie--it is suitable for jerks to eat. Eat this, Jerk, and know that my precious self is filet mignon while you are pig lips and sphincters held together in a gelatinous mass. (If only you weren't such a damn fine kisser.)

Will take a picture, later, when I stop kicking the furniture...

That Sudden Feeling

So, maybe it happens like this: there's this guy you've known for a long time and you've worked together a bit off and on for a while, but you can remember meeting him and thinking at the time, "Meh, not for me." Then one day there's something that happens: you find yourself blushing,  and swimming in the pools of his eyes. You have a "coffee" after work that turns into a dinner. You have a real official date: he gives you a respectful good night kiss (no tongue) that curls your toes. You drift off to sleep thinking, WOW! Why didn't I see this before?

A few days pass: you know he's kind of into that macho thing and hell, since he's your age and never been married you don't expect this to go too fast, right? Right. At least that's what you tell yourself when the phone rings--which you jump up to answer and almost throw out the window in a fit of anger when the person ringing Isn't Him. You bump into him at work: he sort of waves at you and ducks away quickly. You think, oh, shit, not this again. You think of that kiss: my god, he held your face and brushed his thumb gently across your mouth, then kissed your eyelids, before planting one on you, one of the best kisses you've ever had--and you think, what the HELL? A mutual friend takes you out to lunch, ostensibly to discuss the lining of her new coat. It's a ruse. She tells you that she'd had cocktails with him the night before and he confessed after his third Dirty Mother that as much as he likes you, you are--and I quote --"too fucking smart for him."

What do you do? Do you run towards him shrieking, "I am SO NOT too smart for you," which you then prove by making really, really bad choices, largely in the monkey lovin' department, just to show you're a fool and therefore worthy of his attention? Or do you suck it up and put this down to experience and move on, a little sadder, a little wiser, and still thinking of that kiss, wondering if, in the fullness of time, it is your last, ever.

Cancelled Dates

Let's say you're me, and a friend sends you a text saying, Hey, let's meet up Saturday evening and hang out. You're going to be working not far from your friend's place and you finish around six. Your friend knows the place where you work--hell, he went to school there--and he agrees. You text that you're not quite sure when you finish that day but you'll find out Saturday afternoon and let him know.

You get to work, find out you're done around 5:30, and send another text saying Hey, done at 5:30, meet you at the south gate at 5:45. Then--less than an hour before you are supposed to meet, your friend texts you. He can't make it. Busy. Has to watch his kids.  Do you a) send back a message saying Gosh, so glad you're spending time with your family, how I miss having a wee one around or b) send back a message saying "YOU FUCKING INCONSIDERATE BASTARD, YOU COULDN'T HAVE TOLD ME THIS EARLIER? I TURNED DOWN AN INVITATION TO COCKTAILS WITH A SINGLE STRAIGHT GUY FOR YOU!"

Guess which one I sent? Yes, I'm stupid that way. I may have sobbed a bit in the cab on the way home, but at least when I got there, I didn't hit either the cupcakes or the liquor cabinet, so score one to me.

Heating, Chinese Style

If you're in the typical Chinese apartment, you do not have control over the heating system. The heat is officially turned on one day in November, and snapped off on another day in March. They're usually the 15th of each month, but can vary a bit, I understand, from region to region. If you're lucky, you live in a building which "tests the system" as early as October 31st, which means your radiator pipes might leak forth a tiny amount of heat before mid-November. The dates are firm, and you will not get heat at any other time, even if there's a blizzard dropping two meters of snow right outside your window.

One thing to note: there's no thermostat. You don't control the heat: it controls you. You either have it or you don't. Your apartment might be very cold, while the person in the apartment next to you is so hot that s/he has to keep all the windows open at night. Appeals to the maintenance workers are useless. The concept of  "controlling the heat" is not really a part of the design in most buildings, although privately held apartments or very expensive housing MIGHT allow climate control.

Also, there is no heat in state-owned apartments and buildings south of the Yangtze. The most horrible weekends of my life have been spent in Wuhan in February, guest-lecturing at a university. On both occasions, it snowed like hell, and I stood on a cement platform in a cement building with my down coat, fur-lined boots, gloves, hat, muffler, merino long johns and other gear shaking with the cold in front of blue-faced students who couldn't even take notes as the ink had frozen in their pens.

Another thing to note: many air conditioners have a "heat" setting which you can use to ameliorate the conditions. Not all have this feature, but if you can choose an air conditioner with a heating option, do so: you will not be sorry. I'm not complaining about the heating situation here--it's just the way it is--and I'm grateful that I no longer live in a little place heated by a tiny-stove which burned funny round bricks which were treated with coal dust. Just be warned, that's all. Everybody wears long underwear, even in the chi-chi places, so pack a set if you're coming any time between October and April.

This post is inspired by the fact that it's March, and the maintenance workers decided that last night, around midnight, it was time to start shutting down the heat. The resultant shrieks and moans and rattling of pipes kept me and the two furry morons I live with awake for several hours. I am going to work in an unheated building today (they turned off the heat during Spring Festival on the grounds that the building might be empty for a few weeks--it wasn't) and they just haven't bothered to turn it on. Despite the fact it's shaping up to be a fairly warm day today, I will be in a tiny north-facing room with cement floors, and I have already laid out my arctic business outfit,  merino wool long johns,  fur-lined boots and all. Le chic, that is NOT me, but at least I won't be shivering.  

CD, Blue Movie, DVD

I had to go to a major tourist area today where vendors serenaded me with cries of "Big size for you, Ma'am" and "Cd, Blue Movie, DVD." Charming.  I ducked into the very prominent CD shop where I occasionally buy Cds and DVDs and lo and behold, 90% of the stock was gone, and only very legal locally made products were on display on the shelves. Kicking myself for not having picked up the complete "Buffy" series on my last trip, I asked a person working there if they still had movies. "Oh yes," she said wearily, "but not where the cops can see. Follow me." I followed her through a rabbit warren of mazes to find myself in front of an unmarked door. She opened it, pushed me through, and said something to the very startled-looking person behind the cash register which was the equivalent of "Hey man, she's cool." I guess I passed the "cool" test as I was allowed to browse. I picked up a half-seasons' worth of  a TV show (the first 12 or so episodes of the new season are available usually right after Spring Festival), paid, and fled. As I left, I noticed a trail of other "cool enough" pilgrims winding their way through the maze, one a white family so clearly from the US they might as well have had the Stars and Stripes plastered across their asses.

Here's my deal: Chinese TV sucks. Even if you speak Chinese well enough to follow the plots and get the jokes, the humor is of the slapstick,  the plot lines and sets of the "La Hora Del Ganas" variety, with stock characters, lots of shrieking and pointing of fingers, pouting, and whining. And that's just the men. The women are shrill harridans who harass their husbands, boyfriends, and children. Most actors make The Three Stooges look like masters of the "less is more" school of acting. Soap operas feature very very thin young unpleasant people who pout because they are given a Mercedes instead of a BMW. The few "poor" people on the soaps are unfailingly perfect but one-dimensional. You can pick up the plot at just about any juncture and you won't be wrong. On my favorite, which I call "Young PLA Officers in Love" you can guess the characters just by the hair style: here's the Bitch, the Vixen, the Virgin, the Smart One, and the (implied) Whore. (And again, that's just the men.) Other characters include The Fat Fool (which, granted, sometimes I get to play) and the Ambitious Throat-Cutting Bastard, who is usually the lead.  Given the lack of plots, of characterization, of really terrible sets, costumes, and production value overall, why would I WANT to watch it? There's more depth in an episode of Ozzie and Harriet, more subtle art in a Restoration Comedy. I don't even have my TV hooked up right now because there's nothing I can bear for more than five minutes, including the so-called "English programs" which have become largely Chinese-language over the last few years. (Outlook English, anyone?)

So yeah, I do buy DVDs and no, I am not that careful to check to see that they have the proper stamp that shows that they are official copies. I don't even know what that looks like. But bear this in mind: I do not use my computer to file share, I pay for all the music I listen to, courtesy of I-tunes, and the few television shows I really follow avidly ---Mad Men, and Glee-- I also pay for, again courtesy of I-tunes. It takes about 24 hours to download an hour-long episode, but I figure I'm worth it. Since I don't buy the products that sponsor the shows, I figure the least I can do is pay my three bucks to watch the program. Do I download and burn discs? No. Enough's enough. I wish I could watch TV for free through Hulu or some of those other sites, but they're blocked in China, and going through a VPN isn't foolproof. I'm happy to pay for my shows, and to support the industry in a clean and legitimate way. If I could access more, I'd pay for more: but as it is, once in a while, a local shop just happens to have what I want, and I give in.

Pooped

I'm tired, tired, tired, but I have one of those congested snotty noses in a month where it's non-stop go for several weeks. I may not have enough time to do anything fantastic for Saint Patrick's Day, for example. I won't have enough time to make pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. Screw Lent, I've already given up conversation, an automobile, and the chance of happiness in the form of regular monkey lovin', so asking me to give up sugar is just plain martyrdom and a one-way ticket to hell for all concerned. This weekend I have MJN2 (Mysterious Job Number 2) a dinner with The Rose, a trip to a publishing company to give advice about an upcoming teacher training video, a trip to the salon to take off the Amazing Forever Nail Color which is weilded onto my fingertips via a light box (and which while glossy and wonderful has shown the world exactly how fast my nails grow) and oh yes, papers to grade, and to sort, lessons to plan, dogs to walk, clothes to wash, food to buy, and with luck an hour or two of snoozing in a taxi when I have to get up at four to get to Job 2 by seven-thirty on Sunday morning. Next week I have THREE jobs--Teaching Gig (full time) Number One, MJN2, and a voice recording. It's Thursday, and I'm tired. I may well be tired for another eighteen days, which is the first time I will get a day off since February.

It would help if I didn't have as much noise and distraction at night as I do, but I can't shut my bedroom door or else the two moron doggies I live with will butt it with their heads until I am sufficiently pissed off to give up and open the door so they can bound in. One will slip under the bed to snore the night away (when he's not tap-dancing across the bare spots on the floor with his razor-sharp toenails) and the other will think nothing of treading over me on her way to the side of the bed. If I had known what no sleep can do to a girl's complexion I probably would have said "No" to the animals but hey, who knew.

One unexpected stroke of luck: I got a taxi right outside my school, and didn't hit any traffic on the way to town today. I had expected the usual 2 hour commute but I arrived in precisely 19 minutes. I didn't get my nap in, but I can't complain: I saved a fortune on the ride!

Teaching Conditions for Some, But Not All

My students have told me the following: there are no distinct cultures within America, it's all the same. "Just plain Murica" as one put it. So it doesn't matter if you apply to Harvard or Stanford, both places are exactly the same. They're horrified that I make them learn the names of the states, the capitols, and to find each state's location on a map. (It's on the final exam.) They are equally appalled, however, by the number of foreign people who come to China who don't know where Xi'an is, or who can't name the different dynasties. Foreigners, they tell me with a sniff, are STUPID. But since the US is the same all over, there's no need for them to know anything such as the name of the university they're applying to in English, or where it might be located.

The Chinese staff share the same attitude. I sat in anger and horror at a staff meeting this afternoon in which a senior staff member explained in detailed how, after her two-week school-sponsored trip to the US, she revised her opinion that ALL Americans are lazy. This is based on seeing an American principal at work who actually knew the names of the students in his school (student population 440.) The foreign staff sat and seethed while she went on, and on, and ON, telling us in breathless detail, that in America, some of the teachers went to college before they started teaching! (The Ph.d's and Master's among us didn't dare look at each other.) Not only that, but she saw that some teachers in the US even STOOD UP when they taught and did activities, not just "read the book out" to students. She concluded with, "Yes, I think maybe in America are some teacher who are hard working at job." Hmm, just in America? How about here in China?

Let's divvy up the work duties, shall we? Yes, our speaker has to be at her desk from 8 to 5, but she gets a 2 and 1/2 hour lunch break with access to a napping lounge.  Seriously. Her cell phone is firmly shut off during this time. She has an administrative job, but of the 9 hours she's "at her desk" two and a half are spent in slumber. This was a promotion from a teaching job she held last year where she taught exactly six 40-minute classes per week. Yes, six 40-minute classes per week. This was the same lesson, taught to six different groups of kids, using a complete curriculum which included lesson plans.

My schedule? Lazy little me--who busted her ass to pay for graduate school while working full time as a single parent, TWICE--lazy little me has 24 different lesson periods a week with seven different groups of kids. Each lesson, and each group, uses a different curriculum. Four of the groups of kids don't have textbooks at all, due to a snafu at the school. It's March, and I don't think the textbooks will come in this year. This means I not only WRITE the lesson, but design all the materials to accompany it. This comes out of my "free time." In addition to writing lessons, I have to troll through the mish-mash of textbooks appointed to my students, most of which are horrible and have nothing to do with one another, and try to string together a series of lessons that flow together and which reinforce anything I'm trying to teach them. Oh yes, I have 148 different students, and each one gives me several pieces of work, including an essay, and a vocab test, every week. I also do tutorials (mandatory for me to do--another two hours) plus run a club (which can run 20 hours a week or more if I choose to do something stupid like drama or choir or dance) and I also attend two staff meetings per week. For some reason, foreign teachers don't get the sacred two and a half hour rest break, and are often called upon to have a department staff meeting then, or to meet with parents.

There isn't a janitor for my room, so I not only buy my own cleaning supplies using my own money, but I use them too. I spend an average of half an hour every day cleaning the floors in my room. The posters etc on the walls were paid for by me and me alone. The school principal promised me some "decorations" for the room and what they provided was this: two papercuts in red, the type given away for free at Spring Festival. They're not even laminated. Maps? I supplied them (thank you, National Geographic,which I also paid for.)

My Chinese colleagues get benefits such as subsidized housing, retirement, free health care including dental, and free tuition and health care for their child. I get a salary which is higher than my Chinese colleagues, and I don't put in as many "office" hours, but in truth, I put in far more hours and work a hell of a lot harder. (Most of my colleagues in my office just sit at their computer and watch movies.) I have a small amount of health insurance but if I get really sick I'm screwed. No dental. No retirement. And oh yes, I lose 25 percent or more to local taxes. Maternity benefits? They get nine months off. I get nothing. In fact, I have eight sick days a year and if I miss a single class in one day for any reason---such as the tine I evacuated a classroom which had caught on fire---that counts as a day off the total of eight. (They said, "You didn't ask permissions before ending the class early." My response: Uh, hello? FIRE? was discounted.)

Other things I have paid for: all the refreshments, decorations, and costumes for the Halloween, Christmas, and New Year's parties. The coffee I serve at the free before-school tutorial sessions which I conduct because it's the only time of day some of my students can squeeze into their schedules. All of the toilet paper, kleenex and soap in the girl's bathroom for my floor. My friend Suzie Q reports much of the same conditions at her school, with the added indignity of health insurance that hasn't kicked in because their school principal hasn't signed the damn check to the insurance company yet. As for her floor's cleaning supplies, she goes one step further, and puts toilet paper in the boys' room as well. "Self-defense," she explains. "Otherwise, you can't imagine the smell."  Sadly, I can.

I'd go on, but I have to walk to the store now to get some more Dettol so I can give the desks an extra-good scrubbing before the weekend. Trust me, I won't see a single Chinese colleague there. Lazy American, my ass.