Grumpy Update: Beware Guangzhou

It seems that along with Rudolph, Vixen, um, Nixon and the rest, Santa has a new travel partner. I've just heard the news that Grumpy finally came by the school on Boxing Day to pick up his passport, which the school had been holding behind the counter while waiting for his return. Apparently, this was very much a in-the-nick-of-time situation, since his visa expired the next day.

Apparently, he disappeared quickly, with nothing more than a few comments about how keeping the passport behind the front desk could have "compromised" something. (Granted, given the general disarray behind the front desk, I'd rather not have my own passport stored there, but then I wouldn't disappear for a couple of months either.) So Grumpy is really gone now, and headed on to a new post in Guangzhou. If you're an employer in Guangzhou, a few things to look for if you think you may have Grumpy on your staff: chain-smoking, remarkably vague sentences that invariably end with "you know what I mean" (even though you don't), and an unusually large number of ninjas (presumably employed by a Nigerian Santa Claus) hanging around outside your fron entrance. See below for the original Grumpy trilogy (including "Pen Phenomenology"--my second most viewed page from blogcharm, after the post about toilets).

"How Do You Spell Qianjing?"
Originally posted: 08:19, 2007-10-10

As I sat tongiht, eating a plate of fried tomato and egg with rice* and listening to a peculiar blend of music**, I felt a deep sense of relief. Grumpy has been let go.It turns out his condition had not improved early this week, whatever it is that's going on with him.

Monday he apparently called in to say he couldn't come to class (twenty minutes before the class was set to meet), stating only that there was an "emergency" and asking to take use of the emergency provision in his contract. (Of course, as Whitetooth mentioned to me, the emergency provision is meant for more tanglible things--natural disasters, war, maybe spontaneous combustion--than Grumpy's emergency.) He tried to arrange a certain time to call Whitetooth on the days of classes (the later, the better) so that he could provide Whitetooth with the most up-to-date information on the situation and say whether he could make it to class. Whitetooth naturally said that this wouldn't be possible, and when Grumpy asked what they could do then, said to call him back in twenty minutes. (Though Grumpy had a cellphone last weekend, apparently he no longer does; you wonder what happened to it.)

While waiting for the return call, Whitetooth spoke to the Chinese manager, explaining that this particular teacher wasn't goofy-crazy, but crazy-crazy, that he was freaking out other teachers and creating problems with the students, and asked whether he could fire him. He got permission to offer Grumpy a deal: Grumpy would be taken off full-time employ, given an unpaid vacation, and if he felt up to it later, could return as a part-time employee (at which time, classes would be curiously unavailable). Grumpy accepted this deal, stating that he needed a vacation (here, quite a bit of talking was apparently necessary to make it clear that this was an unpaid vacation).

Whitetooth double-checked whether the communication was actually clear on both sides: "So you understand you don't work here anymore?" Apparently the message was clear.Granted, it still remains to be seen whether an even weirder Grumpy will show up to work on Saturday, either to teach classes he imagines he has or to battle adversaries equally imaginary, but for now I'm assuming the best (grudgingly, since doing so often proves the wrong choice in China).

As Nersey points out, should the communication turn out not to be clear on all sides, at least waiguoren can't buy guns in China. So if Grumpy goes postal, at least it should be with a weapon everyone can potentially outrun.

*I was going to have a plate of chicken and cashew, but changed my mind once the chef brought a large chicken cage to my table in order to let me pick my favorite. Granted, I like fresh food, but I'd rather not meet it first.

**Included on tonight's play list were English versions of "Silent Night," "Eidelweiss," and a Chinese version of an English song I had a hard time putting my finger on. Then I made out part of a line--"Nin shi qu ____ ji shi ma?" ("Are you going ____ fair market?")--followed by a distinctive (even in translation) falsetto. Simon and Garfunkel would be proud.

"...And Curioser"
Originally posted: 08:05, 2007-10-08

Grumpy has taken a turn for the frightening over vacation. It is as though the bad run-in with the female student weeks past had pulled at a loose thread in some poorly made crewel. The little quirks and general unpleasantness which I had earlier passed off as a bad case of nanguo waiguoren (angry foreigner) now seem to be an indication of greater problems.

The weekend before our break, Grumpy had begun to pull another teacher away for secretive talks, saying, "I need to talk to you for a minute." A drawnout conversation would follow, usually ending with the other teacher's confessing he had no idea what had been discussed. Grumpy tends to speak thus: "I promised myself [long pause] said I was done philosophizing [long pause] Let's not talk about this just now [long pause] Okay. Okay, let'sjust say, maybe someone said something [long pause] Well, okay, so I'm not sure just how I'm going to feel tomorrow [long pause] This is just between us, okay?" The problem of course is that there is no between us; whatever the subject of discussion is, it is firmly locked away in the space between Grumpy's two ears. No communication, just sound and fury.

By the Sunday before break, his behavior had become erratic, and he held a secret conversation with me that day. I won't bother recreating all the annoying pauses and disconnected phrases. Suffice it to say that there was much talk of his adversaries, how "one adversary goes out and more take his place," how well-funded said adversaries must be, how badly they wanted to "get [his] skin," how he didn't know who was on his side anymore, and how to tell whether the "psychological damages of running away" might or might not outweigh the risk of "hospitalization, or worse. The whole conversation was creepy, and I was glad to get out of it by pleading a dinner date (which I actually did have--at Wave pizza in Bao'an).

That night, I mentioned to Nersey and Jia that I might be working with a paranoid schizophrenic.Saturday, after vacation, Grumpy was sullen and largely silent, saying only that something was bothering him; he wasn't sure just what. The next day, the rambling became even more unnerving. In the morning he said he'd slept in an "Internet store" because he couldn't go home. At lunch he very intesely detailed how Chinese guanxi was working against him, how someone (who knew who) would have prejudice built up against him and think he was some sort of monster before even meeting him. How, he wanted to know, did you work against this sort of prejudice, and how long did this guanxi stuff have to go on? Didn't it ever let go?In the afternoon, he began pulling teachers aside as they walked past his (in-session) class. For me, he only said, "This has been going on too long, three months. I need you to help me. You know to say something to someone. You know who."

I had no idea who he meant. Another teacher and I got to talk about this behavior, and it turned out that similar encounters had happened for other teachers. The other teacher expressed concerns that having Grumpy around children might pose a hazard to safety. We decided to discuss the matter with Whitetooth during break between classes.While I was waiting for Whitetooth's class to finish, I got cornered by Grumpy again. It was very important to him that I sit very still in a specific place; the two of us sat unspeaking, he mulling over whatever was going on in his head, I just thinking how much I wanted to go home. Whitetooth called me over from this uncomfortable situation to discuss "the visa," and Grumpy tried to casually follow us outside. In order to speak, Whitetooth, the other teacher and I finally had to hide in a back office which is currently under construction. Two of us told Whitetooth what had been happening; he thought a while.

"Yeah," he said, "I just found out about a part of this a month ago." It seems Grumpy had cornered him alone one night in the office and launched a threatening tirade in which he accused Whitetooth of having been "placed" at the school to sabotage him. He then demanded some "straight answers," though he'd asked no questions. The conflict ended with Grumpy's repeatedly asking, "Are you going to let me cool off, or are you going to do something?" Whitetooth admitted that he had run home that night once the coast was clear, not even stopping to unlock his bicycle. No matter how quickly tempers may have calmed or routines returned, I can't imagine working with that sort of open threat in the past (and won't, if it comes to it, I've decided).After the confrontation with the female student, Grumpy had again approached Whitetooth, this time to apologize. It wasn't Whitetooth who had been placed at the school to sabotage Grumpy; it was this woman.

"They've been trying to infiltrate the school, and now they have," he apparently said. "They're trying to infiltrate my neighborhood too, but they haven't succeeded yet."Whitetooth advised us to avoid Grumpy for the time being, which proved easier said than done, since Grumpy started a class late specifically to grab me as I was leaving the school. What followed was a rehash of the previous week's paranoia: unnamed, well-funded adversaries "out to get" Grumpy's "skin." The new element was that this time I was now "the only one" he could "trust, the only one who" was still on his "side." He needed me (in no clear manner) "to help take this to the next level." I said I was going home, and he told me I couldn't; if I left, "they" would get to me, and he'd end up hospitalized or worse.

I finally got out by promising not to talk to anyone in the next week.I left firmly hoping that something would happen to resolve the situation before I had to leave to the school. Since Grumpy had been late meeting a class, I thought perhaps he might mess up enough in the next couple days to get dismissed for neglect of duty. Chinese don't make it a habit of dismissing foreigners for "just plain crazy," which normally works to the waiguoren's advantage, since so many of the things we do--eating sandwiches without wearing plastic gloves, drinking coffee, preferring to have dogs as pets rather than entrees--might be the height of insanity to the average Chinese. Here, this hesitancy isn't working in the favor of anyone at work.

That's where the situation stood Sunday night.Monday morning Whitetooth called me to discuss some class changes (all to the good for me) and the visa interview with the PSB (currently scheduled for Friday). Once official business was out of the way, he asked me whether anything more had happened with Grumpy Sunday night. I told him about the conversation, and then he told me what had happened after I left. It seems Grumpy had moved his class to a new room in order to be across the hall from Whitetooth's class. During class time, he had continually left his own students in order to interrupt Whitetooth, each time with incomprehensible gibberish. During one of these absences, Grumpy's students apparently wrote, "Can you please teach us?" on the board.

As Grumpy later told Whitetooth, "This [could] only mean one thing; someone [had] gotten to the students." Grumpy confiscated the students' cell phones for the duration of the class to protect himself. After classes, Grumpy cornered Whitetooth for a similar conversation to the one he'd had with me. The only difference was that he made it clear what he thought was happening. Another teacher (henceforth "Ronald") is, Grumpy is sure, coordinating a Chinese group to kill him. The teacher in question is like a cross between Mahatma Ghandi and Bob Marley.

Whitetooth said we might have to wait the situation out until the administration decides to do something. Hopefully, a student complaint or two may get the ball rolling. In the meantime, he agrees that there's a serious problem. In his words, "If you need to be crazy on your own time, that's fine by me. But if he thinks this crap has infiltrated the school, that's dangerous."So for now, it seems we're supposed to be in a holding pattern. But if it comes down to it (i.e., if Grumpy and the lunacy are both present next weekend), I've decided I will put my foot down. If it comes to it, it seems an easy choice: Do you want to retain a qualified teacher who fulfills his responsibilities or a nut-job whose students have to ask him to teach them? Hopefully it will be an easy choice. Hopefully.

"Pen Phenomenology"
Originally posted: 08:12, 2007-09-24

My normal Monday class was cancelled today, so I went to the training center instead to hang around and try to be useful with placing students or a few other tasks. I didn't really have anything to do; it's rainy today, so people aren't exactly rushing out to start studying English. Most of my time was spent talking to one of the Chinese staff (we'll call him Happy) and some of the adult students who tend to hang around in the lobby hoping to encounter a bored waiguoren. To help fill the time, I asked about a few character combinations I'd jotted down at kalaOK and listened to an overly long "story" Happy wanted to tell me.

The gist of the story (in English and Chinese) was that, if you hold a bi (pen) up to a person and ask what it is, the person will say, "Bi." You check and, sure enough, the pen writes; it must be a pen. If you hold the same bi up to a dog, though, what will the dog think? "Gunzi." "Stick."

Happy explained that the "story" shows that meaning doesn't come from the bi itself, but from the person looking at it. The Chinese, it turns out, call this "emptiness"; the object is empty, and it's the viewer's mind that is full, that provides meaning. I mentioned the word "phenomenology," and all the Chinese nearby ran to the computer to look up this big, difficult sounding word. Chinese people studying English gravitate to words like this. Happy didn't understand the definition clearly, so I just mentioned a few examples from Walker Percy's "The Loss of the Creature" and talked just a bit about hermeutics and intentionality (without using the big, exciting words). He seemed to follow this a bit, and we took a little break from talking while he tried to remember all of another "story" he wanted to tell me.

I stepped outside for a cigarette, and while I was returning, a big fight broke out in the lobby. One of the teachers (we'll call him Grumpy) had had a run-in with one of our adult VIP students, and they were arguing back and forth before the front desk. The argument went on and on, and phrases like "playing games" and "not stupid" came up again and again. From the beginning, I realized that this was one of those arguments that go nowhere in China and that I didn't want anything to do with it. I went back outside and waited. Over the next twenty minutes, the argument continued, with the student complaining to one Chinese staff member after another and the teacher going back to his class, coming back to the lobby to shout some additional complaint, going back to class, returning, etc. The whole thing looked just like one of the Chinese melodramas I sometimes see on television.

When things cooled down a bit, I walked inside and sat down in the lobby. Happy called me over to talk to the student. She's the sort of person you immediately feel bad for, a frumpy xiaojie by Chinese standards (short, near-sighted, freckled skin, only achieving the illusion of an A-cup bosom with elaborate padding), and her English is decidedly weak, which probably explains why she's paying all the money for a VIP pass at the training center. "Do you let your students ask questions?" she asked me. I nodded. "Not this. Just, 'Repeat, repeat. Present perfect. No. No, you. I'm teacher. You the student. Stand. Get out.' I want my English better. Why will I come back?" It slowly became clear that the class style and the student's expectations were mismatched, and I thought the easiest solution was obvious: if this class wasn't going to work for her, then she could easily just take a different class.

Before I could point this out, Grumpy came back into the lobby and pulled one of the Chinese staff into a back room, where I could hear him hollering. The phrase "ugly American" popped into my head, and I tried to ignore him by explaining a "story" Happy had shown the woman: an Albert Schweitzer quote--"We should all be thankful to those people who rekindle the human spirit." Grumpy came back out, grumbled, "I never have problems with a student, but she just wants to play games," and went back to his class. (Grumpy uses the phrase "playing games" the way other people use "trying to get one over on me"; this woman wasn't calling out, "Play a game. Play a game," the way kids do in my one class.) The woman started talking in Chinese, laughing loudly (the fake sort of Chinese laugh that always has a darker side behind it), and finally she burst into tears.

One of the Chinese staff took her to the ladies' room, and Happy and I sat there in the lobby, in the awkward quiet that such moments normally create. Finally we ended up talking about how the "story" Happy had chosen wasn't really doing much to help the woman. I managed to explain what "rekindle" meant using my cigarette lighter, and Happy drew the conclusion that Grumpy hadn't rekindled anything; he'd more doused the woman's spirit than ignited it. Once we'd gotten this established between us, Grumpy came out once again, demanding to know where the women were. Happy told him, and Grumpy started knocking on the bathroom door, demanding to talk to the Chinese staff member. I thought, "Here's a nice little demonstration of personal experience at work. The teacher is convinced he's right; the student is convinced she's right. It doesn't matter whether he's a good or bad teacher or joyful or miserable, and it doesn't matter whether she's pathetic or admirable or a good or a bad student; right now, they're both right in the little picture of the universe they're creating for themselves, and it's an ugly thing when two such universes collide."

The drama stretched out for another hour or so; everything runs in cycles here. At one point, Happy held up the pen and said, "Pen," with a big smile on his face. I figured he had come to a similar connection between what was going on and the "story" about the pen. I said, "Yeah, this is a bad pen going on here." He stared at me blankly for a while and said, "No, the pen works fine." He demonstrated this fact by writing "pen" on a scrap of paper. I just said, "Oh, sorry. Yeah, it works fine." For him, the "story" was just a "story," and the awkward silence just seemed like a good time to mention the pen story again, since everybody had been happier back when the story was told. That's what I think at least.