It’s the end of the first semester and most of the expat staff of the A Level Centre of the college and some partners are gathered around the banquet table at the Myth Café in Gudun Lu, enjoying a celebratory dinner. There is an easy rapport of expats from far flung countries thrown together by chance and circumstance in an alien land, mostly native speakers of English and so-called foreign experts. It’s a celebration of camaraderie and survival, though not everyone has survived and there are a few notable absences.
The Myth caters especially, though not exclusively, for Westerners with European cuisine. This evening I’m having bratwurst, mashed potatoes and sauerkraut. A welcome change from the college cafeteria fare. I like rice but not every day, and fish but not carp, which I’ve decided is an anagram of crap and I still haven’t developed a taste for chicken feet. I usually liked the vegetable dishes at the cafeteria but found some of them awfully chewy. The meat was usually okay but I don’t care for offal: cow’s stomach, pigs intestines and the like. I have quite a good Chinese vocabulary for foods I like but sometimes I didn’t know what I was eating and if I asked, often nobody knew what it was called in English.
I have got over the chronic diarrhoea that started soon after I arrived in China and my stomach is coping with whatever but I avoid the street stalls, especially their deep fried food. In my walks around my neighbourhood in Liu Xia I have seen the gutter oil collected from the sump outside a local restaurant and the garage where it is filtered for recycling. Suzie, our American Economics teacher, doesn’t trust Chinese meat at all and arrived in China with a suitcase with forty pounds of meat from home. She’s having fish and chips at the Myth: codfish and fries.
Flags of many nations hang from the ceiling of the café. There are also a few Chinese patrons at smaller tables off to the side. Three chairs at a corner table are occupied by a man, a woman and a large dog, sitting up at table. The Myth is very inclusive. There are not many takers for the rough local red wine but the beer is flowing freely: the local brew of Tsing Tao pijou and various imported beers. Krombacher is a particular favourite but, oh dear, Gareth is ordering another bottle of Bitchslapper. He’s knocking it back now and his Welsh accent is getting thicker and louder as he reminisces about the valley commandos and laughs hilariously for the simple joy of laughing and being drunk. He jumps up suddenly and shouts above the ambient noise, “Whose jacket is this coat?” astonished at the garment hanging on the back of his chair.
Mark is going outside for another cigarette. Smoking is not banned in restaurants but they’ve all agreed No Smoking at the table. One Saturday afternoon Anna and I called into the Myth for a coffee and found Mark sitting on his own with a stack of papers, a pot of coffee and an ashtray full of butts. He was in marking mode, in an impenetrable cloud of smoke, chain smoking and chain drinking coffee. The Myth coffee is passable, though not as good as Starbuck’s and certainly not as good as Costa’s across town. When I went to Starbuck’s all the seats were taken or reserved with a pile of books for absent friends. It’s winter and Starbuck’s is warm and cosy. Students settle in with their books and laptops or just settle in and sleep in their chair.
It’s snowing outside now and the Myth is also cosy and gemutlich. I’m sitting next to Hugo, our Head of Mathematics, and he’s flirting with the waitress, calling for a menu, but pronouncing it mei nu, Mandarin for pretty girl. Hugo’s Irish and has been living in China for three years. His wife, Jie, is Chinese and Hugo’s quite at home in the culture. The waitress ignores him and he calls out to her again: “I’d like to see the menu, please.”
“The men she pleases is none of your concern,” Jie tells him. This remark causes much hilarity around the table and admiration that if Hugo can play with Chinese, Jie can play with English.
Next to Hugo and Jie is Ian, a Scot, and Dan Dan, his girlfriend. Doors are opening for him into the community. Chinese partners are interpreters, guides, negotiators and mentors, who make life easier for their foreign companions.
Anna and I arrived here from New Zealand six months ago and I went straight into the teaching job I was recruited for. Anna doesn’t have a job and she’s been spending most of her time learning Mandarin with a Chinese teacher and riding the crowded buses around the city. Every bus stop has a name, which is written in Chinese characters and Pin Yin and there is very little English signage anywhere but the bus stops, and not much English anywhere off the campus, unlike Beijing and Shanghai. Hangzhou is a second tier city with only nine million people. Anna’s first language is German but she’s fluent in English and has such a flair for language that she’s become quite fluent in Mandarin and she knows her way around the city. She is my ‘Chinese wife’.
The waitress has just gone straight to Richard, the one Chinese guy at the table, but he’s not responding and Liam is speaking for him. Liam has just started his job as student advisor and liaison with the college administration. He and Richard are a couple, an odd couple, as Liam is an African American who speaks fluent Mandarin and Richard, although ethnically Chinese, was born and bred in the US and can hardly speak a word of Mandarin. The waitress is looking from Richard to Liam and looking at Richard as though he is retarded.
At the end of the table is George, from Nigeria. George has a Ph D in English Literature from Cambridge and speaks perfect English. He would not otherwise have got the job teaching English at the college. George avoids the Xi Hu lakeside promenade, where other African guys like to hang out, because he would get harassed by Chinese women there. African men reputedly have bigger penises and greater sexual prowess than Chinese men and Chinese women often prowl the promenade looking to pick up a black guy. George is a handsome guy and a devout Christian and does not want to be picked up for casual sex.
Now, as I mentioned there are a few notable absentees. Dr. Meyer used to frequent the Myth with his colleagues in the English Department but had stopped socialising altogether weeks ago. The unkempt middle aged eccentric New Yorker was a bit of a misfit from the start. There are other eccentrics on the staff who are quite charming and amusing. But Dr. Meyer is not eccentric in any likeable way. He is a philosopher, an armchair Communist liberal who likes blacks but dislikes Christians and Jews. He blames the Jews for the 9/11 terrorist attack and claims inside knowledge of Jewish conspiracies. He has aligned himself with the Party officials in the college who monitor the expat staff to guard against any teaching of religion or decadent Western influences contrary to the values of Communism. The three Ts are explicitly verboten: Tibet, Taiwan and Tienanmen Square. The classrooms are all monitored electronically but it is also helpful to be able to check on suspect extramural activities.
The expat staff take it in turns to give lectures to the senior student body on topics of their own choice from areas of their personal interest and expertise. Dr. Meyer gave talks on Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche. I spoke on New Zealand history and British imperialism. George spoke on world religions and Dr. Meyer considered that he spent too much time talking about Jesus and winced at the mention of the resurrection. There were several questions from the floor at the end of his presentation until Leo called time for the session. A few students approached George individually afterwards with more questions.
Dr. Meyer liked George at first but then felt conflicted about him and finally resolved that the best thing would be to report him to the directors of the college and the police and have him kicked out of China for his blatantly subversive proselytising activities, which are specifically prohibited in our contracts. He had gathered sufficient evidence from George’s presentation and conversations George had with other staff and students. The Chinese bosses would surely have him dismissed.
George was given a copy of the report and required to respond. With regard to the presentation on religion he assured the inquisitors that it was all objectively academic and in the context of Western culture and Western festivals, which were part of the syllabus. He added that Dr. Meyer had misquoted and misrepresented much of what he said and he would be happy to submit a transcript of the presentation. He did talk about his personal faith, he admitted, but only in response to questions from students who approached him individually, and this did not constitute proselytising or evangelising.
In his report, George went on to say that he regretted that he felt unable to continue working with Dr. Meyer because of his prejudices and his habit of eavesdropping on his private conversations to try to incriminate him. He had also observed that Dr. Meyer’s students felt embarrassed by his frequent swearing and coarse language and tired of his ranting against religion. The clincher though was that the AQM (Academic Quality Manager) who had observed everyone’s teaching had given Dr. Meyer a failing grade because he couldn’t understand what he was on about and was sure that most of the students couldn’t either. Moreover all of Meyer’s attention was directed at a few pet students and the rest were virtually ignored.
George showed me a copy of Dr. Meyer’s report, which contained a number of quotes and misquotes from conversations we’d had about the literature syllabus, our input into the choice of texts, and comments I’d made about George Orwell’s anti Communist themes in Animal Farm and William Golding’s Christian world view in Lord of the Flies. He also showed me a copy of the report he’d written for the Board and asked if I would support him in this stoush with Dr. Meyer. I said I would.
A board meeting was called to resolve the situation but I was not called to give evidence. The Board decided that they had more confidence in George and took into account that he had also been at the school longer. So Dr. Meyer found himself transferred out to a more provincial A Level Centre where he would serve a period of probation. The other staff had little interest in the religion issue but were glad to see the back of the nutty professor.
Leo was also conspicuous by his absence, as they say, and he was missed by all the other staff, but it was understood why he had been fired. He was a charismatic, outgoing, touchy feely Brit and it came to light that he was going beyond touchy feely with a few of the female students. Outraged parents became involved and it was a clear cut case of professional misconduct and there was a word in the report that is probably best translated as ‘indecency’. Someone had to fill the role of acting Head of Department and it was decided that George was the best qualified for the position.
Perhaps the most surprising absentee is Al the principal. Not the actual head of the institution. That was the Party hierarchy. But there was always an expat head of academic staff, and there had been a succession. Al is another American, very affable, with great people skills but the powers behind the throne were unhappy with his administration and were keeping close tabs on him. I still don’t know what the issue was but apparently, he would have been in serious trouble if he’d stayed.
The college administration are still puzzled as to how Al slipped away to Japan or even made it to the airport without their knowledge. Al had his own driver on staff and any other travel was necessarily handled by the office staff because he had virtually no Mandarin and even local travel arrangements were handled by the Chinese office staff.
Anna had been helping some of the other expats with negotiating travel and dealing with Chinese officials and she had helped Al make arrangements for what he said was an urgent visit to his wife in Japan just for the weekend, which would have taken too long to arrange with the bureaucratic red tape we were all familiar with. We still don’t know the real reason for his sudden departure and Anna thought it best not to let on that she had unwittingly aided and abetted his escape. It might reflect badly on me. I’ve settled comfortably into my job at the college and plan to stay for a while yet. But right now there’s an apple strudel that needs my attention.