This entry is nearly a month late, but the plain fact is I've been so pissed-off every time my mind goes back to the incident that I've come close to hammerfisting my laptop every time I've sat down to type the entry until now. I wrote last month that my situation in China was getting more than a bit ridiculous. Shortly after that, things began to look slightly, slightly brighter when I finally got the agency to actually fulfill their contract and shell out a housing allowance, which (coupled with my leg being finally healed enough that I only need the walking cane after excessively active days) meant I could finally move into an actual apartment and out of the absolutely insulting accommodation the agency provided before. The agency still -quite illegally- holds my US debit card as collateral for the debt (which I could pay in a day if the card worked in China) from my so-called "treatment" (forced upon me by the agency) at the 306th PLA Hospital (which did nothing for the injury I went in for and was a house of medieval horrors), but at least with a regular salary I'd be able to pay that back by the end of the summer and finally abandon this third-world pit of a country in favor of a country where I can find a doctor to heal the damage the PLA's doctors did to my damned leg.
All I had to do was deal with a Chinese public school until then. "No problem, right?"
...You know, I really need to learn to stop using those three words in China.
Phase One: Dreamed-up Allegations
I'd been teaching at the newly-assigned middle school (which is attached to a university that thinks highly of itself, though I have never heard of it and I haven't met anyone else outside of China who has either) in Haidian District (which matches Obi-Wan Kenobi's description of Mos Eisley, but nobody tells the inhabitants that because they're some of the richest and most egotistical in Beijing) for a month and a half when I got a WeChat message from the head of the agency asking if she could meet me at the school an hour before my classes the following day. Think of this as the Chinese TEFL industry's counterpart to an angry wife's "we need to talk."
I got to my office to find the agency head (the same one I mentioned in a previous entry who brought me the "take it or leave it" contract while I was stuck in a hospital) already at my desk, sitting in my chair (of all the pompous ways to begin the meeting), chatting with a loud-mouthed co-worker of mine in Mandarin. After nearly 20 minutes of me standing there, clearing my throat and tapping my foot, the arrogant bitch finally got up and, with a condescending wave of her hand, said "step outside. I'll be with you in a minute."
Have I mentioned that this was my office, and she doesn't even work at the school?
My patience with Chinese arrogance (never in great supply to begin with) ran out quickly, and I stated with what calm I could muster "if you have something to say to me, you can step outside and say it to me. If not, you can step outside without me. But either way, I'm not some dog who comes and goes on command, you're in my chair, and that needs to change. Now."
The teacher she was chatting with actually let out an audible gasp and began fanning her face melodramatically, while the agency head herself pressed her lips so tightly together that I felt certain she would break her own jaw from the pressure. When she finally regained her powers of speech (much to the chagrin of anyone who has to listen to her on any given day) she said in a voice dripping with a level of sweetness that was roughly as convincing as a three and a half dollar bill, "you know, most foreigners don't talk to Chinese this way when they are in China."
My response made plain that my tolerance for verbal games was at an end: "For one thing, I'm not 'most foreigners;' for another, show any foreigner the level of disrespect I've dealt with from you and you'll be lucky if they're as restrained as I've been; for a third, you messaged me yesterday implying you had a point to make, and I've got classes to get ready for, so if you have a point, make it."
To shorten the story, the agency head claimed that she had gotten calls from parents claiming "this foreign teacher spoke negatively of 'The Glorious Motherland' in front of the class." Now then, reality check. It's no secret that I have no respect for China, but I've got enough professional sense to keep politics out of the classroom. Besides, I teach English. Chinese politics or culture isn't exactly the topic. My knee-jerk smartass response was to say "not unless the student found my Facebook profile in class somehow," but it occurred to me that this was probably not the wisest thing to say. So, I simply shrugged and said "Well, bullshit. Next?"
The agency head insisted "we've heard this from multiple parents."
Trying to force myself not to throttle the self-righteous twit, I answered, "right. And how many of these parents were in the classroom when this allegedly happened?"
"They said their children told them."
"Uh huh. So, a group of 12 year olds supposedly claim I supposedly said something. Right. Well, you have cameras in the classroom. Roll them."
The agency head was silent for a minute before checking a WeChat message on her phone, after which she said "according to one student's WeChat post, your exact words were 'idiot, idiot, idiot, China.' "
After waiting a minute to see if there was anything else, I responded with, "you know, before, I was only annoyed. Now, I'm downright insulted. Do you know why? Because you can listen to something that basic and think I'm capable of dumbing my speech down that low. Tell me: in the months I have suffered the misfortune of your acquaintance, have I ever been as verbally ham-fisted as this? Have I ever been as primitive, as absolutely paleolithic in my choice of phrasing as 'idiot, idiot, idiot, China?' You may rest well-assured that if I had gone on an anti-China speech, it would have been a great deal more colorful and eloquent than this nonsense." From the agency head's facial expression, I could tell my words were lost upon her, so I decided to summarize. "You're taking a seventh-grader's word that a native speaker with credentials spanning three continents made a comment that sounds like it came from a seventh-grade ESL student when we both know I'm too fluent to drop my English level that low even if I tried."
"The principal would like to have a word with you," was the agency head's response.
"Well then, follow me to his office."
Phase Two: Attempted Coercion of a Confession
About an hour later, I was sitting in the office of the school principal, surrounded by parents who had brought the accusation to the attention of the principal. Some were glaring, some were crying like extras in a soap opera, and one actually had the balls to get in my face and point his finger at my eyes like he was scolding a child, and it was only the school's security guard who saved him from death and me from jail. I'd listened to the principal droning on, and on, and on (in Mandarin) repeating some drivel about the seriousness of the allegations (essentially, it was a few dozen repetitions and paraphrasings of 'as you know, it is a high crime for a foreigner to show disrespect to the 'Mighty China' '), during which I forced myself not to laugh at how inherently self-righteous this garbage would have been even if it had been true. Finally, the principal folded his hands together and said (in English, strangely enough) "we can put all this behind us, if you will simply write an apology letter and sign it."
"Apologize for what?"
"For what you said?"
"First of all, I have never apologized for words in my life and I'm not about to now, and secondly, I am even less inclined to apologize for something I didn't say."
"[Patriam], you are only making this more complicated."
"You have cameras in the classrooms."
"[Patriam], I-"
"You have cameras. Roll them. Show me when this incident allegedly happened. Settle the issue once and for all."
"...I really do not think that is necessary."
At this point I turned to the agency head and said "translate my words for the parents. Tell them I deny everything, and I want to see on the cameras when this statement was allegedly made."
The agency head looked nervous. "[Patriam], I-"
"Tell them," I said, holding up my auditory translator, "or I will."
With a strangely fearful look, the agency head translated my words to the parents, who suddenly looked confused. Conversations in Mandarin took place, and finally the principal set the display screen in his office to display the footage from the class the previous Friday when the incident was alleged to have occurred. Calmly, we sat and watched an entire 40 minute class, complete with the 10 minute breaks before and after it: 60 minutes of surveillance footage in total, with full audio. The parents laughed at the over-the-top acting that I use to give vocabulary examples, as well as the stick-figure drawings I put on the chalkboards and whiteboard for explanations, and smiled as they saw their kids giggling and working on discussion projects, using actual English instead of the "English-with-Chinese-characteristics" that is taught by the Zhongjiaos.
And of course, when 60 minutes had passed, from my entrance into the classroom until my exit, not a single China-bashing speech had been made (I save those for the internet, you see). So, I looked around at the parents (who, by this time, were all smiling and laughing, and the bastard who shook his finger in my face actually came up to me and apologized) and made small-talk with them as they all made their way out the door. Once they were gone, I turned back to the principal, to find him glowering at me like a half-starved wolf.
"So, I take it we are finished here?" I asked.
"You're fired," was his answer.
"Thanks, but on what grounds?"
"And you will answer for this in court."
"Answer for what?!"
Phase Three: Found Guilty of Proving My Innocence
By this time the principal was on his feet, screaming in Mandarin, with his fat face as red as the Hammer-and-sickle banner pinned to the wall behind him. The agency head's translation was that the principal intended (get this) to sue me for slander, for the damage I did to his reputation by proving that the allegations against me were false. Apparently, under what passes for "law" in this country, as a foreigner working for a citizen, I was under some legal obligation to sign the apology letter for what I never did, in order to save him from losing "face," and now that he had been "humiliated at the hands of a foreigner," the fact that I refused to confess and apologize for false accusations he went along with meant he actually had legal grounds to sue me for slander.
My first thought was "yeah, right," but after seeing so much of the corruption in this country first-hand, and then reflecting on what I'd read from China's own legal professionals about the way law isn't exactly law here (Yan, 70 & 78), I began to worry that the psychotic drivel he was spouting may actually carry the weight of law in a country this backward.
That was the 15th of May. Since then there has been no further word regarding any lawsuit. And in China, where civil and criminal law are interconnected, the police would have been sent to confiscate my passport if the bastard had actually filed a lawsuit, and due to a funny quirk in their laws this would happen whether or not the suit had any valid legal basis and I would not get it back until the suit had been settled to the satisfaction of a judge (who, by the way, is a Party member (Yan, 79)). Nonetheless, I've been out of work except for part-time tutoring since then.
And the agency, of course, is not lifting a finger to arrange another school, despite their contractual obligation to do so since all allegations of misconduct were soundly disproven.
Works Cited
Yan Jirong et al (other authors not listed in this translation). Trans. Huang Fang. China's Governance. Beijing, 2017. Renmin University Press.
ISBN 978-7-300-24625-3