China goes Gaga

By Gavin | March 8, 2010

I don’t think it can be overstated how much Chinese students love Lady Gaga.  This may sound like an exaggeration, but Lady Gaga might just spark a revolution here. ….No, seriously, when I was at that damn Crazy English Camp, small children under the age of 10 were listening to her music.  It’s not hard for them to watch her music videos online, either.  If people are afraid it will warp the minds of America’s youth, just think of what it will do to the Chinese. … I’m all for this, naturally.  This country is very strange when it comes to sex.  Prostitution is out in the open, pushed in people’s faces practically.  Yet, I’ve met so many people who graduate from high school without ever experiencing their first kiss. … Last week, I decided to show a Lady Gaga music video at the end of a few classes.  Don’t worry; not one of her actual videos.  I found a video of her performing an acoustic version of “Paparazzi” live – just her on a piano.  The kids loved it.  And then, in a hilarious twist, I was asked if I thought Lady Gaga was beautiful. 

“Sure,” I said. 

Then the girl replied, “Many people on the internet don’t think so.”   

            “Is it because of her nose?” I said.

            The girl began to giggle, and her friend put a hand over her mouth.

            “Did you read a funny rumor about Lady Gaga’s body?” I said.

            Both girls were laughing now.  “Yes,” they said in unison.

            Imagine being one of the most influential musicians of your time, having fans love you all the way in China, and everyone thinks you’re a hermaphrodite.  That’s gotta be annoying.

            Then today I walked into a class, and four girls were standing around the computer listening to Lady Gaga’s song called, “Christmas Tree.”  The lyrics were running up the page.  I read half a verse and stopped them.

            “This song is not about a Christmas tree,” I said.

            One girl looked at me with a smirk.  “We know.”

            They know. …. They … know.

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I’m the white person here

By Gavin | March 8, 2010

The back alley near our school is called Nine Street.  It’s your typical back alley: garbage, construction, trinkets, small restaurants.  On some days, it really smells, and on others, you can barely maneuver it due to trucks hauling material down the narrow street.  It is so off the beaten path that Beer Monster and I stick out like sore thumbs, even more than usual.  To the surprise of both of us, we saw a white woman and her two small children walking down the street on Thursday of last week.  I had to do it.  I’ve been dying to do this for over a year, especially whenever I saw a white person near the Black River.  I walked over to the one woman, who appeared to be buying fruit from a fruit stand.  I tapped her on the shoulder.

“Excuse me,” I said.  “But, what are you doing here?”

She began to mumble, unsure of how to answer.

“I’m the white person on this street.”

It’s a joke completely ripped from “Not Another Teen Movie,” in that cinematic gem, it was about the token black dude at the upper middle class high school party.

The woman and I both laughed, and then I spoke to her 3 year old daughter.  Her son was one and being pushed in a stroller.  The little girl, named Nikki, actually chewed my ear off – adorable little thing.

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Food

By Gavin | March 8, 2010

Not sure if I’ve written about this: corn on the cob is sold on the street here.  Men with food carts sell them usually near bus stops.  You can also get sweet potatoes or stinky tofu.  Chinese people love tofu, which I never knew before moving here.  But, the corn on the cob continues to blow my mind.  It’s not uncommon to be walking down the street, even early in the morning, and see a man or woman squatting down near a bus stop and rapidly devouring boiled corn on the cob, without salt, pepper or butter. 

I went into my local Vanguard this evening to buy a few things for dinner.  I had a bag of pasta in the kitchen, and I wanted to grab some beef.  The beef and pork are all mixed together.  I picked up a slab of meat that was covered in plastic wrap and turned to an old woman and asked her if it was beef or not.  She said it was beef.  I stared at the meat a moment, thinking about whether or not I actually wanted to mix beef, spaghetti and tomato sauce.  It didn’t look like the freshest of pieces of meat, and none of the others seemed much better.  As I stood there waffling, the butcher came out from the back room with this enormous knife.  This butcher’s knife was as long as my forearm and about 8 inches wide.  The old woman began to speak to him.  She then pulled out a plastic bag from her purse, and in the bag was a dog’s hind leg.  The butcher took the leg and began chopping it into pieces on his wooden block, which is not behind a counter, and which I was standing right next to.  I could smell the meat, and the sound of bone crunching echoed off the walls of my brain.  I hurried away without buying any meat. …

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The Jakarta Jagoff

By Beamer | February 28, 2010

In following the footsteps of Hines Ward and Jim Paek, I am leaving Korea for bigger and better things. Starting 5 March, I will be working in Jakarta, Indonesia.

You can expect some entries about taking the Terrible Towel around South East Asia, and looking for Polamalu lookalikes.

The yinzer gods are smiling on this decision. How do I know this? The name of the woman who is handling my Indonesian work visa is Agnes.

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Li Yang is an evil son of a bitch – conclusion

By Gavin | February 27, 2010

Li Yang ruined my last class with my students.  That bastard picked that time period, when all the foreign teachers had class, to sign autographs.  I really enjoyed my class and most of them were in line for that asshole.  I pulled them out of line with five minutes left so I could have my picture taken with them.  The kids who go to Li Yang’s camp and walk away loving him are brainwashed.  Critics of Li Yang are right to call his camps a cult.  He’s a businessman, not a teacher, not a celebrity – a fucking infomercial superstar.  That’s it.

He’s such a douche bag that he didn’t even say goodbye to the camp in person.  He videotaped it and had his tampon of a sidekick Daniel show it to the camp.

I made sure all of my students, except for the children I looked after during the VIP sessions, knew I did not like Li Yang.  And I told them why.  I argued with one of my TAs, the only guy, about whether Li was a business man or teacher.  I still can’t believe anyone could think he’s a teacher.

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Li Yang is an evil son of a bitch – Tim Lyde edition

By Gavin | February 27, 2010

Following Li Yang’s “I’m mature.  Nothing offends me” comments, we walked back to the hotel for lunch.  We ate lunch and dinner in a private room at the hotel’s restaurant.  They put out the same buffet for each meal.  Good food, but the same stuff for each meal for 12 days. …. At lunch that day, some black dude in his 50s showed up with a Chinese woman and a half black-half Chinese baby girl.  He sat down at the table where I was sitting and introduced himself.

“I’m Tim, and I’m here to observe and evaluate,” he said.

“Are you sure you’re not here to replace one of us?” I said.

At that point, I really thought I was going to be fired.  Actually, I kind of wanted to be fired so I could return to Shenzhen and write.  It didn’t happen, though.  Tim really was there to observe and evaluate.

“I just got done working another camp, and I wanted to have a few days off, but Li kept calling and calling begging me to come here.  The man doesn’t take no for an answer.  Then Clark called me, and I gave in,” Tim said.

I wasn’t buying it.  I immediately assumed he either was replacing me, or he was there as Li Yang’s token black friend.  The latter turned out to be true.

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Crazy Chinese back alley dice game

By Gavin | February 27, 2010

I found a series of sketchy back alleys across the street from my apartment complex.  The area begins behind the row of shows Beer Monster and I call the Welding District, and it stretches to the Wal-Mart near our school.  One of the streets has a plethora of restaurants, one of which looks incredibly out of place, with nice finished wood paneling and tables with bench seats.  It’s a Hunan joint, which means the food is extremely spicy.  Walking home from dinner there on Monday night with two friends, I suggested we turn right and explore a section I hadn’t yet seen.  My friends agreed.  These roads do not smell good at all.  There are little shops where you can buy live ducks, chickens, and birds to eat.  Food carts line the right side of the road and open air markets are on the left.  We walked about 50 yards and came upon a crowd of people standing in a circle under a tent.  They were yelling and screaming, so we walked over to investigate.  There was a table in the middle, and on it was a board with six squares.  In each square was a picture.  There was a crawfish, fish, crab, lion, hookah, and chicken.  A man had a cup cylinder down on the table.  Under the cup were three dice, and on each side of the dye were the pictures that were on the board.  People put money down on the picture, or pictures, they thought would come up.  Then the man shook the dice and lifted the cup.

We had to get in on this.

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Li Yang is an evil son of a bitch, Part III

By Gavin | February 23, 2010

During his lectures, Li also taught English, if you call yelling the same word or sentence over and over again teaching.  He repeated the following sentence one day: “Learning can become a way of life which helps you to achieve your greatest potential.”

He yelled this sentence over and over, breaking it down word by word.  The Chinese national anthem began to play, and the campers repeated each word of the sentence after Li, while holding their books to the heavens.  Then he told them to stand, and they pumped their fists to the anthem, repeating the sentence.

It’s pretty obvious what Li Yang is doing: he’s taking advantage of China’s national pride and making a profit.  What’s pathetic is that there are more Chinese students under the age of 18 than there are people in the U.S., and most Chinese parents will do almost anything to make sure their child speaks English fluently enough to get accepted at a good university.  Thus, Li doesn’t have to tug on the national pride strings, but he does anyway with his picture everywhere and crowds chanting his name in unison.

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Li Yang is an evil son of a bitch, Part II

By Gavin | February 21, 2010

I wanted to make it through the next day without any problems.  I actually wrote down in my journal that this was a goal of mine.  Didn’t happen.  I was assigned to a Junior 2 class.  Junior 2 students in China are the equivalent to eighth graders in America.  Each class had four Chinese teachers, who acted as teacher’s assistants when the foreign teachers had the floor.  When I got to my class, my teacher’s assistants didn’t seem to know what was going on.  According to the schedule, I was supposed to help them teach pronunciation for a half-hour, then I was to have the class for 45 minutes.  I was given the floor immediately, which made me think I had to do the assisting at the end.  However, according to the schedule I had VIP teaching from 5 to 6 p.m.

I did not know what was going on, and I did not want to get in trouble.

I finished teaching and went to the foreign teacher’s office.  Along the way, I saw that my friends were still in their classrooms.  No other foreign teachers were in the office.  Afraid of causing more problems, I went back to my classroom and walked around the room helping each of my 20 new students on a one-on-one basis.

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Li Yang is an evil son of a bitch, Part I

By Gavin | February 21, 2010

Last year, a friend of mine worked at an English Camp during the Spring Festival holiday.  She returned to Shenzhen with 4,500 RMB, close to $660, for 10 day’s work.  She talked about how networking at the camp had gotten her more than enough tutoring opportunities and possibly a job at a university.  She said the camp was easy because the students were intelligent and eager to learn.  She judged a few English competitions, and on the eve of the Lunar New Year, she walked on hot coals with other foreign teachers.  It sounded like she had a great time and made a nice chunk of change doing it.  The negatives she mentioned included the food and lack of internet.

She never mentioned Li Yang, his lectures, or his many airbrushed pictures.

A couple months ago, my nameless female friend gave me the phone number of a man to contact about getting a job at this winter’s camp.  I called him up, made an appointment, and went to see him.  His English name was Clark, and his office featured framed pictures of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela.  He referred to the camp several times as being a Crazy English Camp.  I’d heard of Crazy English before, but I can only recall hearing about this company when discussing textbooks to use with adults I tutored.  Under the impression that Crazy English was just a normal, faceless, for-profit company dedicated to helping Chinese people learn English through its camps, books and MP3 downloads, I signed a contract to teach at this year’s camp.

Clark never mentioned Li Yang, his lectures, or his many, many airbrushed pictures.

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