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

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.

In the long run, this was a beautiful move because my students fell in love with me.  But, I had skipped the VIP class.  The VIP students were special because their parents were dumb enough to shell out 18,000 RMB (approximately $2,630) so their children could have the following: one hour a day to spend time with a foreigner, two dinners with their foreign friends, special Li Yang VIP lectures, and front row seats to Li’s normal lectures. … Many of the students in the front row used the catwalk to sleep on.

Clark pulled me aside at dinner and said I was in trouble again.  It was the first day of the camp and my second full day there.  Walking to the auditorium after dinner, Clark said Daniel wanted to fire me.

“You have a 50-50 shot,” he said.  “It’s gotten around that you have been saying negative comments about the camp.”

“That’s just not true,” I said.  “I’ve been saying negative comments about Daniel and Li Yang.  Not the camp.”

Luckily, a middle-aged American woman made the same mistake as me and skipped VIP class.  I imagine I would have been fired if she hadn’t made the same mistake.  As it was, I was docked 500 RMB. 

We were walking to the auditorium to welcome Li Yang to the camp.  The lights went out, and on the stage a video began to play on a movie screen.  It showed Li in a courtyard with his arms above his head, his fists clenched.  He was surrounded by students clapping and chanting his name as they approached.  Soon, the mob was all around him.

“Li Yang!  Li Yang!  Li Yang!”

A spotlight swirled all over the stage before landing in front of it to the right.  Li Yang was making his entrance.  He walked through a crowd of Chinese teachers, who were all wearing the same yellow and white coat.  The teachers gave Li high-fives as he approached the stage.  It was like a boxer making his way to the ring.  Li wore a Barack Obama “Hope” shirt, dark blue jeans, and white Nikes.

Li took the microphone and the lights came back on.  He invited the foreign teachers to join him on the stage.  With the movie screen at the end of the catwalk, there wasn’t much room.  Several of us, including yours truly, sat in chairs in front of the stage.  Sitting there was a bad move because Li screams into his microphone, and the speakers are behind you at ear level on the stage.

            Li owned the campers, which ranged from 5 year old children whose parents want them to get a good start on English to adults trying to upgrade careers.  He made several jokes about Japanese students.  He even went as far as to call them lazy at one point.

            Have Americans ever called Japanese people lazy?

            One of the foreign teachers was a white-haired American woman in her 70s.  She taught adults at the camp, and she had been teaching in China off and on for 10 years.  She was sitting in front of the stage near me when Li asked her to step onto the catwalk and talk to him.  He asked how long she’d been in China.  When she told him 10 years, he asked her a question in Chinese.  After she answered it, her tones way off, of course, Li turned to the crowd and said it was pathetic that her Chinese was not better.

            Fair or foul?  I say foul.  The older you are, the harder it is to learn a language, and a man who claims to be a teacher should know better.

            Li escorted the woman away from the podium.  He turned to one of the young American teachers sitting in a chair at the end of the catwalk and said, “How about you climb down and sit in her seat and let her take your chair.”

            Obviously, this was the right move.  No one wants to make an elderly woman climb off a catwalk.  But, then Li had to jab and say, “We here in China respect our elders.”

            This after calling the woman pathetic in a different language to a crowd of students?

            Also seated at the end of the catwalk was an African American teacher.  Near the end of his lecture, Li turned to the foreign teachers and said, “Can someone come up here and imitate Obama?”  He pretended to scan the crowd of foreign teachers, and then pointed at the only African American.

            “How about you?” Li said.

            For those who don’t think this is racist, allow me to tell you about Li’s next lecture.  He wore the exact same outfit because all of his speeches are recorded, and he had to wear the same clothes for a video he was making.  The fact that he went out of his way to wear an Obama shirt for some video he would sell and profit from made me sick.

            At the beginning of his lecture, he asked to see several of the foreign teacher’s smiles.  “Oh your mother raised you right,” Li told a Georgian man.  “You have a nice smile.”  He inspected another smile, and then remarked, “In America, dental hygiene is important.”  Then he turned to the crowd and spoke in Chinese.  He pointed at the African American and said, “Look at him.  His skin is so dark.  I bet he has very white teeth.”

            Li turned to the American teacher and said, “Can you smile for us?”

            The American was fluent in Chinese, though, and understood everything Li had said.  Tight-lipped, he shook his head.  Sitting next to the African American was Kim Li, the American wife of Li Yang.  She wrote a note to the teacher saying, “I’m sorry.  He shouldn’t have said that.  I’ll talk to him.”