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.
Anyone who knows China’s history knows this is dangerous. The baffling part is that at the center of this is an American woman who is married to and has children with a Chinese man who uses Americans as a punch line while teaching English. Some people could complain that I’m being too politically correct here, but I don’t think I am.
Li’s goal is to teach 300 million Chinese how to speak English. Let’s say he does that over the next decade. A whole generation of Chinese – a group of people who outnumber the citizens of the United States – could be greatly influenced by a man who sees no problem with pointing out how dark a black man is to a crowd filled with children, has no problem telling small children that they have to learn English because Americans aren’t smart enough to learn Chinese.
Americans aren’t “Crazy” about learning Chinese because only people in China speak Chinese. … Plus, a lot of Americans are more concerned with learning Spanish right now anyway. …
But, does Li tell them that? Of course not.
The English Camp was more about Li Yang than learning English. That’s obvious from all his pictures, and the sad part is the children at the camps worship him like he’s a celebrity and not just a businessman making money. This guy got to carry the Olympic torch. People admire him. Think about it: 300 million Chinese speaking English and influenced by this guy.
The greatest outrage of the entire camp occurred during the Lunar New Year’s celebration. The night started out great. I danced around a bonfire with students, clapped while people danced on stage, and had my picture taken countless times by students. Afterwards, we went into the auditorium. Some of the foreign teachers were going to perform for the camp. And when I say “perform,” I mean lip sing “Beat it” on stage while acting out the music video. I wanted no part of the “performance” on account of coolness and principle. It wasn’t mandatory, and I wasn’t alone. The rest of us sat in the bleachers and watched.
Then Li took the stage around 11:30 p.m. He couldn’t lecture without Americans on stage with him, so those of us who didn’t “perform” had to sit up there. OK, I get it; whatever: someone had to go up there, and what’s fair is fair. Part of the lecture was shown live via webcam, and the students thanked their parents for everything they’d been given in English. It was touching, and expected, given this is China’s equivalent to Christmas Eve.
Shortly before midnight, I was informed by an American sitting next to me that Li Yang had just said, “Americans trying to learn Chinese is pitiful.”
The wind from an open door punched my legs. I was cold and wanted to go to bed, and Li was talking shit on Americans again? I walked up to the bleachers and told Clark what I thought.
“This is bullshit. You work for a racist asshole.”
“I agree with you sometimes,” Clark said. “Here take a seat.”
I wasn’t about to sit down in the bleachers where it wasn’t cold as cold. That wouldn’t have been fair to the people on stage. So, I returned to my seat at the end of the catwalk. A few minutes later, the teachers who “performed” were allowed to leave and return to the hotel. Three people didn’t go out of respect for the people on stage. None of them was the nameless female friend who told me about the camp.
Li lectured on. Several of the VIP students in the front row rested their heads on the catwalk near his feet and slept. Li lectured on. His own daughter fell asleep in the second row. Li lectured on. That motherfucker spoke until 1:15 a.m. on the most important holiday of the year. I felt so bad for those kids. I hated being there. I can’t even imagine what was running through their minds, especially the ones who were forced to go there by parents.
At one point, he wanted to break down the word ‘necessary’ phonetically. As he usually does, Li turned around and walked the microphone to his American stage clowns. Every time he did this, I just looked away and hoped he wouldn’t call on me. That night, he asked me to say ‘necessary,’ a fitting word considering it was almost 1 a.m.
“Necessary,” I said.
“Slower,” he said.
I looked him in the eyes and said, “Ness – ess – air – ee.”
He got the hint. Li asked one more person, and then chirped back, “Wow, why didn’t you sound more like him?”
When it was finally over, I got in Clark’s face a little bit. I couldn’t believe the other foreign teachers got to leave just because they bounced around on stage to a Michael Jackson song.
“Don’t complain to me here,” Clark said. “Maybe you should keep it inside. You’re not allowed to complain on campus.”
Yeah, that was a rule.
The next day, Clark sat down next to me on a couch in the lobby. He wanted an apology for getting mad at him, and I gladly apologized. He was just taking orders from Daniel, who danced really weird on stage at the bonfire to techno music. While I was talking to Clark about why I was upset the night before, who sits down next to us but that nameless female friend. Naturally, she had to interrupt the conversation to argue with me and state why she felt it was fair that she didn’t have to sit through that God awful lecture. She’d interrupted a couple other conversations of mine over a three-day span, each time to argue with me. She had witnessed Li last year and didn’t feel the need to warn me at all. I don’t see how anyone could ever work at a Li Yang camp and NOT walk away talking about this guy. I couldn’t take her anymore.
“Shut the fuck up,” I said.
I continued to talk to Clark, and she interrupted again.
“I’m not fucking talking to you,” I said. “Shut the fuck up. Stay out of it.”
I wasn’t the only one who voiced their opinions about the camp, and at the next Li Yang lecture, he turned to the Americans on stage and said: “You can say China is a third world country. I won’t get offended. It’s true. You can say Chinese are rude. I won’t get offended. It’s true. You can say Chinese spit and litter, and I won’t get offended because it’s true and I’m mature. Nothing offends me.”
That afternoon, I told my class of 20 students that Li was ignorant, that Americans can learn Chinese if they want, and that you should never, ever, point at a person and talk about the shade of their skin.
Two days later, Tim Lyde arrived at the camp.
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