So I mentioned previously that I’ve run into a bit of an awkward situation. This is a situation that many of the other teachers have experienced as well. There is a particular student that seems to have a developed a bit of crush on me. Now this has happened before, but it hasn’t been too serious. And actually my case isn’t nearly as bad as what some other teachers have had to put up with. All the same, she’s been quite persistent, seemingly doing everything short of drawing “Love You” on her eyelids in class. Of course if she does that, I’ll take it as a sign that I should start wearing a brown fedora, buy a bullwhip, and take up archaeology.
Now this doesn’t seem all that bad and in many ways it isn’t. She was one of the dancers who lined the athletes’ entrance at the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Yep, she was one of those unfortunate girls who had to stand there for like two hours shuffling her feet to make it look like she was dancing. Of course this means that she is fairly cute, as we all know that the ugly people in Beijing (particularly little girls who can sing) were frozen in carbonite until the Olympics were over and all the foreigners had left.
It also means that she’s about 21 years old. Not only does this mean that she looks like she’s about 16, but it also means that she acts that way as well. I’ve noticed that the maturity level of the girls here lags far behind their age. I suspect that it’s all the cutesy Japanese and Korean shows that are so popular over here, but I’m not sure. Perhaps you could argue that I’m not one to make judgments since I still laugh at fart jokes and am not above playing with shiny objects for long periods of time. However, this only proves how much more immature she is.
I suppose I should be grateful that she hasn’t gone on a hunger strike or tried to kill me yet. But she has done a few creepy things. The first time she crossed the stalker Rubicon was when she sent me a text message (I don’t even want to explain how she got my number) asking me what I was doing. I was at my desk at work, so I said I was writing an e-mail or something. I asked her what she was doing. The response was: “Looking at you.” My head snapped up so fast I almost shattered the glass behind me. Another message revealed that she was in a place, “where I can see you but you can’t see me.” As it turns out, she was in an office somewhere behind me staring at me through the glass.
The second time she crossed the line was when she wanted to have lunch with me one day, but I was already out having lunch with some friends and discussing a few important things. She sent me a message, but then proceeded to call me before I could reply to the message. I had previously decided that I would try to maintain a friendship with her lest she decide to do something to me or threaten to off herself as some of the other teachers’ stalkers have done. But I promised myself that I would draw the line at chatting with her on the phone. I don’t really know why I drew the line there, but it seemed to make sense at the time.
So I ignored the call and just turned the volume all the way down on the phone. After the first call, I figured she would understand that I was busy. Instead, she took this as a sign that I simply hadn’t heard the phone when it went off, so she called again. I ignored it again, but started looking around cautiously to make sure that she hadn’t spotted me on the radar at Stalker Headquarters, followed me, and figured out that I was purposely ignoring her call. I thought surely after the second call she would get the idea that I wasn’t going to answer the phone. Guess again. I got a third call a minute later. I angrily sent off a message telling her I was busy and that I was already eating lunch. She ended up sulking around and puffing out her cheeks at me for the rest of the evening around the school.
I finally had to sit her down one day and explain to her that I can’t just go around having lunch or dinner with lone female students. I didn’t specifically mention that the teachers are not supposed to have relationships with the students, but she knows well enough. I certainly don’t need rumors to that effect either, since as soon as such a rumor gets started, it makes no difference whether I did anything or not. I suspect that she also knows as well as I do that relationships between the teachers and students are just a bad idea all around, but to make an unnecessary Dark Knight reference, I see her as the Joker to my car. She’s chasing me like a puppy after a car, but if she actually caught me one day, she wouldn’t know what to do with me. I also have a creeping suspicion that many relationships start with one person pursuing the other, but as soon as the fun of the pursuit wears off, so does the attraction.
Anyway, some time after I let her know that it wouldn’t be appropriate for us to hang out alone together, I saw her talking to one of the other male teachers in the hallway of the school. I have to admit that there was a twinge of jealousy and I caught myself thinking, “Hey, don’t forget about me. I’m still… stalkable.” I guess this is the part of the story where you see a freeze frame of her and a big red stamp that says, “The Bold” and then a freeze frame of me and a big red stamp that says, “The Awkward,” followed by some Ennio Morricone music. I only hope that this story doesn’t end up with me riding away into the hills while she yells at me: “Hey Chris, you know what you are? You’re just a dirty son of a – ” and we get another blast of Morricone instead of finding out what I really am.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Love in the Time of... Recession
Well, here in Wuxi the weather is getting warmer and love is in the air. It’s about time I got around to describing how relationships work around here. I guess I can only offer my limited perspective, but I’ve seen and heard about a few interesting things. Obviously, relationships tend to work a little differently when the members have two different mother tongues. I should also point out that many of the foreigners here aren’t necessarily looking for long-term relationships, while many of the Chinese girls get pressure from their families to marry when they are about 22 or so. This results in some ‘unusual’ relationship stories.
For example, one of the foreign guys here has left two different apartments because his Chinese girlfriend at the time (yes, two apartments, two girlfriends) moved in and he subsequently decided that he didn’t want to be with the girl any more. I don’t know the details of the situation, such as whether the girl refused to leave him or whether he just walked out on them one day. Since some of the girls here are a little crazy (see below) and since he has a history of getting up and leaving places he doesn’t want to be without saying a word, either option is possible. Many people dream of just leaving whenever they want, but he actually does it. All I know is that he currently lives in a hotel room and has, as far as I can tell, another girlfriend.
When I said that it was possible that his girlfriends were simply crazy, which is admittedly less likely given that it’s happened twice with that guy, I did have the story of another foreigner in mind. Two stories actually, though they deal with the same guy. This guy apparently had a Chinese girlfriend for a while and then broke up with her. These things happen to everyone. Life goes on. Well apparently the girl didn’t see it that way. She proceeded to throw herself in the canal, knowing full well that she couldn’t swim. Fortunately for her, someone saw her, went in after her, and fished her out. To be honest, I’m not sure who’s more of a head case: that girl or the random foreign guy who told me the other day that he saw her, recognized her and tried to hit on her. You have to be a special kind of person to actually seek that kind of relationship. But then again, some people here are.
The other story about the guy whose girlfriend threw herself in the canal involves a later girlfriend of his. They went out for a while and, after what was supposedly a tempestuous relationship, they broke up. The Chinese girl was heartbroken/furious. I’m not entirely sure what happened after that, but I think she wanted people to think she became a lesbian. She got a ‘girlfriend’ and sort of seems to be affectionate with her in public. The strange part is that even though she hangs around with her ‘girlfriend’ most of the time, whenever she ends up at the same place as this guy, she spends most of her time fawning over him. It’s an extremely awkward situation that I, for once, am not involved in. I suppose I should consider myself lucky that I have avoided any post-relationship suicide attempts or faux lesbianism.
But there is a new situation that I’m dealing with that has presented itself recently. It’s hardly necessary for me to say that it involves considerable awkwardness. I’ll dive into this situation in the next exciting episode of “The Bold and The Awkward.”
For example, one of the foreign guys here has left two different apartments because his Chinese girlfriend at the time (yes, two apartments, two girlfriends) moved in and he subsequently decided that he didn’t want to be with the girl any more. I don’t know the details of the situation, such as whether the girl refused to leave him or whether he just walked out on them one day. Since some of the girls here are a little crazy (see below) and since he has a history of getting up and leaving places he doesn’t want to be without saying a word, either option is possible. Many people dream of just leaving whenever they want, but he actually does it. All I know is that he currently lives in a hotel room and has, as far as I can tell, another girlfriend.
When I said that it was possible that his girlfriends were simply crazy, which is admittedly less likely given that it’s happened twice with that guy, I did have the story of another foreigner in mind. Two stories actually, though they deal with the same guy. This guy apparently had a Chinese girlfriend for a while and then broke up with her. These things happen to everyone. Life goes on. Well apparently the girl didn’t see it that way. She proceeded to throw herself in the canal, knowing full well that she couldn’t swim. Fortunately for her, someone saw her, went in after her, and fished her out. To be honest, I’m not sure who’s more of a head case: that girl or the random foreign guy who told me the other day that he saw her, recognized her and tried to hit on her. You have to be a special kind of person to actually seek that kind of relationship. But then again, some people here are.
The other story about the guy whose girlfriend threw herself in the canal involves a later girlfriend of his. They went out for a while and, after what was supposedly a tempestuous relationship, they broke up. The Chinese girl was heartbroken/furious. I’m not entirely sure what happened after that, but I think she wanted people to think she became a lesbian. She got a ‘girlfriend’ and sort of seems to be affectionate with her in public. The strange part is that even though she hangs around with her ‘girlfriend’ most of the time, whenever she ends up at the same place as this guy, she spends most of her time fawning over him. It’s an extremely awkward situation that I, for once, am not involved in. I suppose I should consider myself lucky that I have avoided any post-relationship suicide attempts or faux lesbianism.
But there is a new situation that I’m dealing with that has presented itself recently. It’s hardly necessary for me to say that it involves considerable awkwardness. I’ll dive into this situation in the next exciting episode of “The Bold and The Awkward.”
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Be Careful What You Ask For...
As anyone knows who has tried to learn a foreign language and then use it to communicate with native speakers, it’s easy to make a mistake and end up saying something you don’t mean. It frequently happens in my classes. These things even happen in the same language every once in a while. For example, if a British person wants an eraser, they will ask you for a ‘rubber.’ It can be difficult to explain to my students, especially the younger, more impressionable ones, why this may not be appropriate when speaking to an American. Well, something similar to this happened in class the other day and that got me thinking about whether or not I had run into a similar situation. I thought for a while and then it all came back to me…
I went to a popular nightclub that was reopening in Wuxi after it had closed down for unknown reasons before I arrived. Another club had been shut down in the same time period after a drug raid, though I can’t be sure that the two closings were related. On a side note, I should mention that the other club hasn’t reopened, probably because it’s owner was supposedly executed after being arrested on the drug charges. China doesn’t screw around when it deals with crime. Anyway, a couple of friends and I went to go check it out. This was clearly not my idea as I don’t really like clubs, but the other guys wanted to see what it was like, so I went along for the ride.
We arrived to find the place packed and the music so loud that I had to put my hands up near my ears not so much to drown out the music, which would have been impossible even if I was wearing earplugs and standing several blocks away, but more to keep my eardrums from flying out of my head. We were approached by an older woman who tried to make small talk with us, which was difficult since we didn’t know that much Chinese at the time and because we may as well have been trying to have this chat inside a running jet engine, were such a thing possible.
We soon correctly guessed that she was there to sort of introduce us to the club, but mostly to try to get us to buy drinks. We weren’t averse to this since we had planned on having a couple of drinks while we were looking the place over. She asked us something using a term that we thought she was using to refer to a waitress. It can be used to mean something like ‘Miss’ as in ‘Miss So-and So.’ As it turns out, it can also mean ‘prostitute.’ You can see how this might prove to be confusing.
Anyway, like I said, we thought she meant she would go get a waitress, so I nodded my approval. She went off somewhere and while she did, my friends headed to the bathroom. When she returned, she brought about four girls with her, none of whom looked like they were about to take my drink order. I thought, “What the…? This isn’t what I asked f— ohhhh, I see what I’ve done here.”
Surprisingly, I did actually know about the second meaning of the words, but I thought it mostly applied in northern China. To be fair, the bargirls here aren’t really prostitutes and are a bit different from the girls who sit in the places at the side of the street. Their basic purpose is to get customers to buy them drinks, thereby generating business for the bar. At the end of the night, it’s up to them. They can leave by themselves or with the customer. For this reason, we tend to refer to these places as ‘dirty bars.’
However, this was a popular club, not a bar in a back alley, so this turn of events was quite surprising. Since they were expecting three guys, I now found myself surrounded by three or four good-looking women who were trying to get me to buy them a drink. As I had a girlfriend at the time, this turn of events was also somewhat frustrating. The rather unique situation I now found myself in soon turned awkward (really, who didn’t see that coming?) when it became clear that I was unwilling to buy them a drink. For one thing, even if I tried to be polite and buy a drink, it would look bad if I bought just one of them a drink, so I would have had to drop a significant amount of cash to cover all of them. Then there’s the fact that I refuse to pay to have a conversation with someone. There are plenty of people who will talk to me for free, so why pay?
I had to think of a way to extricate myself from this situation without insulting anyone and without losing any dignity. So I used a technique that has come in handy in several situations. Most Chinese people just assume that I don’t know any Chinese, which means that I can get away with things that a normal Chinese person never could. I can blatantly disobey rules, quickly end a conversation with someone who’s annoying me, or wander into restricted areas with a few magical words. I just say, “I don’t understand” in Chinese and they usually back off, figuring I’m just another stupid foreigner and I don’t know any better. The fact that we might as well have been trying to talk during a rock concert being held on the deck of an aircraft carrier only strengthened my position.
I deployed this strategy successfully for a few minutes, trying to avoid some questions (mostly the ones that I legitimately didn’t understand) while still answering a few in order to keep them around long enough for my buddies to come back. Finally they got back and were also slightly puzzled as to why there were so many club girls there when we thought we were just asking for a waitress. I explained what I thought had happened. They were a little annoyed as well since they’d both been in China long enough to know those girls were just there to get drinks off us and then run off as soon as our wallets ran dry.
If we had lots of money, maybe things would have been different, but to be honest, teachers are at the bottom of the foreigner pecking order here and the Chinese girls know it. If a man who looks about 50 and a man in his 20s are sitting at a bar, there’s a 90% chance that the older man will be approached by a girl first. Guys, consider yourself lucky that you don’t have to watch as a beautiful girl walks away from you to go chat with some old, overweight bald guy instead.
Anyway, the other guys decided we should hang around for a bit, so they bought a couple of the girls drinks. I refrained for the reasons mentioned above and because buying random bargirls drinks, regardless of your lack of intentions, is not the kind of news you’d like to get back to your girlfriend. It didn’t take long for the girls to figure out that we didn’t plan to spend a whole lot of money there, so they left fairly quickly.
In conclusion, the lesson for today is that when learning a foreign language, you should learn the most important things first. Forget “take me to the airport” or “how much is that?” If you don’t set your priorities right, you could seriously offend someone or, as in this case, you could end up with a bunch of quasi-hookers at your table.
I went to a popular nightclub that was reopening in Wuxi after it had closed down for unknown reasons before I arrived. Another club had been shut down in the same time period after a drug raid, though I can’t be sure that the two closings were related. On a side note, I should mention that the other club hasn’t reopened, probably because it’s owner was supposedly executed after being arrested on the drug charges. China doesn’t screw around when it deals with crime. Anyway, a couple of friends and I went to go check it out. This was clearly not my idea as I don’t really like clubs, but the other guys wanted to see what it was like, so I went along for the ride.
We arrived to find the place packed and the music so loud that I had to put my hands up near my ears not so much to drown out the music, which would have been impossible even if I was wearing earplugs and standing several blocks away, but more to keep my eardrums from flying out of my head. We were approached by an older woman who tried to make small talk with us, which was difficult since we didn’t know that much Chinese at the time and because we may as well have been trying to have this chat inside a running jet engine, were such a thing possible.
We soon correctly guessed that she was there to sort of introduce us to the club, but mostly to try to get us to buy drinks. We weren’t averse to this since we had planned on having a couple of drinks while we were looking the place over. She asked us something using a term that we thought she was using to refer to a waitress. It can be used to mean something like ‘Miss’ as in ‘Miss So-and So.’ As it turns out, it can also mean ‘prostitute.’ You can see how this might prove to be confusing.
Anyway, like I said, we thought she meant she would go get a waitress, so I nodded my approval. She went off somewhere and while she did, my friends headed to the bathroom. When she returned, she brought about four girls with her, none of whom looked like they were about to take my drink order. I thought, “What the…? This isn’t what I asked f— ohhhh, I see what I’ve done here.”
Surprisingly, I did actually know about the second meaning of the words, but I thought it mostly applied in northern China. To be fair, the bargirls here aren’t really prostitutes and are a bit different from the girls who sit in the places at the side of the street. Their basic purpose is to get customers to buy them drinks, thereby generating business for the bar. At the end of the night, it’s up to them. They can leave by themselves or with the customer. For this reason, we tend to refer to these places as ‘dirty bars.’
However, this was a popular club, not a bar in a back alley, so this turn of events was quite surprising. Since they were expecting three guys, I now found myself surrounded by three or four good-looking women who were trying to get me to buy them a drink. As I had a girlfriend at the time, this turn of events was also somewhat frustrating. The rather unique situation I now found myself in soon turned awkward (really, who didn’t see that coming?) when it became clear that I was unwilling to buy them a drink. For one thing, even if I tried to be polite and buy a drink, it would look bad if I bought just one of them a drink, so I would have had to drop a significant amount of cash to cover all of them. Then there’s the fact that I refuse to pay to have a conversation with someone. There are plenty of people who will talk to me for free, so why pay?
I had to think of a way to extricate myself from this situation without insulting anyone and without losing any dignity. So I used a technique that has come in handy in several situations. Most Chinese people just assume that I don’t know any Chinese, which means that I can get away with things that a normal Chinese person never could. I can blatantly disobey rules, quickly end a conversation with someone who’s annoying me, or wander into restricted areas with a few magical words. I just say, “I don’t understand” in Chinese and they usually back off, figuring I’m just another stupid foreigner and I don’t know any better. The fact that we might as well have been trying to talk during a rock concert being held on the deck of an aircraft carrier only strengthened my position.
I deployed this strategy successfully for a few minutes, trying to avoid some questions (mostly the ones that I legitimately didn’t understand) while still answering a few in order to keep them around long enough for my buddies to come back. Finally they got back and were also slightly puzzled as to why there were so many club girls there when we thought we were just asking for a waitress. I explained what I thought had happened. They were a little annoyed as well since they’d both been in China long enough to know those girls were just there to get drinks off us and then run off as soon as our wallets ran dry.
If we had lots of money, maybe things would have been different, but to be honest, teachers are at the bottom of the foreigner pecking order here and the Chinese girls know it. If a man who looks about 50 and a man in his 20s are sitting at a bar, there’s a 90% chance that the older man will be approached by a girl first. Guys, consider yourself lucky that you don’t have to watch as a beautiful girl walks away from you to go chat with some old, overweight bald guy instead.
Anyway, the other guys decided we should hang around for a bit, so they bought a couple of the girls drinks. I refrained for the reasons mentioned above and because buying random bargirls drinks, regardless of your lack of intentions, is not the kind of news you’d like to get back to your girlfriend. It didn’t take long for the girls to figure out that we didn’t plan to spend a whole lot of money there, so they left fairly quickly.
In conclusion, the lesson for today is that when learning a foreign language, you should learn the most important things first. Forget “take me to the airport” or “how much is that?” If you don’t set your priorities right, you could seriously offend someone or, as in this case, you could end up with a bunch of quasi-hookers at your table.
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