Comments, Feedback, & Suggestions

Dr. Greg,

I'm interested in your take on "The Seven Year Laowai", a fictionalized account of one man's experience in China's ESL world.

Though if you're pressed for time, parts 1, 4, and 8 express the overall theme the best.

Travis

I think if there was a fictionalized version of our Foreign Teachers Guide to Living and Working in China, your short story, The 7-Year Laowai, would be very close to what I would imagine it to be.

Most of your storyline could be drawn directly from the Guide’s pages and your character Jack in chapter four seems like a dead ringer for our “Lenny” in the section titled Western Colleagues and Office Politics.

I wish there were more guys your age in China writing these kinds of stories (warnings) for other guys your age who are seriously contemplating moving to China to teach oral English. Maybe, together, we could start saving future lives from being destroyed.

The biggest challenge we face at Middle Kingdom Life is not from Chinese school owners or even recruiters: it’s from Western men who are lost in China as oral English teachers and are too defended, too self-deluded, or too whatever to admit it. They dismiss our work here as “biased,” “elitist,” and even “classist,” and then assure others that teaching oral English in China is a fine career choice and that the work is both academically meaningful and even important. They insist that the pay is great and how they are saving more money now than they ever did back home. Come ‘on in guys, the water is great!

Unlike the Chinese school owners, recruiters, and these all-in-one “nonprofit” cultural exchange organizations, they aren’t misleading others for the sake of money: They are doing so because they haven’t found the strength, courage, or self-enlightenment to look themselves in the mirror and honestly see what their Chinese administrators, colleagues, students, and Western corporate types (here for a brief stint with extra combat pay and a sterling benefit package) see.

Unlike the protagonist in your story, they will not be returning home in seven years (having grown more sober, if not wiser, from the experience) or at anytime in the foreseeable future (outside of a wooden box perhaps) because they have become vocational and economic prisoners of Asia's EFL Industry.

I knew people who would go on at length about how they were leaving ESL for more lucrative fields. I mean, they would really talk this up, and then when September rolled around, they were teaching English, still talking about their plans to leave. And the louder they boast about how much "better" their lives in China are, about how much "happier" they are there, then the worse off they are.

The events in the story largely happened, with names and things changed here and there. It had a lot of influences, your guide among them. If someone asks me about teaching in China, I won't actively discourage them, but I will stress that they do their research and come to an informed decision. I end up sending them to the Guide.

Your article Oppressed Group Behavior Among Foreign Teachers does a great job of explaining why certain foreign teachers act the way they do. I saw this firsthand, and while some of what I saw did make it into my story, the worst of it did not. China's expat scene was home to some of the most miserable people, as well as the ugliest anti-Americanism I have ever seen.

My wife and I left China a month ago. Overall, I'm happy I went to China. I'm happy I left too. The grass is not always greener, and I'm happy there are places out here where people can get a clearer picture of what they're getting into.