Upon arriving home, some of the noticeable ways I was affected by my one year stay in China began to come out. I had become much
more conservative and prudent than before. In Hefei, many people behaved as though they were aware of their every action and were afraid
to make any movement or action that did not have a clear-cut purpose. There was so much refinement in people’s personal behavior that
there wasn’t much room left for error, and people sometimes came down hard on each other when mistakes were made. That is why it almost
seemed like the whole society, at least in Hefei, functioned with a group mind, because in some ways, people were not allowed to be
different. Losing face really was a big deal. Of course there were some rare cases, and I was fortunate enough to meet a number of them. I
was influenced by that kind of behavior of strict normalcy. In some ways, it made me a bit more rigid and critical of other people’s mistakes
and unnecessary behavior. I was generally without American slang and idioms while living in Hefei, so it sounded strange to hear people
talking like that again when I came back. Perhaps it’s a form of arrogance that I had somehow developed, but I almost thought people
sounded kind of stupid, and I couldn’t believe that I used to talk like that as well. I don’t often have the custom to look down on other people,
but this was my initial reaction to coming back to my old environment. Perhaps it meant that this is how Hefei people generally viewed
outsiders, and I was reprogrammed with some of their same views without even knowing it. There was definitely a Chinese way to do things in
Hefei, and anything else was somehow inferior to them in most cases. They were really a strange people. The city had an aura of being stuck
somewhere in the past, yet they were making full use of modern technology everywhere. The people of Hefei were very cautious and
introverted and good at reading other people’s minds since any thought or action that was not in tune with everyone else was extremely
noticeable. Hardly anyone ever looked around with curiosity, and just kept looking straight ahead or to whatever direction they were looking.
They were very wise in some ways, but there was also something dark about a lot of the people there, meaning that their concerns did not
always lean towards humanitarian even though they had great intuition. Their minds seemed to be in another dimension, one that I couldn’t
exactly understand. One thing was for certain, after living in China, I had an advantage over other people whose knowledge about the place
was limited. My choices were clear. I could use that knowledge to manipulate others with a type of knowledge they did not understand, or I
could share it in an attempt to enhance other people’s lives. The time where I would make the decision would come soon.
       The streets seemed so deserted. Madison has a low population of about 250,000 people where there are many individual houses so the
people are more spread out and not stacked up on top of each other. In Hefei, there were at least four million, and there weren’t many streets
that didn’t have people all over them during the daytime walking from place to place, selling food and drinks, playing badminton, doing tai
chi in groups, and other activities. It felt kind of lonely to be back. Also, there were no more colorful neon lights dancing around everywhere
and exotic architecture in the buildings I could admire. After living in China, how could I ever get used to living in the U.S. again? That
problem could be solved after I earned my TEFL certificate from WESLI and find another teaching job back in Hefei.
       In the beginning of January 2007, my courses to become a certified teacher at WESLI began. It was located up on the square near the
Capitol. I used the remaining money I had earned in China and also got help from my father to help pay. It’s kind of a depressing feeling that I
was in a foreign country making it by myself, and now I have to be at home relying on the monetary support of my father once again. I’m
thankful that he’s kind enough to help me, but it’s like a giant step backward as far as progress is concerned. I didn’t have much choice
anyways since the Chinese government was putting pressure on me to leave the country.
       At WESLI, there were about a dozen other students in my class who were trying to get TEFL certified. Everyone had different destinations
that they would go to once they earned their certificates, destinations such as China, Japan, South Korea, Chile, and Mexico. I found it
strange, because there was one guy in the class a few years younger than me with almost the same first and last name as me that had already
been to China as well. We looked quite different from each other, but there was some strange connection between us. We thought the same
about most of the subjects in class and sometimes gave almost the same answers even when the topic was broad. Michelle, the head program
instructor’s sister nicknamed this phenomenon “The psychotic connection.” We had many exercises to do Monday thru Friday for eight hours
each time for five weeks. We had to listen to explanations about teaching techniques, grammar, and many other helpful things that would
help us to become decent ESL teachers. We also had practice teaching lessons every week with a variety of students from different countries
who came to WESLI to study English. The predominant number of students were from Korea and Saudi Arabia. Each of the students that were
in my program was also required to take on a student to meet for a certain number of hours before our course finished. My student was a young
man from Saudi Arabia named Turki. He was a very kind and polite young man, and he invited me to his home several times with his other
classmates who were also from Saudi Arabia. They liked to smoke flavored tobacco out of a hookah and watch T.V. together. Sometimes they
would go out to different places for fun. One night, we went to see the comedy starring Eddie Murphy called “Norbit,” and afterwards, we went
to the Hooters restaurant. One of Turki’s classmates asked me what would happen if he touched one of the waitresses, and I simply made the
motion of getting handcuffs slapped on my wrists.  
       Graduation time came, and all of my classmates were off to their selected countries. I would have been off too, but it was not easy for me
to find another teaching job. There was no way I was going to work for David in Wongas again. Hillary drove me crazy with her overbearing
criticism, and David’s way of handling money and trying to cheat people were both not attractive. My old friend from Hefei named Nancy said
she could get me a job at her school, but the heads of the school were taking too much time, so it did not seem like a true possibility. Also, my
old friend Mike from Australia, who was sort of the great organizer of the foreigner community in Hefei, said he had a job lead, but they ended
up giving it to someone from New York City. My last chance was my friend Daniel who worked for a trade company in Hefei. He said he was
going to open up his own school in the city with one of his old classmates, and he wanted me to be a teacher there. I said I would do it, but
some weeks later, he told me that his friend cheated him and must have taken off with his money that was going into the school. All of my
choices failed. My father said, “Why don’t you just go to China and then look for a job?” I said ‘I don’t want to do that for several reasons. First is
because of what happened before. I don’t want to go back there unless I’m already sure I have a teaching job that is legal because I don’t
want to have any more trouble with the police. And also, if I can’t find a job, then it would have been a big waste of money. It doesn’t seem
wise to me.’ It seemed as though no jobs were possible for me to have in Hefei, but would it be possible for me to return to China at all?
I had to do something while I was waiting for a job opportunity to open up, and that something was a talent deep inside of me that I didn’t
even know about. During the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, I went with my father to a dinner that was dedicated to his memory. While I was
there, my father introduced me to a friend of his named Ike, who needs no introduction to many in the Madison community. He was very
interested in China and had read an article in The Capital City Hues long before about when my father interviewed me when he came to visit
me in Shanghai. He was interested in learning the details of the country because most often, news reports only give information on general
issues and not what actual living is like there. Sometime later, he wrote to The Capital City Hues and called me out to continue writing about
China. I didn’t think I had anything interesting to say about it, so I was reluctant to do it, but I didn’t want to disappoint Ike after he took the
time to make that comment in the newspaper. So I started writing about it, even if Ike would be the only one who ever read it. It was as though
I was in school for writing, but I was the teacher and the student. I continued to spend most of my time developing my writing skills for several
months while continuing to look for a job.
       Seemingly out of nowhere, my old friend Chad who used to be my first roommate in Hefei made a suggestion to me. There was a school
called Webster Education located in a small city called Liu Zhou (Leeooh Joe) in China’s southern Guangxi Autonomous Region. He gave
me the contact information of the boss whose English name was Mark. I contacted Mark and he sent me the contract and asked if everything
was alright. My only problem was that the money was much lower than my previous job at Wongas. I wasn’t in a position to demand anything
so I accepted it and was glad I finally had the chance to come back. I was hired by Webster Education’s Liu Zhou branch, but they were going
to send me to another city, Nanning, the capital of Guangxi province. From the pictures, I could tell that the city was in some ways much
more beautiful than old Hefei, but that was all I could guess. I signed a one-year contract to Webster and emailed it back to them. At the end
of August, I would have the chance to teach in China again and find out why it was so important for me to go to Nanning instead of Hefei.
China Dispatch/Andrew Gramling

Hefei vs. Madison