Changjiang Primary School was a very difficult place for me to work. There was about a one-mile distance between Yong Hong and
Changjiang, and it was located on Changjiang Road on the opposite side of San Xiao Kou from where I lived. I always dreaded the
bus ride there in the morning. I had to get off the bus at San Xiao Kou in front of KFC and walk past a McDonald’s and other
buildings on an extremely wide portion of sidewalk until I got to a walkway where I could take the stairs up and cross a bridge over
the street. In that area, close to the intersections, there were fences made from tube shaped metal bars with rails lining the edges of
the sidewalks to prevent the pedestrians from wandering across the street and slowing down the traffic too much. The metal was not
extremely strong, and it looked like it was made from aluminum.
There was a bit of an elitist attitude among the staff and some of the students at Changjiang Primary School that I wasn’t
compatible with. The atmosphere there was so tense that I felt like every move I made was being monitored by 100 Olympic judges.
Maybe I would get a 2.5 for scratching my head during class. If the teachers would ask me a question about English, and I didn’t
know the answer, they would laugh to each other and say, “Ta bu zhi dao” which means, “He doesn’t know.” I doubted they knew
every word in their language too, but they would probably make up some kind of excuse to cover for it instead of admitting to it
anyways because they were so afraid to lose face. Damian (Dah Mee Un) was equally frustrated with teaching there, and he always
had a complaint about one of the teachers there named Linda whenever I would eat lunch with him and Nina. Damian would often
use gestures such as pointing a gun to his head with his fingers when he was frustrated with something. When someone got him
worked, he acted like someone who just slammed an entire coffee pot, and he was very funny in a melancholic kind of way. He
would talk about his classes with the children and pretended that he was so joyous and excited about the children, then he would
get a serious look on his face and point the gun to his head. He didn’t know how to relax, and he was always full of nervous energy.
Our suffering from the inconsiderate and ungrateful behavior of others did not last long, however. One day, in the middle of
October, our boss David told Damian and I that the school was going to change teachers. The reasons the school gave him was that
Damian’s Slovenian accent was too strong, and that my class wasn’t fun enough. I guess the students drawing pictures of you on the
chalkboard with a halo around your head and calling you an angel just isn’t enough to say that they like you anymore. We later
found out that their reason for changing teachers may have had nothing to do with our teaching abilities. Changjiang School had
recently acquired a new headmaster who didn’t have as good relations with David as the other did. In the business world, as many
people know, connections are everything, and without them, you have no voice and no ground. On my last day at Changjiang, the
teacher made sure that the students said goodbye to me as I left the classroom, but they didn’t know I would soon be replaced. It
was sad for me to leave the dozen or so students that had grown attached to me. During break time, some of the children would hold
my hands and bark like dogs while hopping around as we walked downstairs into the courtyard to join with the rest of the school’s
students that were playing ping pong and other games. I never knew how the students reacted when the new foreign teacher arrived
at Changjiang School on their first day.
I was thankful that I could at least depend on the emotional support that the teachers and students gave me at middle school #47.
Without that place, I may not have had enough faith in the teaching business to continue on in Hefei. I usually left the middle
school with a warm feeling instead of a cold feeling like I had when I would leave the primary schools. I think part of it was that
Hillary wasn’t there constantly criticizing my teaching methods and recognizing every imperfection in following the teaching plan.
Also, I didn’t have to be judged by the parents at the middle school because they never came there, unlike the primary schools.
Some people have a hard time accepting a way that is different from their own. I wasn’t the usual teacher that they were used to
seeing, and they didn’t know how to handle it. Part of the problem may have been my lack of experience as a teacher. Wongas
decided to hire me even though they knew my experience and qualifications. I had no bachelor’s degree or teaching certificate,
and had basically been hired off the streets. I also didn’t act very professional because I had always been a little afraid of the word. I
thought if someone called me that, it would mean that a large part of my individuality had been snubbed out. I was determined to
do things my way, and it didn’t matter to me who disapproved of it. If Wongas wanted to terminate the contract because I wanted to
be myself, then they could do that with no resistance from me.
Each day, walking home from the middle school was the best chance to organize my thoughts. The distance between the middle
school and my apartment was about two miles. Near the middle school on an intersecting road, there was a bridge that extended
across a small river that eventually led into the east side of Hu Po. Traffic was especially crazy during this time because I got out of
the middle school around 5:30 in the evening when most people were trying to get home. It can also be difficult to find a taxi at
that time because they are in the process of changing drivers. In the beginning, I thought they had a personal problem with me
when they would wave their hand without looking at me as they drove by when I tried to signal them. On the bridge, there would
usually be more than several people, some old and some young, flying kites over the river as the sun was beginning to set. After the
bridge, there was another intersecting road that had many trees and walkways all around it for at least half a mile. Not many people
walked there or drove on that road, except for some people walking their dogs or joggers, and a few stray taxis and transport trucks. It
gave me a few peaceful moments to think without the noise and congestion of the big city’s many vehicles and crowds of people.
When I would get back to the apartment, Chad would usually be tutoring one of his students. His student’s name was Qi Sheng,
about 17 years old, and sometimes Chad would tutor him in our apartment or in Qi Sheng’s apartment building that was very close
to ours. Afterwards, we would go to Mei and Gong’s restaurant next to the police station and eat dinner. Chad and I both liked to tell
stories, so we usually had an entertaining time there, though we still wondered what happened to our friends from the other
restaurant that disappeared. Chad once told me about a story when he was at a house party, and everyone had to leave, so they all
decided that they were going to continue the party at Chad’s house without his permission. Chad didn’t agree with their decision, so
he ran in front of the crowd of students that were on their way to his house so he could get there first, where he had a b.b. gun
stowed away. Chad hid in the bushes, cocked his b.b. gun, and opened fire on his classmates like a sniper when they arrived at his
house. “Ow! Oooh! What was that?!” they all cried as they were getting pelted by Chad from an unseen location. When they finally
figured out what was happening, someone called the police and had Chad brought up on assault charges. I know that b.b. guns can
hurt like the devil, but I still had to laugh at Chad for taking such an extreme action for what his classmates decided to do.
During the week, it was mostly business as there was little time for anything else. I also didn’t know what interesting places they had
in Hefei, and wouldn’t be able to effectively communicate with anyone anyways. So I had to rely on other people for something
interesting to do. A couple of times, Forrest Wang, the one who got me the teaching job, treated me to breakfast at Yong He, the 24-
hour restaurant on the corner. Some foods we ate were fried beef dumplings, steamed vegetable dumplings, and some heated
artificial orange juice that people in Hefei liked to drink when the weather turned cool.  One time, Mr. Wang took Chad and I to the
2001 dance club in the middle of the week. The music there was so loud that it was difficult for Mr. Wang to enjoy himself. Despite
the loud music, we managed to have a conversation about America. Mr. Wang had always dreamed about going to America, but
once I told him how unsafe it was compared to China, he changed his mind about it. I didn’t know he would have that kind of
reaction to the news. After having a couple of drinks, we left 2001 and walked out onto the street to find a taxi. Mr. Wang asked me,
“Do you have a girlfriend in Hefei?” I told him, “No. She’s not in Hefei right now, but do you remember your old student Summer?
We have something going on right now.” “Oh, you can find another. It’s no problem,” he said. “No; I can’t do that to Summer,” I said
to him. Apparently, he didn’t have the same idea about loyalty as I did. “But she is so far away,” he said with a smile on his face. But
my answer was still no. On our way back to the apartment, there was a small road that was under construction. One of the
construction workers had his big machine parked in the middle of the road, and didn’t even try to move out of the driver’s way. The
driver got angry and jumped out of the taxi and the two of them started neck-vain bulging and saliva-tossing on each other. The
driver got back in the taxi and started complaining to Mr. Wang, who was in the front seat. The driver kept shouting, “Taoyan!” and
would sometimes drag on the word to give it extra emphasis “Taoooyyyyyyyaaaaaan!” I laughed quietly to myself because taoyan is
one of the few Chinese words that Summer taught me. It means that you are disgusted by someone’s behavior.
Sometimes I would meet Nina and Damian and have lunch and dinner with them. We usually tried to make it to McDonald’s once a
week because there was no other restaurant with that kind of flavor that we had been to. In the Chinese restaurants we ate at, the
cooks usually didn’t use a lot of seasoning in their food. We knew that the food at McDonald’s wasn’t as healthy as the Chinese food
we were eating, but there was a part of us that still couldn’t live without the old flavors from home. Nina was fluent in Mandarin
because this wasn’t her first time to come to China, so it was no trouble for her to order food at the restaurants. Damian came to
China mostly because it was Nina’s wish to return. They both had an attitude that was completely opposite of many of the people I
had met in China. They were very outspoken about everything, and they always expressed their dissatisfaction about anything they
were not happy with. When it came to cursing someone out, friend or enemy, they    didn’t wait. It happened immediately after the
“offense.” Nina was teaching at a school called Jordan’s Language School which had branches all over China. She was such an
energetic and outgoing person that they had lots of work for her there, which may have added to her hostile attitude towards others.
Regardless of whether or not I agreed with everything they did, Damian and Nina were still friends, and it was important for us
foreigners to stick together in case anything big ever went down. And the air was always thick with the possibility that such an event
was possible because foreigners were easy targets for anyone to take advantage of since they didn’t know how the system worked yet.
But foreigners were not the only targets.
China Dispatch/Andrew Gramling
Leaving Changjiang School