What's the Big Deal of Being Foreign

I've been really busy lately. First, I finally finished my work in the office, no more telephone marketing, no more lies, I'm pretty happy about that. Past three days, my new job is staying at a hotel, greeting new foreign teachers who just arrive in China and sending them to their programs. There're six English major students working with me, and I'm their leader. It's weird to become a leader all of a sudden, I'm used to doing things on my own or being told what to do, now I need to ask others to do things for me. I don't have any desire to be in charge of a team, and I don't like acting like a boss. This time I think I've done a good job, and most of the students are quite cooperative with me. Now I understand once you have power, you need to take responsibility. I work from 7am to 9pm, two shifts every day; I have to be there all the time as I'm afraid that the students probably won't be able to deal with some situations, I don't want to see these newly arrived teachers complaining.

There's around 70 foreign teachers, before they came to the hotel, they had no idea about where they will go and whom they'll teach exactly. Most of them thought they'll teach in Hangzhou, but actually only few of them will stay, the rest will go to other cities in Zhejiang province. Though the contract mentions it's possible that the company will send them to other camps near Hangzhou, many teachers don't expect they'll be the one who leave, it takes us time explain to them about their working schedules. Last morning there's an American couple who're in their sixties. When we told the wife she'll teach kids, she burst into tears and wanted to go home immediately. She said she thought she'd train teachers and she'd done lots of preparation. She's a qualified and experienced English teacher; she didn't want to just teach beginners. Her tears surprised me, I expected these people would be stronger than that. A few years ago, I was like a normal student who's got lots of respect to foreign English teachers. To me they're foreign, and they speak perfect English; I tent to see them as a whole instead of individuals. But now I've got more experience of meeting people all over the world, I just see these foreign teachers as ordinary people. Just because they're from English-speaking countries doesn't mean they're smarter or more important. Many Chinese are eager to make friends with foreigners so they can practice their English, my former English teachers all told me to do that too. Personally I don't like that idea at all, foreigners are not language machines, I hate using people like that, and not all the foreigners are interesting or nice, some of them could arrogant and boring. Like yesterday there's one American guy who really got on my never. We helped him a lot but he never said ''Thank you'' to us, not even a smile. He looked very impatient when we were telling him about the schedule, and sometimes he just left before we finished the sentence. Many times I wanted to tell him hey say thank you. I regretted I didn't do it yesterday because he left this morning.

Now I don't really use the word ''foreigner'' that often, I prefer ''American'', ''Korean'', ''Australian'', ''Canadian''… or ''non-Chinese''. Actually there's no foreigner in my eyes anymore, we're just people from different places; I don't have that much special feeling when meeting someone who comes from another county. Last Saturday I went to a museum with an Israeli and an American girl. There's a painting exhibition there. As soon as the artist saw two foreigners coming, she came to us and asked me lots of questions about them, and she wanted me to tell them about her art. Such thing happens to me quite often. When I was traveling with Linda and Guillaume in China Last November, almost everyone thought I'm their travel guide or translator, most people don't speak English but they're all curious about foreigners. ''Where are they from?'', ''What do they do?'', ''Where are they going?''... People asked me these questions every day. Sometimes I got really tired so I pretended I didn't hear them. Then people would say things like ''Are you deaf or something?!'', ''Who do you think you are!!'', ''Girl you're so rude!''... At first I felt bad about these words but after a while I didn't care. Since I got back from India and Pakistan, I totally understand these people's reactions. When I was in India, Indians treated me as a ''foreigner'', a special and sort of an important person, they were curious about me and wanted to know more about China and my travel stories. Some locals don't speak English; my Indian friends became my translator. Now back to China, my role is switched from a ''foreigner'' to a ''translator''. I have to admit I'm still tired of being asked too many questions when I'm with non-Chinese friends. But I understand it's not personal and it's not just a China thing, the same thing could happen in India, or Cambodia, or Pakistan... It's understandable that people who don't travel are curious about outsiders, but it's too bad many of them don't take ''translators'', ''travel guides'', ''foreigners' friends'' as individuals who have personalities and characters.

Yesterday there was an orientation meeting for some teachers at my boss John Zhou's company. Zhou is the manager taking charge of all the camps, and he's the one who gives orders and makes all the final decisions. Last night there were several teachers who weren't too happy about their arrangements, so they came to his office asking him to make some changes for them. Usually Chinese is the one who's being very polite and respectful to foreigners, and Chinese take foreigners as important persons. But last night it was the other way around. I was in the office with Zhou, unhappy teachers came one by one, telling Zhou about their requests. Zhou seemed like Godfather, and for him these teachers are not ''foreigners'', he just treated them as his employees. I like his style, after all what's the big deal of being foreign.

One month at work already, long enough to see the ugly sides of the society. In the office, we were doing telephone marketing, and we got unwanted calls ourselves all the time too. For instance, the biggest local TV station called us, asking if we want to get a report of the summer camp, they can send a camera man following the first day and edit it into a one-minute news and play it on prime time. Of course we need to pay for it-- 8000kuai per minute. We put an ad on a very popular local newspaper, and the bonus is they'd write a 400 words news for us on their educational edition... It's disappointing to see that's how the media works. Now I've got sharper eyes when reading newspaper, I can tell there's many fake news out there. Where's the integrity of the media? The government censors the media for political reasons already, now money and market are making the situations worse.

Next week I'll move into one summer camp in Hangzhou and work there for three weeks, sometimes I'll travel to other cities' camps to check if every English teacher is fine. Not bad, finally I'm out of the office, great!