On Loneliness

To be quite honest, not all has been positive this year. I am completely embarrassed to admit that I had not truly checked my own privilege, ever, until I came to China. It has caused for a lot of tears, frustration, and ultimately, a lot of soul-searching.

These past few months have thrown me for a loop, and made me re-examine my life from a drastically different perspective. Our U.S.-based organization calls us “volunteers,” giving the impression that we are sent overseas and placed at schools who truly need the valuable resources of foreign English teachers. However, my fellow foreign teacher colleagues and I quickly realized that we were treated like interchangeable bodies. I don’t blame the school- they’re used to having four new foreign teachers every single year, and maybe there had been a precedent set by previous teachers that foreigners don’t want to get involved in the community.

Normally, this would make sense. At any new job, you must work hard and prove yourself. Just because you were hired, it does not mean that you are automatically entitled to anything. When I signed my contract for this job six months ago, I expected many difficulties in the classroom, but being treated poorly because of my ethnicity had never crossed my mind. As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog post, I’d had some pretty ridiculous disciplinary issues I had to deal with. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it.

The photo on the left is from when I asked students what their favorite food and hobbies were, and below that they wrote a brief self-introduction. The middle is a racist cartoon that reads, “The Great Japanese Empire,” that was drawn during one of my classes. The last is a screenshot of messages that a student messaged me on QQ, a Chinese instant messaging app. The Chinese “kaonima” translates to “f*ck your mother.” I have endless other stories, but these are the only ones I happen to have photographic evidence of.

I have been pretty appalled at how seemingly generally ignorant some of my students are, and of course I feel most personally offended when there are remarks made about either of my two home countries. Before coming to China, I was aware of some preconceptions that local people had about Japan and Japanese people, given the history between the two nations. What’s curious is that not a single person I’ve met here has guessed off the bat that I’m part Japanese. If someone notices that I struggle a bit with Chinese, they might ask if I’m foreign, and they might guess that I’m from Thailand, Korea, or Hong Kong, but never has it it been Japan. This isn’t a bad thing on its own, of course, but this points to the fact that maybe if I hadn’t told anyone that I was Japanese, the assumption would be that I was Chinese, and maybe I wouldn’t be poorly. Even when a store owner or waitress finds out that I am from Japan, the reaction has never been bad. I’ve even gotten a “差不多” (chàbuduō: about the same) from someone, meaning that China and Japan are similar enough. So where’s the hate comin’ from?

The explanation I’ve been given over and over is that “the students are young, they don’t understand,” which is actually a really terrifying excuse. A colleague told me that one day, he wrote the Chinese characters for “Japan” on the board before class, and his Junior 1 students (11–12 years old) all booed, and claimed that “Japan is bad!” Chinese patriotism has been hammered into many of these students’ minds from a young age, and they probably haven’t given it a second thought as to why racism can be detrimental.

I have never personally been met with such specific and blunt racism before, and the effects of it were surprising and uncomfortable. Going to work can be hard. I have anxiety about walking into the classroom, because I am afraid that a student will yell out something derogatory at me once again. I have anxiety about not being welcomed into this community, because of my ethnicity. I have anxiety about being judged by my heritage, which overlooks my passion and skills as a teacher. With this understanding, I think back to September 2014 where my fellow peers and friends at my alma mater, Colgate University, held a 100-hour long sit in at the Admissions Building to demand more on the part of the university in terms of racial awareness and equality. I am reminded of their heartbreaking cases of not being able to attend class. My heart is fully with my former classmates, as well as students all over the country who are still fighting the battle to this day. No one should have to go what they go through, especially in a supposedly loving and supportive community as an educational institution.

Just as I celebrate almost four months of teaching in China, I still struggle to find my own sense of community at this school. It comes in many forms.

A few days after we began teaching , we were given the English textbooks that our students use in their written English class. We were given no instruction on how to utilize them, so the assumption has been that we can use it as guidance in our classrooms. We do not have a curriculum to follow, nor does anyone at all care about what we actually teach. Our best bet is to create engaging and interesting lessons that our students will enthusiastically participate in. If we don’t, students will quickly lose focus and revert to doing other classwork while we teach. It’s logical for them, as there is really no incentive to do well in our class. Every time a student participates in my class, I give them a stamp. For every 15 stamps, they can get a bag of candy and an extra point on their English test at the end of the semester. What about the students who don’t care about candy, or who don’t care to seek out my approval? I’m at a loss.

My foreign teacher colleagues and I eat lunch and dinner together almost every day, but does that even count as interacting with other teachers? My social life and interactions with the local Chinese teachers is minimal at best. On more than one occasion now, I’ve walked into a classroom only to be met with students explaining in their broken English, “teacher, today, no.” After a bit of translation, it becomes apparent that their head teacher has spontaneously cancelled my class for their own. A little heads up, from the head teacher instead of my students, would be nice. It’s also things like when one day during last period, the students were bolting out onto the field while sirens were blaring all around campus. It was apparently a fire drill, but we were given no notice. We were first terrified that there was a fire on campus, but after we realized it was just a drill, we were still shocked. We were never told what to do in case of an emergency, and we honestly still don’t know. All in all, it is hard to feel like the administration, faculty, or students really want or need us here.

I had high hopes for this year. I came to China to explore a smaller, lesser-known city in order to work on my Mandarin and to learn more about the local culture. I knew I didn’t want to take a job in the US, because I wouldn’t be pushing myself. Little did I know that this attitude was covered in arrogance- I rode into China on my high horse and expected to be treated like a valuable resource. Reading an article about teaching English as a foreign language has really made me re-consider my purpose here.

English fluency is social and economic capital. You’ve proven this simply through your ability to travel the world and probably get paid more than a local teacher for doing the same job unqualified.

You didn’t earn this privilege; you simply hit the linguistic lottery.

The reality is that the classes I teach are treated as extra-curricular along with art and PE, meaning the students, faculty, and administration don’t really take me seriously. I am often left with a sense of hopelessness, and it is a wonder that I haven’t quit after considering it on a weekly basis.

I quite often ask myself, “what am I doing here?” and on many days, I don’t have an answer. My colleagues and I joke about getting the will to teach from one single student every class who makes it all worth it- meaning we have only 15–20 students out of 800+ that keep us going. In all seriousness though, I wouldn’t be able to keep going if it weren’t for Sunny Green from C130, who writes me a letter every class, or Alisa from C129 who sings me a line from a US Top 40 song whenever I see her in the halls, or Justin and Sarah from C127, whose English is mediocre at best, but visit me in my office whenever they can. I am so thankful for students like these who keep me sane, even when my 800 other students do the complete opposite.

As I count down the days to our winter vacation, I hope and pray that the second semester will go smoother than this one. Until then, I keep Sunny, Alisa, Justin, and Sarah in my mind.