Wo Shi Laowai – Wo Pa Shui

Students of the Noveau Riche

In the finest tradition of teasing the bee in my bonnet with a bouquet of yellow roses with their erect stamens pointing firmly towards Beijing, I offer you the poor point of view of a teacher (come on, just say it: “Oh, a fricking Laowai who speaks native English, just pucker your ass-lips into a full-mouthed vowel and you have an instant job mixture) who has to rub shoulders with the offspring of the elite and powerful clique that call themselves the upper middle class of modern enlightened China.

Without wasting a moment to apologize to the editor for the convoluted grammar I am sure he detests despite liberally employing it, allow me to introduce myself. I am a professional writer from an English speaking country, lost in a never-ending yellow haze of BaiJiu soaked days and XiaoJie soaked nights. In order to support my growing requirement for the brain-deadening effect of alcoholic stupors (as required by my witnessing of the below) I have had to resort to teaching these fantastic (in the proper sense – not real) children in return for the toilet-paper that passes as currency in this part of the world. Ok ok, so a sheet of good quality toilet paper is worth more than a RenMinBi, but you get the point. I mean, don’t let it faze you that before I came here I was teaching professional, native speakers business English writing, that would just confuse the issue by demonstrating I actually knew something worth teaching. Not that it, by any means, stops me from having quality conversations with students that go something like this:

Bella: “I finish repeating an English book. Want to improve myself. I am trying to be a wonderful.”

Me: “That’s my girl. Get great English so when we jump into bed together you can understand my requests. Ok, tonight’s vocabulary for better sex is ‘Tickle my balls with a peacock feather.'”

Bella: “Can’t understand.”

Me: “Do you know what a peacock is?”

Bella: “No.”

Me: “So use your dictionary.”

Bella: “My English is rubbish though i read English everyday.”

Me: “Not at all, peacock is hardly a word I would expect to be taught. There are millions of words, just look this one up.”

Bella: “I also have no progress in it.”

Me: “Oh rubbish – we communicate just fine. So – have you found ‘peacock’ in your dic. yet?”

Bella: “I have no dic beside me.”

Me: “http://www.mandarintools.com/worddict.html” (note, I provide this link every other week to her, hoping that repetition will pay off one day)

Bella: “Change another topic until i have a good English let us talk this.”

Me: “A peacock is a beautiful bird: 孔雀. Zhe dao le ma?”

Bella: “Got it.”

Me: “Ok, so you know the long, beautiful feathers on the peacock’s tail?”

Bella: “Yes. His tail is beautiful.”

Me: “Right – well, you take one of the those feathers to tickle (胳肢) my balls (睾). Understand?”

Bella: “STOP THAT.”

For a country that has a pathological loathing of queues, it is amazing how popular QQ is. Anyway, before I get sidetracked into a long rant about the quality (or lack thereof most likely) of the teachers found in the land of the long yellow groan, let’s get into the real meat of this sandwich: their protagonists; the students.

The modern China is a far cry from the traditional China that is constantly force-fed to us by the inhabitants as the true description of this nation of deeply ingrained hypocritical xenophobes. In this day and age, we have the one-child policy, as enforced by the department of Families Using Controlled Killing Unless Planned (FUCKUP), which is simultaneously bringing about several new phenomena.

The first is the introduction of the helicopter parent (always hovering around), certainly one of the bane of teachers in China everywhere. They know FAR more about education their child than we do, and never hesitate in demanding we lowlife Laowai change our curriculum to match their requirements, usually on a weekly basis, until they have gone full circle and realize they have finally demanded that we return to our originally scheduled program. Why do they know more than us? Because we know NOTHING about China of course.

First lesson, Chinese are more highly evolved than the rest of the planet because 5000 years ago a group of yellow bastards decided that the only way to do business (after inventing the concept) was to get pissed (on their invention, alcohol), make a deal, then run off to fuck Wang XiaoJie (for pay, as invented by the Chinese – see previous). They then institutionalized this into a system of government and social (dis)order.

Second lesson, as we are evil, amoral, arrogant, uncivilized and uncultured anti-Chinese devil worshippers, how could we be expected to bring anything of value to the children in our classroom? This is obvious from the differences between western and eastern education methodologies, the latter being to introduce the exam to the children at the start of the school year, then demand they reproduce the Party-approved answers word for word at regular intervals with all classes being dedicated to the rote impressing of such. We WaiGuo just don’t understand this finely honed system of proper brain washing education. Let alone, western culture doesn’t force its children into 16 hours of daily schooling 7 days a week starting from age 3.

The third lesson, the Chinese invented schooling (although I am sure Kong FuZi would roll over in the huge compost heap they call his tomb if he was to blink a decomposed eye at the modern indoctrination education system) so we western people simply haven’t had the thousands of years of experience of state-owned propaganda education that is required to properly program educate their children.

The second phenomenon is, naturally, their charming offspring, most of whom are certainly off by any foreign standard. These children are spoiled rotten, self-centred, blinkered, parasitic recorders, but you should see their bad side. God help China in a few years when the workforce demographic consists mainly of these foul creations, and when justice finally comes around and bites them firmly in their backside. Let’s take a typical scenario with a senior college student:

LaoShi: “What do you want to do when you finish college?”

XueSheng: “Study abroad.”

LaoShi: “Oh? What subjects?”

XueSheng: “Whatever they will let me into.”

LaoShi: “But isn’t that counter productive because China has the superior cultural imperative and all the western thoughts and materials have just been stolen from the Chinese?”

XueSheng: “I need to experience the decadence of the west in order to truly appreciate the grandeur of my country, and in doing so, be able to formulate more efficient schemes for extracting money from the unsuspecting Laowai.”

LaoShi: “Uh huh, so, after you finish studying abroad, what are your plans?”

XueSheng: “I want to start my own business.”

LaoShi: “Oh, what sort of business?”

XueSheng: “Selling stuff.”

LaoShi: “What sort of stuff?”

XueSheng: “Dunno, that is why I am going abroad, to get some ideas. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter, Daddy has promised me the money to start my own business.”

(Yes, this is a fictionalized account of the real conversations, as the English level displayed by our brave youngster is simply so far below even this basic standard that it renders the conversation useless for the purposes of demonstration)

Now the problem begins to display itself in all its true technicolor (invented by the Chinese of course) glory. Our intrepid young entrepreneur, having received his seed money from his father venture capitalist (with Chinese Communist characteristics of course), starts his business and begins attempting to employ staff to do the actual work. Well, of course our model student here won’t actually have DO any of the WORK themselves, they have avoided this so far in their life and they are damned if they are starting now, so they require staff.

Our first challenge raises itself, most of his staff demographic are out starting identical businesses and have no interest in working for our Fiscally Aware and Highly Trained hero. The remaining demographic are either too old for our budding young CEO’s modern dreams, or have flunked university so badly as to be suitable for nothing more than doorstops, unless gifted by a rare chance of genes that combined to make them attractive enough to be sought after as a cum-gargling fuckbucket profitable XiaoJie. I say gifted because the massive inbreeding and constant exposure to healthy combinations of high-grade pollutants as dictated by the forever ruling Han class has created a nation of buck-teethed, boggle-eyed, bow-legged, acne-pockmarked, cybrowed, stumpy, overweight, hairless fucktards who have difficulty finding their ass with their hands even with a map.

Our next challenge was already implied by the definition of the first, that whatever business our little yellow friend chooses, he has a million other similarly-minded mongoloids trying to do exactly the same thing. This is the time-honoured way to do business in China, walk down the street until you find a business that doesn’t look like too much work, then duplicate that business right next door to the original. Crikey, they don’t even have the sense to go to the other side of street, let alone town, to do their R&D (rip-off and duplicate).

So, let’s assume, against all statistical probability, that our example Shining Heavenly Light of Celestial Grandeur and Business Endowment has actually managed to start a business that isn’t duplicated too many times on the chosen street (while remembering that seeing as the Chinese invented streets, they have evolved far past the requirement for such and that footpaths and road surfaces alike are merely vacant shop space for less financially capable but equally avaricious competitors) and has even managed to attract some staff, what then?

If they are PRODUCING product, we have the (in)famous Chinese Quality standards to meet, also known as the second set of bribes (the first bribes were to register, locate and power the business), in order to ensure that the product is capable of reinforcing the Holy Party requirement of population reduction by all means necessary through minimum requirements of embodied toxins. These toxins don’t come cheap, and sometimes even requiring shipping from a long distance, usually because the local supplies of such have long been consumed by the other local businesses.

Then, regardless of whether they are actually MAKING anything or not, we have the next round of grafts (institutionalized by Chairman Mao who was a great believer that agriculture should lead the way, because it is mainly powered by bullshit) – keeping the power on, taxation, protection money for the local extortionists policing fees and so on. About this time our young friend has realized that his naive profit projections are about as useful for forecasting the business climate as his penis is useful for propagation, which – given the enormous fertility problem of our civilized, cultured, inbred walking toxin farms – is to say, a non-existent capability. So, he has to raise prices in order to satisfy the demands of his newly extended family: the tax man; local Mafia boss police chief; the Minister for Industrial Systems, Farming, Institutions and Training (MISFIT); the manager of the power distribution and so on. Unfortunately for him, the latest wave of ‘graduates’ is out on the streets, blissfully unaware of the full requirements of these social responsibilities every Chinese has to his family – the mother country – and have projected their profit margins and realized that they can do what he does, better and cheaper.

It is a seething sea of sharks and blood, and our wannabe baleen whale has just been harpooned by the cloning of his avarice, stupidity, duplicity and complete lack of anything resembling creativity. So, how does he stay afloat? He goes to his local, friendly bank of course, and with daddy’s guanxi (a Chinese word that is somewhat akin to relationships, only you will get fucked harder than any XiaoJie will ever be capable of) and some creative accounting, manages to get himself a business loan to ensure his diet of KTV girls, BaiJiu and deep-fried effluent keeps flowing freely. This merely extends the strain on the entire Chinese financial system, now completely dedicated to supporting the newly adopted American system of consumerism at all cost to ensure Communist produce is actually purchased by someone, seeing as the rest of the world prefers products that last longer than a week or two before beginning to decompose into their native constituent toxic materials.

But that’s OK, he has been in business long enough now to know that all he needs for a loan is a bit more guanxi; pay for a few dinners with the local bank manager with the obligatory BaiJiu, KTV girls and foreign devil imported drinks; and a bit more creative accounting to show his sustained profitability. He can now get a new loan to buy a cramped, substandard, short-lived, mis-wired, pollutant-laden apartment to raise a single child with his KTV girl of choice.

A few years down the track and he starts to realize his market is shrinking, the successful effects of the party-mandated Youth In Asia and Daddy’s business is also facing similar problems. Rampant, sustained inflation has further reduced his purchasing power, but this was A Good Thing because it reduced the requirement of his Elder Brothers In The Government With Chinese Characteristics for purchasing large amounts of foreign currency in order to artificially deflate the value of a fairly worthless monetary system to keep it in line with other equally worthless systems. With the reduction of the population around him he begins to worry about a decline in his property’s value, when, one day, with a short, sharp crack, his property begins to biodegrade on schedule and thereby ensures that the supply of housing meets the new, lower demand.

Watching his business and house crumble are too much for our ex-KTV girl, so she now runs off to whore it up with the local Friendly Communist Party Leaders, who in turn give her the bloated contract for removing the rubbish that used to be known as Housing For The Glorious And Well Loved Citizens of The Kingdom at the Centre of the Universe. Then this fraud gets exposed, because insufficient funds are flowing upwards into the coffers of the Treasury of the Heavenly Inspired Kingdom of Freedom for All Hard Working Comrades and our now divorced ex-KTV girl’s fleeting moment of Financial And Social Independence has passed, leaving her sitting in the internet cafe sending out bulk emails to any Laowai stupid enough to reply to her, stating her immediate availability for marriage and romance, provided he has enough financial assets to make it worth her while to strip him raw.

The Children Are Our Future, and verily shall it come to pass wind for us.

– DaBizarre

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