Beijingle Bells All The Way...

And so the gathering excitement gathers as our plucky band of scholars look forward to their one day’s unpaid day's holiday on the 25th. But Lord what larks we have before that and indeed, what larks we have pre-larked already.

Take yesterday, which, for those of you timezonally challenged, was a Thursday, all be it a rather earlier one than most of yours. Now Christmas is not a big deal here in the Middle Kingdom. Unless you're 6.

It's a bigger deal still if your're six and your Chinese teacher has wound you up to a (yellow) fever pitch about the impending arrival of a busload of foreigners bearing gifts and you're very first chance to meet Santa Claus (in this case a very bemused 19-year old from Prestbury who arrived at school expecting a job interview and get bundled into the red, white and beardy role due to a general shortage of free white faces and a specific unwillingness to look a complete cock by the rest of the foreign teachers.)

Well we rolled up to a scene that I can only describe as reminiscent of how Francis Ford Coppola would have staged the helicopter arrival of the mini-skirted go-go girls to meet the sex-starved GIs in Apocalypse Now - if he had only a knackered bus and a crowd of umpalumpas in the budget. Well that was Thursday.

Friday has been a quiet day spent thinking euphemisms for "abalone and shark's fin" as I attempt to finish off subbing the 2007 Shanghais Tatler Best Restaurant Guide - which is full of establishments that we humble toilers in the field could ne'er afford to frequent.

Tomorrow is a half day teaching day and then we have the joy that will be Sunday.We has a veritable smorgasboard (whatever spellcheck it yourself I can't be arsed!) of delights. After a token bit of teaching, we have the final of our "Rising Star" English Speaking competition.

This involves nearly a 1000 Chinese people squeezing into a school gymnasium, whilst various school classes do long dances involving chinese flags and talk about their allegiance to "Beijing's Green Olympics".

Straight after the competition we, well all the school staff, decamp for our annual Christmas party, where we will no doubt be joined by representatives of the local young communist party (average age 53). Now last year, this was a jolly occasion with all the foreign teachers being mates and genuinely being pally. This year, thanks largely to the antics of our colonial cousins (oh and me a bit-ish) and sundry visa problems, all is not so cozy.

Take Adam, our 30-year old Canadian, who somehow has got it into his head that he is "more than just a teacher" and also believes that he can tell the future. Unfortunately, one of senior teachers went out for a drink with him and told him he was a silly cunt. Now, he wants to leave. Now, admittedly it was me who said it, but I can only say in mitigation, that well, he is a silly cunt.

Our other problem is Adu, our Ghanian teacher, whose passport has been missing for six weeks after a "friend" of the school promised he could get her a visa, even though the Chinese government (despite last months 3 days of official celebration of African-Chinese friendship) won't give black people visas.

Now, her visa-less passport has gone walkabouts, her identity has been probably been cloned and she will probably face a cavity search wherever she travels - but does she see the funny side? Does she bollocks. It will take more than Sunday's Secret Santa to cheer her up methinks - unless someone has got her a visa as a surprise.

Ah, well, merry gentlemen and women of a similar ilk, it is time to God rest Me.
Have a Cool Yule Dude as our Soon to be Departed North American Brethren Might Say If He Was Speaking To Me

Teenage Mutant Whinger TEFLs...

Thursday night in Beijing is fading gently into Friday morning here, coaxed by a surpisingly decent bottle of Great Wall Red Wine (40 RMB or around 2 pound 75 to you occidental types).
Christmas, old hat for you with its traditional late September UK kick-off, is starting to loom here as we FTs (foreign teachers as opposed to CTs( supposedly Chinese teachers, but better put as Cute Teachers) huddle together and wonder how to spend our one day off (Dec 25th).

Traditional revelry will revolve around me playing my now traditional (well I did it last year) role of Father Christmas at the school's huge Xmas party/speech competition. Last year it featured the twin spectacles of me being obliged to reclaim colouring books from teary 6-year-old Chinese kids that I'd over distributed, after being under briefed, followed me being marrooned on stage and waving farewell and shuffiling in a sheepish (?) crab-style manner off to stage right. Ah, happy days.

Being indistinuishable foreign types, we are obliged to pretend to celebrate every possible Western festival here for the benefit of our kids and, more importantly, their fee-paying parents - including Halloween, Christmas, April Fool's Day, two lots of Thanksgiving (US and Canadian), St Patrick's Day, Valentine's Day and the newly founded Thank-Fuck I'm Not North American weekly event that I've co-founded with the Scotiish, Irish and New Zealand teachers here.

It's stunning, quite frankly, that these buggers - Americans and Canadians - have ever achieved anything as nations (okay, admittedly, lumber and crap songstresses aside, Canada hasn't), but the amount of self-rightous clockwatching and whinging we suffer from our colonial cousins is astonishing.

Frankly it's a wonder the Mayflower ever arrived Stateside as definitely no-one would have agreed to row on their day off, no matter how becalmed the vessel was and woe betide the captain if he tried to serve sea biscuits and rum instead of burgers and Budweiser. Cultural adaptation is not a great strength of Transatlantic TEFL teachers. They're a bit like daleks, only with less charisma, a greater degree of cultural imperialism and a desire to have multiple days off whilst all the other daleks have to do their exterminating for them.

The Brookside Factor

Spring has come at last to Beijing. Last Tuesday to be exact. We are now firmly established in Summer. Beijing only has two seasons really - summer or, in the vernacular Foo Khing Boi Lin and Winter or Free Zhbollox Orph as it is known locally.

And with the arrival of the new season, comes the new foreign teachers - every one, normally, with a more complicated back story than the average new family in Brookside Close.

First up is Hannah, our one venture in breaking our long observed No North Americans policy which was our school's one token nod in the vague direction of sanity. It took us three goes to pick up Hannah on concurrent 6ams at Beijing airport - the first involved a miscaluation involving the international date line and the 16 hour (maybe 16 year) time difference between here and the States and the second was due to inclement weather in the Texas area.

Hannah, it must be said, is a big lass. In a country where most women have no arses to speak of, you really stand out when each of your bum cheeks requires a seperate postal code. In fact, on one of her first days here, I ventured out to lunch with her at one of the local restaurants and the look on the face of the guys whose table joined couldn't have been more astonished if she'd arrived fully dressed for an extended space walk.

The second arrival was Mat( the Chinese staff somehow resisted my suggestion he was met at the airport with a placard saying "Welcome Mat"). Mat is from New Zealand, but has proved no Kiwi Fruit, in that he has remorselessly pursued at least two of the Chinese teachers and had a prostitute back at his aprtment in the week that he has been here. He has also managed to ususrp may long standing claim to be the Worst English Teacher in China. Within days he had proved an inabilty to teach teenagers and than matched it with a similar aptitude with kindegarten kids.

And then only last night (after being specially briefed by the Chinese headmistress Chen Xi, that his debut adult class featured a number of her friends and some senior members of the local communist party) he managed to "accidentally" fail to teach the last 25 minutes of his two hour class. The smart money is on the order of the Wellington (geddit?) Boot before too long.
Our third arrival was Jacqui from Dublin, who has so far appeared breathtakingly normal, popular with the Chinese staff and even able to teach. I think I hate her the most.

This seeming normality can only be down to one of two factors:
a) A much deeper and darker secret lurking in her past which has yet to emerger, but, when it does, will probably involve covens, machetes or alien abduction. Maybe all three.

b) A complete failure of the scrupulous vetting procedure normally adopted by our Foreign Manager which normally ensures (with one obvious exception, ahem) only total dipshits get through.