A Year Working for the People's Republic of China | The People are the Heroes Now
I am not sure what most of the other music teachers think of me. They seem to be a chirpy bunch – they’re a bucket of smiles and mid-day Mandarin jokes I’m not privy to. And they seem interested in me being interested in their office and in them. Asking a question, even through a … Continue reading Virgynihtee: The Musical
I’m teaching two sections of 9th-grade World Music. I’m astoundingly white, and studied the whitest sort of music that there is: academic composition is a tradition of men in powdered wigs writing music for like flutes and shit, and then other men in the 1960s haranguing each other about the nature of art in drafty … Continue reading The Internet Speaks Chinese
At the part-time job I worked in Colorado – the one where my boss kept trying to sing on the job – it was important to everyone in the program to be an Educator. I’d hear it at all the staff meetings: “Well, as an educator…” is how sentences would start on the reg. It … Continue reading An Education
Finally, it’s time: On my second Thursday in China, Green Tea — one of the music teachers — sends me a text: I’m to meet with Ms. Music at the music department. The music department is just past the main gate of the school: a compound of three squat, drab rectangles. I don’t know what’s … Continue reading The Deep End
A little over halfway through orientation week, I am summoned from the nothingness of Groupless existence: all the foreign teachers are routed to the main hall for a series of informational sessions. The first piece of information nestled in the informational sessions is that we don’t actually have Chinese visas. We might think that we … Continue reading You’re Going to Lose Your Passport, Then Die in the Street
