Business is Business

I run an Public English Corner. 

Or, ran.  Last week we decided to take two weeks off.  Attendance peaked about three months ago with something over a 100 people a week and about eight semi-regular foreign persons.  These days it has dwindled--perhaps 20 people coming and going of a night.  A recent shot in the arm for my willingness to keep being involved has been one or two of the regular members wanting to get more organised--advertise, involve the city council--and stating willingness to become part of the necessary organising committee to get such infrastructure up and running.

This week a letter of complaint was received at my place of employ, a public university.  The letter was written in Chinese with a name signed, but no return address and no contact number.  The letter has been placed before a VP of our school, and he has thus far made no comment.  A translation of the letter was passed to me today by the foreign affairs officer. 

For the record, I am aware of no commercial activity arising out of this event, except for one English major who scored part time tutoring work for a few weeks with two middle school students.  The event is without charge.  I receive no money.  I ask none.  No one has offered any.  Further, I do not accept, nor ever have taken, employment of any renumerated sort outside of my contract.  Calach don't do private.  He lazy. 

The letter, translated from Chinese by the foreign affairs office, is included below.  Names have been changed to protect the foreign.  All named foreigners legally reside in China and live at the same school by virtue of their formal, legal employment contracts being for full time work at that same school, the same one I work at.  Oleg does work part time at Jolly English.  Mary teaches groups of children in her apartment.  She has never been to BooBoo Square Corner.


Honourable leaders:

Please forgive me to take this liberty to inform you that some foreign teachers of your school, without your school's permission, taught outside of the campus.  The same with your school, we hired foreign teachers and paid them considerable salary.  However, as some foreign teachers of your school frequently worked outside, your school has caused everybody (including us) problems.

What Calach is doing is the biggest problem we are facing.  Every Saturday at 6:00pm he holds English Corners at BooBoo Square.  he claimed the English Corner was free of charge, but actually many students paid for it.  His main purpose is looking for students who want to attend private classes given by his colleagues and himself.  We have photographed the situation several times when he and his students were together with other foreigners.

Oleg regularly teaches at Jolly English near the walking street, and he is going to do this.

Mary takes private students and teaches them at her house.  Like other foreigners, she is going to join Calach and make use of the English Corner to look for private students.  Several excellent students of our school left our school because of this.

Calach and his companions have been doing these kinds of advertising activities at BooBoo Square for nearly half a year, but they didn't ask permission from any administration department and didn't pay for any related management expenses.  We have contacted Calach, if he continues to do so; we are going to take some actions against this activity.  Meanwhile, the expenses he should pay for the half a year's commercial advertisements probably should be paid by your school.  We have discussed to photograph these activities they are doing to make use [sic: making use] of the loopholes in China's educational system into documentary videos.  If we do it, obviously it will cause negative influence against your school.

If your school needs any evidences, you can go to BooBoo Square on Saturdays, or go to Jolly English training center to get related information.  Mary is teaching in her apartment, you can choose one night to go there and have a look.

Please take it seriously and give us satisfying response.  We will keep this letter as a backup to show that we have formally informed you.

Thank you!
All the best!

            Your friends
            Li tiaojiao
            2007.8


I'm betting it's the weasel who runs a private school in the city.  But I don't know which one, weasel nor school.  Can probably rule out Jolly English, though.

darn...

sounds like someone is seriously ticked off at ya for not playing ball with them.. these SOBs can be quite vindictive. Watch your back..

Indeed.  I'd like to think public officials would see this for the pathetic sleazebag attempt to attack free assembly that it is, but maybe it's not so obvious.  but it occurs to me that the worst thing that could happen is that officials would come to your English corner and see for thenselves.

And it occurs to me that if this guy had the clout to really hurt you, he wouldn't have to write a letter- he'd just drop some hints to his drinking buddies.

Hope you tough through it.  It's a damn good story.

Yep, you're interfering with someone's plans somewhere...he's probably having a hard time selling classes in your time slot.

This guy is bluffing, of course. As long as your employer is cool with what you are doing, my vote is that you keep on keepin' on.
Carefully.

Part of the upcoming problem will be if your employer asks why you haven't been running English Corner at your place of employment.  You are clearly prepared to run one, and therefore, as an employee should be doing it at your assigned place of employment.

This could actually become tricky.

What has your boss said??

I once asked a middle school teacher how many training centres she thought operated in our little town, and she said thirty-four.  When I expressed surprise she said she was including all the little ones, not just those that employ foreigners.  We decided there were probably only a few that have non-Chinese on board.  Of those, none are children of the big chains, but some are big enough to have more than one location.  Jolly English is one of those.
  Now I have no particular proof, but I'm starting to think I ruled Jolly out too soon.  The crazy midget in charge over there, Zhang, is big on turf disputes and once, reportedly, saw fit to hound one guy out of China.  Apparently Zhang likes to tell the story, but might be making it up.  Another guy who worked there three years ago said he had a great time, but wouldn't go back because they've started seriously skinning back any fat they once had.  They opened a new location and probably over-extended.  It might not be them, but who can rule it out just because they wrote a letter warning about foreigners working outside contract and included the fact that one of those FTs is moonlighting with them.

A Vice Prez here has the letter, but hasn't commented.  The foreign affairs officer, a tough, white-faced broad who has the only eyes I've ever seen that never, ever smile, handed me the letter and asked what she thought I should do.  She said she had checked with the other FTs and they had all said, throw the letter away.  She asked if I wanted her to take it to the police.  She said the school couldn't find the named writer, but the police might, if I wanted.  I asked her what she thought I should do.
  "It's an English Corner!" I said.
  "The English corner, if it's just meeting to talk, it's okay, it's good to the city," she said.  "If you think of something, you can tell me." 
  I was reading through the letter again while she was speaking.  I saw my name there but it didn't have any effect, the character there wasn't me at all.
  "I only worry if they have pictures of you," she said.
  "What can they do with pictures?" I asked.  I hadn't gotten to the part where the writer threatened to blacken the school's public image somehow by displaying pictures of foreigners talking to Chinese in public.
  "Okay," she said, concluding the meeting the way she always does, by starting walking at me, a gentle bulldoze toward the door.  I stepped out of her way.
  "That's for you," she said, indicating the letter.  "Think about what you want to do.  You can tell us, but writing," she waved her hand and an imaginary pen.  "Some response."
  It was the most civilized meeting I've ever had with her.  I've been surprised by her since I've been back here.  She's mellowed with age.

I came back home and showed the letter to Bob, my neighbour.
  "Huh!" he said.  "I'm listed as `his companions.'" 
  We talked it over for a while, shooting the breeze over what it might mean, and came to no conclusions. 
  "Okay," he said, "see ya in an hour." 
  I went inside my place to freshen up some because the first school English Corner would start in an hour.  They'll be every two weeks this semester instead of every three weeks like last semester.  I like them.  I always go.  It's something to do.
 
At the school English Corner I showed the letter to a few people, only the interested ones who came up and said, "I heard you got a letter."
  "Ridiculous!" said Susan after she read it. 
  She's the one who suggested only two days ago that the city could be asked to help out somehow in the future.

And so on.  Outside the foreign office everyone I meet tells me to forget about it.  My lawyer--well, a buddy, my little sister, she graduated in Law a couple of months ago and she's taking what she calls the bar exam tomorrow--said forget about it.

Ironically enough I met the dean of the Language Department a few days ago.  He'll work primarily out of the west campus this semester and he asked if I would be running the BooBoo Corner again.  "There's no English Corner on the west campus," he said.  "If you are, I'll tell my west campus students about it.  Their teachers can bring them along, and maybe organise some--" and he thought for a while--"some materials, games, maybe."
  "Okay," he said, turning and whisking his arm up and ducking his head in his characteristic goodbye salute.  "Good luck.  Let me know."

The thing I don't want is some vindictive dwarf in a tatty business office dreaming up innuendoes in lieu of actually having gotten my school to clamp down on me for the sake of his business.  With one guy drowning in his lost money worries and dealing out his own energetic "Calach says", "Calach does" Chinese whispers, and me standing out there in public, I become the kind of target no one ever tells me I am until someone does something.

Not exactly a prescription for peace of mind, I'll concede.

But your very public-ness is your defense.  It's a free event.  People show up without paying, ergo no one gets victimized.  It's not making you any money, but it'll sure build you a great reputation.

So I suppose you've had the middle roads erased.  You have to either give up on English corner, or English corner the shit out of that town.  Kind of exciting- every movement needs a Grinch for dramatic tension.  It's like that movie Swing Kids, except not as visaually interesting, and with fewer Nazis.

My lawyer--my little sis who calls me "Grandma" because she's seen me make decisions, who graduated Law a few months ago, who always says what she thinks and curses like a sailor when she's excited--now reckons a few new things.  She says I'm on a legal Z visa, so I can work in China.  She says anyone offering me work (that I don't accept) outside of a contract and without permission is the one in the wrong.  She points out I'm employed at an institution under provincial, not local, control.  She says have our school give a copy of the letter to the police now.  She thinks they'll probably support us because we're not exactly nobody--we're legal, provincial, and supporting our school and city.  She says keep on with the English Corner and if anyone makes trouble there, call the police immediately.  She says watch out for people with paint and weapons.  And she thinks it's Jolly English too.

We're on an already planned break this week, so no English Corner tonight, and I'm not up for the showdown yet anyway.  Next week--I dunno.  I'll check around this coming week and see what potential participants think.  Not what they think about the problem.  About whether or not they're still interested.  I'll check around more as market research for English Corner II.  Get some new ideas.  See what's possible.  It's what I was going to do anyway.  That's was why we were taking a break.

Further to this... nothing.  Nothing happened.  We started up again as planned, and have been holding Corners for every week since (except two weeks ago when it rained).

But I had reason to mention the complaint letter again tonight.  We had what might well be the last outing for the season--it was a nice, clear day, warm, and still pleasant enough at 7 in a winter coat, but by 9 it was damn cold--and it happened that the [insert big foreign supermarket chain name here] local operations manager joined us, a titch of a woman, all of 4 foot five, and probably not the operations manager but definitely someone on the operations staff.  She'd heard about the big ole warm hearted foreigners and their public shiver-thon that our English Corner has become.  She wanted to invite us, students and all, to an English Corner to be held in their store with their employees in a few weeks time.  It sounded kinda cool.  But I mentioned the complaint letter because if it seemed that a big supermarket were in effect sponsoring our English Corner, well... and so we talked a few minutes more.

I felt quite important for a short while.  It's pretty much every single day that I wish I had more street smarts.  It's kind of like not being a man when you realise how easily you fall for the same old trick of an invitation to "something special because we heard about you" when the something special is the same old dog-and-foreigner Christmas show.

Yes indeed, I do want to be a unpaid promotional object for a large commercial enterprise.  It's all about the giving back to the community.  I'd do it just for the love.

I suppose though it is an actual opportunity.  An enterprising fellow might turn it into a bunch of meetings and telephone numbers.