Today, I feel like I am a character in the 70s film Network. “I am mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” I want to open my windows and shout it to the top of my lungs.

The first time I travelled through China, I thought it was bold and brash and in many ways contradictory. I was amazed, bewildered, charmed, offended, and tickled at the same time – like when my guide in Hangzhou told me he was expecting a white man, but instead found a middle-aged, black, and a little bit fat woman. It was so honest and direct that I had to chuckle. Even now some of my students call me Michael Jackson and ask me to grab my crotch. Then one kid told me I was a fat Michael Jackson. All I can say is in Romania I was called Damon Wayens, so I guess I have moved up in the world from a mediocre actor to the King of Pop…so Beat It! But now I digress.

I have been having a lot of trouble trying to figure out this maze of paying for my utilities. I know to call it a maze seems ridiculous. I should be able to get a bill and just pay it…Right?????? Well, WRONG!!!!!! In Hanoi, the bill collectors rang your doorbell in the evenings with the bill and you just paid them on the spot and got a receipt. In Romania in 2000, the block system was still in place. At the entry of your block was a board that listed the total amount owed by each apartment. You went to the association building, stood in a long line to pay your bill on the designated date, got your book stamped as paid and that was that. If someone did not pay, a notice went up on the board in your block letting everyone in the block know who had not paid and was responsible for the utilities to the entire being shut off.

In China, there are no bills. I was given a bank book that I am to take to the bank and deposit money into an account. Then the electricity and maintenance fee is deducted from the money in the account. Although I know what my maintenance fee is, I have no clue what the electricity bill will be. I have been trying to find out what other teachers pay, but they are as vague and ambiguous as the billing process itself. I was given a bank book by my real estate agent to use to pay for my maintenance and electricity. Since my maintenance is about $50 a month, I put an additional $60 in the account for the electricity. I was told I would have to pay my water online and get a card for my gas that is sort of like a gift card. I put money on the card and then stick the card in my gas meter at home and the credit transfers to the gas machine. The problem is – the owner of my apartment does not know where the card is. SO I have to wait for my gas to run out before I can get another card. My owner lives in the US so it is not easy to get straight answers.

I got a message last week from the owner that he was sending me the account book for the utilities. When I asked what the account book was for that I just put money in – he said he had no clue. So now I have to figure out with the agent whose account book I have and how to get my money back.

My next bone of contention is about the upcoming week off we have. It is a National holiday from Oct. 1-7. In order to receive this holiday, we have to make up the days off by working the weekend before and the weekend after. We have been told it is cultural to require workers to make up these days. Then we were told this is by statute. BOTH are bullshit!!!!!!!
I looked up Chinese Labor Law and found out that this “statutory requirement” to make up the days does not exist. What does exist by statute is:
1) Workers cannot be required to work more than 40 hrs. per week. Any work hours beyond 40 hrs. during the week must be paid at 150% the hourly rate.
2) Any overtime work on weekends must be paid at 200% the hourly rate. But workers must have at least 1 day of rest per week
3) Any work performed on holidays must be paid at 300% of the hourly rate.

Besides this law, our contracts do not say we have to make up the time for holidays and we were not told this when we were offered the position.

I went through our contract line by line and wrote a memo detailing this information and citing to the appropriate contract provisions and statutory sections. Because teachers had been complaining about these things, I sent the memo to them for their thoughts. Well, all hell broke loose. Suddenly I was a pariah or had personality odor (PO) because no one wanted to talk to me. I got emails warning me that I was going to be fired for questioning the practice. I am sorry, when something does not seem right, I have to question it. I am not going to end up like the Apple employees jumping out the window to make a point after years of abuse. So I went to my Western Principal to speak to her. She immediately acted nervous and strange and told me she could not address my concerns and that I needed to speak with the Foreign Affairs Coordinator. So I sent him a text asking to speak with him later that day. He agreed and told me to come to his office at 4pm.

This guy is a real putz. He has the body of Mayor McCheese and the face of a pudgy rat. He looks like he is wearing a brown Joey Heatherton wig that has been frosted with silvery blonde paint. His eyes look like they have been through a botched tuck job and his teeth need to be replaced as they look like a wooden set borrowed from George Washington himself. When I went to his office, he told me that he wanted to also talk with the High School Assistant Principal. Now he looks like a beefy Seth McFarlane.

When we got to his office, his computer was angled away from him with the screen facing the chair they ushered me to sit in. I looked on the screen and there was my memo. Some weasel teacher had forwarded it to them. I suppose they thought turning me and my “union” touting memo would gain them a few points. In a split second I decided not to let them intimidate me. So I sat down – my years of acting training at the Lee Strasberg Institute came in handy. For 4 years, I had to sit in an orange plastic chair learning to relax every muscle in my body so the instructor could lift an arm or a leg without resistance. The purpose was to relax the body at will and have a heightened sense of the self and the body. So now whenever I am nervous, I can sit and appear relaxed. If I feel my eyes strain or my hands tense, I am immediately aware and relax them. So I sat down in the chair and smiled looking at the screen and calmly said, “Oh, I see you have my memo. Great. I thought I was going to have to explain it to you. I hope you had the chance to review it.”
I could see my cool reaction took them by surprise because they immediately looked at each other and there was an awkward silence. I broke it by stating, “Before we start. I want you both to know I was warned by several teachers that I would be fired for writing this memo and that others had been fired in the past for speaking up. Therefore, if that is the case, I want you to know that I cannot work in an environment where employees are not allowed to question practices that they feel are unfair. If that is the case here, then we should part company now because this is not an environment for me. Let me know that now so we are not wasting both of our time.”

Again, there was an awkward silence. I was told by my dear sister, many years ago that the person who controls the silence has the upper hand. So after my opening statement, I remained silent and looked each one in the eye. Finally the HS assistant principal thanked me for writing such a clear and well documented memo. He appreciated that I took the time to point out the sections of the contract and the law. It is something that he can use when discussing these points with management. The foreign affairs person commented that he was surprised too how well I had explained the issues and supported it with law.

They launched into a speech telling me that this practice is cultural – it is the Chinese way. I countered with my belief that it is not cultural but bad or unfair business practice. I stated that if you look at the history of the formation of labor unions that “culture” of exploiting workers had also been the norm in many countries. Therefore, I could not accept that it was merely part of Chinese culture. Then I pulled out my computer and opened the document I had that summarized the new Labor Laws in China written by a US firm. In that document, the statutes related to Chinese holidays were addressed, over-time pay, and the requirement for at least 1 day of rest per week. Based on that, I could not agree that requiring us to make up work days lost due to national holidays or requiring us to work the weekends before and after the holiday are required by statute. In essence, the school is requiring teachers to work 9 days straight for two weeks. If you make us work, the school must pay us double our hourly rate for the weekend work, and further we have to have 1 day off.

Then they wanted to see the document. They seemed shocked that I had it. They started reading through it. Then the assistant principal started double talking about how our pay had been raised significantly. I said that I could not speak to that except to say that I was told when the offer was made that I would have Chinese holidays off, a winter break, and a summer break as paid holidays. Never was I told that I had to work extra days for this benefit. Further if it is the legal requirement, I should have been told that at that time. If I had been told, I would not have taken the job, and I bet many other teachers would have done the same. In essence, I feel like I have been duped. I was made one offer and sent a contract reflecting that offer, then when I get here, the terms have been unilaterally changed. It’s like a bait and switch and it does not feel right. Besides, I was aware of other schools in China where the teachers get the holidays and do not have to make up the time. So why do we?

Then they started asking me if they could not get this policy changed, what would be acceptable. I told them that I had to be paid the correct amount of over-time pay or perhaps they could look at shaving off my end date so that I could leave early. Then the foreign affairs person said he would have to look at what the law is in Foshan because we are governed by Foshan. So I said I would look into it. Thank god for my sister. She has access to tons of law firms and sits in the catbird seat of connecting firms with corporations. When I called her for help because I could not find anything on the law in Foshan, she had two avenues to pursue to get this information and one was a lawyer in Foshan that she had just met.

Now, to my third conundrum of the week, the majority of students in my 4th grade classes are just wild animals. By the end of the week, they reek; they do not listen; they hate to speak or listen to English; and they refuse to participate. They don’t even listen to the Chinese teacher. There is one girl in the class who is the leader. She is constantly staring at herself in the mirror. She has puffy cheeks and is constantly rolling her eyes. I call her Peppermint Patty. She bosses the other girls around and has deemed herself the queen of the classroom. Her sidekick is a fat girl with a Beatles’ cut who constantly wears a dress and a frown. I call her Puddin’ Face. Well, on Friday, Peppermint Patty refused to participate and would not stop talking. When I told her to follow the rules, she rolled her eyes and went back to her conversation. I told her to stand up and move to another area of the room away from her friends. She refused. Then the other students started acting up following her lead. I made them all stand and put them out of my room until they behaved. PP kept rolling her eyes at me. She would not listen to the Chinese teacher. So the Chinese teacher sent one of the students to get their homeroom teacher. So while we waited for the homeroom teacher, the entire class stood in a line outside in the heat and baking sun. Finally the homeroom teacher came and spoke to PP, but PP turned her back to her teacher. When the homeroom teacher tried to turn her around, PP held onto the railing so she could not be moved. They argued back on forth about her behavior. Puddin’ Face decided to tell me what was being said. PP was complaining that she did nothing wrong and did not want to apologize. Finally the teacher pulled PP over to me and told her to apologize. PP started crying and refused. Finally she offered a weak apology in Chinese but refused to look at me. I told the homeroom teacher that she could not come back until she could follow the rules. By this time there was about 5 minutes left for class. The rest came in and we went over a few things before they were dismissed. I was never happier to say good-bye.

Hopefully next week will be better.