Sticking It to the Man

Here’s a tip for all you ESL teachers in China. When you decide that your tenure at the school you are teaching at is drawing to a close, delay telling anyone at the school (Namely your Foreign Affairs Officer, or any teachers that are vying for your sweet “Foreign Teacher Liaison” position.) until the last possible minute. Better yet, don’t tell anyone at all. Take flight under cover of dark. Escape like a thief in the night. I say this because if your school is like mine, and from what my 3 readers have told me, they (schools in China) are all similar, they will try to bilk as much money out you as possible. They don’t see you off as warmly as they welcomed you. No, they release you from your contract as if they were forced to hire you from some prison rehabilitation program, and they KNOW you’re back to your old bootlegging ways.

I’ve been teaching here at Zhejiang University City College for the past two years. Every semester I was highly rated and well liked by both students and faculty. I almost never missed class, barring sickness, and really bad baijiu hangovers. I was always prepared and never lost my temper with students. I also never dated any. My composure and attitude towards my classes was almost always professional yet upon the announcement that I was leaving the bills came pouring in for excess utilities usage.

Since ZUCC began hiring foreign teachers, no one has ever paid a utilities bill. Until now. You see they haven’t changed the contract since they began hiring foreign teachers 3 years ago, yet utility costs have quadrupled in that time. We also had a particularly long, cold winter this year, so my heaters were running quite often. I have no doubt I went over the alloted RMB 200 they provide per month for utilities, but I would greatly prefer a monthly bill as opposed to one yearly bill they calculated at almost RMB 1800. They slid this under my door, at the end of the month when I have the least amount of money, and gave me 4 days to pay. Thanks a bunch.

I told them flat out, “Hey, I know what the contract says about excessive fees and I’ll pay it not like anyone else ever has, but for future reference and for the well being of the rest of the foreign teachers here, why not send them notices when they are going to run over on their utilities allowance and send them smaller monthly bills as opposed to not saying anything for 12 months and then dumping a big bill (with no documentation validating the charges on it [that’s right, I even speak in parentheticals]) on them 2 months before they return home.” So here I am, their best teacher ever (see above post), trying to leave the school as amicably as possible, and they douche me with this massive bill right before summer (we don’t get paid over summer). How am I supposed to pay this and still live comfortably on the meager salary (a pittance really) I’m paid.

Then it hit me. I’ll pay’em in jiao.

For those of you who don’t know (mom and dad) the jiao is the second smallest denomination of money China has next to the fenwhich is completely fuckin’ worthless. Seriously, back in the U.S. when Publishers’ Clearinghouse sends you the fake check for millions of fake dollars and at the bottom it states, “actual value 1/20 th of a penny,” that fake check is actually more valuable than a fen, that’s how worthless it is (please don’t check the math on that I’m just trying to make a point). Realizing that collecting that much fen in the time permitted would be near impossible to pay said bill I decided jiao was the way to go.

In two years I’ve collected a lot of jiao, but hardly the 18,000 I needed to fully pay the bill. However, I did have a lot floating around and I wasn’t going to waste them by just letting them continue to collect dust in my house so I got them all together and bagged them up. If I’m going to be the only person to pay this bill at least I’m going to make them work for it. Needless to say, even with the donations from other teachers (and I can’t thank you guys enough) here I fell far short of the amount I truly wanted, but I had way more than enough to piss off the corrupt bill collectors I had to pay. Here’s a picture of my actual payment with the bill:

Needless to say they weren’t pleased when I presented them my payment, but I explained to them that money’s money and if they expect the teachers to pay suspect utility bills then they need to get used to counting jiao. I got to tell you, it felt pretty sweet. It took’em over an hour to count. Mess with the bull, you get the horns.