[Hemingway]

Huaibei Coal Industry Teachers' College, Huaibei, Anhui Province, CHINA

Although I am a newbie to this forum, I am not a newbie ESL teacher in China.

The city of Huaibei is located in the northern part of the Anhui province, a poor undeveloped province even to most Chinese. The city of Huaibei doesn’t possess the cosmopolitanism of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, or Suzhou. Places to see are few and far between. There’s Xiangshan Park, which has a temple. Shanghai lies 10 hours away by train and Beijing 12 hours away. Weekend trips to those cities aren’t an option if you teach on a Monday.

Since it is in a heavy coal producing region, the air quality of Huaibei is very poor and on the whole, the city tends to be grimy. Other parks consist of tiles and a few electric palm trees. Western amenities are very few and include: Budweiser beer and Coke. Night life is practically non-existent except for the standard “massage-prostitution” parlors near the train station. There are some good restaurants and a few good outdoor tent diners. There is one KFC, recently constructed 2 years. They also have a great many VCD shops to wile away your time in isolation since throughout my employment only 2 to 3 foreign teachers were hired.

Quite a few inhabitants openly spit, urinate, defecate, and blow their nostrils in public, and littering is non-stop. Sanitation is poor. The hospital is dirty. Of course the incessant cattle calls of “hello, the hostile stares, the gawks, and laughter were the predominant behavior of the residents both on-campus and off-campus whenever I left the confines of my apartment.

The accommodations of my campus apartment were similar to what was described in my contract: computer with broadband internet access; but no printer, a microwave, a television, and kitchen utensils. The furniture was hardwood, without soft cushions, and incredibly uncomfortable; but after complaining to my FAO he did procure two sofa chairs. Most everything was in working order, although old and grimy and maintained only after a bit of prodding.

I always received my salary on time, as well as my vacation allowance as prescribed in my contract.

All water was routinely shut down to the apartment around 11 pm every night, so late night showers weren’t an option and neither was flushing the toilet from 11 pm until 5:15 am. Occasionally, power would be shut off to the apartment from 4 to 8 hours every 2 months.

Mafia-zation would best describe the administration and the Foreign Affairs Office. The school administrators were essentially hold outs from the Cultural Revolution, deeply mired in antiquated perceptions of foreigners, and never willing to go beyond those stereotypes. The modus operandi was guanxi (relationships) and houmen (getting things done surreptiously) in which any educational standards were not valued, nor did they even exist. Bribes were very prevalent to encourage the on-going construction of the college, increasing enrollment, and increasing profit. Of course, the later can be argued that this observation is not any different from most public colleges and universities in China, and it’s not my country and thus, not any of my business, but the degree in which it was exercised here was blatantly obvious, even to a foreigner who wears relativistic blinders.

Administrators often had lavish banquets while students languished in absolute squalor. The administrators did not want to have anything to do with foreign teachers, nor did they care—until they wanted foreign teachers hired to fulfill the government requirement. In fact, many times I was asked to write web advertisements enticing fresh foreign meat to come teach, (and these advertisements are still being used). Here’s one of them:

The college is located in the city of Huaibei, in the far northern part of the Anhui Province, here in The Peoples Republic of China. The city of Huaibei is approximately five hours north by train from the Anhui Provincial capitol city of Hefei and 10 hours south by train from Beijing as well as 10 hours northwest by train from Shanghai.
The city of Huaibei has approximately 1.9 million people within its municipal vicinity and is mostly an industrial city, consisting of textile and beer factories as well as a power plant. Although Huaibei does lack the cosmopolitanism of Beijing and Shanghai, it can give the foreigner a better insight into the daily life and culture of the Chinese people. Huaibei also has many Chinese restaurants and hotels as well as numerous supermarkets and department stores. The main modes of transportation here in Huaibei are its public bus system as well as numerous taxicab services. Just recently, Huaibei has seen the developments of a few health clubs, which some of our foreign teachers have enthusiastically joined.
Huaibei Coal Industry Teachers College was first established in 1974 and is a fully accredited public college. The campus itself consists of a library, with a well-stocked English book selection, as well as parks, and numerous classroom buildings.
The Foreign Language Department consists of students whose major field of study is English, and will eagerly welcome you to teach them.

Also, you will have to pay for your foreign residence-working z visa, which you will be informed about after your arrival.

They do have a surprisingly well-stocked English library (It’s on the fifth floor of the campus library).

The Foreign Language Department did schedule my classes (American and British Literature courses and Western Culture Survey courses) at good times, usually in the morning or early afternoon; but my classes were overcrowded from between 60 to 70 students. I was never given a roll sheet, but soon learned to take matters into my own hands, developing a roll sheet for each class with their student identification numbers, their Chinese names, their Pynin names, and their English names.

The last two years, the college embarked on an “Adult Education Program where students paid fees, some rarely attended class, and if they did, they were enrolled in classes with regular students whose language skills far exceeded their own.

The language abilities of the regular students varied from poor to excellent. Most Foreign Language students were polite and respectful, some conscientious and diligent about their studies. The classrooms were filthy, strewn with trash and debris, and the ever-present smell of decomposing feces and urine reeked out of the restrooms into the classrooms. There was a janitor, but I never saw her cleaning; usually just sitting out on the steps of the building.

The Foreign Language Department attempted to exploit foreign teachers to increase its department budget; often requesting foreign teachers to teach weekend classes to off campus adult students and paying only a pittance to do so; fortunately, I did have the option of refusing these kinds of classes and did so because these classes exceeded my contractual obligation of 16 hours a week.

I set my own exams, but my exams were proctored by Chinese teachers who never took their duties seriously, resenting it if you stressed they should, and thus cheating was exacerbated. Some students, especially adult students, would suddenly show up for the exam, although I had never seen them in class. Fortunately, because I had a class roll, it was relatively easy to spot them.

I was expected to grade hundreds and hundreds of formal exams without any assistance by the Foreign Language Department. I sucked it up and accepted it because my wife, a Chinese, was employed as a teacher by the Foreign Language Department. Yet, the Foreign Language Department expected her to assist in grading my exams as well as recording the marks, and we both thought this was unfair because she had her own classes and duties. One vice dean even said to her, “You’re half foreign since you married a foreigner, so you should help him.

Also what had been the “The Foreign Teachers’ Office had been commandeered—without prior notice—by the Foreign Language Department to accommodate a Foreign Language Department Administrator.

Without a doubt, the biggest problem of living and working at Huaibei Coal Industry Teachers College was the daily barrage of jeering and harassment from students, faculty, and staff.

For a long time, I made the best effort to ignore such behavior, figuring that this far into the provinces that I had to accept it, that it was a different culture, a different country, and that, for better or for worse, I had married a Chinese, and she was employed there—however, after many incidents, which included students yelling obscenities and being aggressively so, I complained to my Foreign Affairs Officer. He acted concerned, and even went so far as to inform various student campus organizations to make efforts in telling students that such behavior was totally inappropriate.

Later, I found out he NEVER contacted the students or the administration about this recurring problem.

On September 8th 2005, while walking to our classrooms, I was openly harassed, jeered, and assaulted by students from the Physical Education Department, whom were often the very ones who participated actively in this past abusive behavior, but this time, matters escalated. I was kicked, shoved, and slapped by the students. My wife was terribly upset and frightened during this incident.

My Foreign Affairs Officer, who knew about the events that had transpired, chose to ignore the problem as he had in the past. Later, through certain sources, I find out that my FAO had been visited the evening of September 8th by these Physical Education students and the department dean.

I notified the US Consulate in Shanghai about these disturbing events that very day. They contacted the Foreign Affairs Provincial Office in Hefei, the Anhui Provincial Capitol city, as well as the Huaibei Municipality Foreign Affairs Bureau. Without the US consulate’s great assistance, I feel the situation would have been worse; as advised by Consulate officials, I went to the PSB who listened to my wife’s recounting the events, and seemed sympathetic, but weren’t really.

The PSB gave me two choices:

1. I could pursue criminal charges against these students.

2. I could have a meeting with the students and my FAO to get this situation resolved.

I chose the later because I wanted the abusive situation resolved without detriment to the students’ educational future. Besides, things were already ugly enough. The PSB were instrumental in setting up a meeting on September 10th 2005 between us--my wife and I--and my FAO, although my FAO was reluctant to have this meeting, eventually he accepted it. My FAO was surprised when my wife attended this meeting.

The bottom line was my wife and I left after my FAO conducted a criticism meeting in which the Party Secretary of the PE Department, the Campus Security Chief, a representative of the Huaibei Foreign Affairs Bureau, and a few students from the PE Department were present, and it unbelievably smacked of every bad dialogue imaginable from the Cultural Revolution. A choice gem, among many, from my FAO during this meeting, “American students attacked teachers too.”

After that meeting, I briefed a consulate official about how this meeting was conducted, and we were advised to go to a better city and a better school in China.

The only reason I stayed so long was my wife was working there and she had a contract with the department danwei (working unit), which looking back now, both of these reasons were lousy. When the events of September 8th occurred and I found out where I stood after the fiasco of a meeting on the 10th, we chose to leave for our personal safety, but not before my FAO sent me to the PSB to have my working Z visa cancelled. Despite that, through the help of foreign and Chinese friends, I still found employment.

There are, most assuredly, much better colleges and universities to teach in China, where they take their responsibilities toward foreign teachers more seriously, and are certainly more respectful towards them.

You may accept this review with a grain of salt because it greatly conflicts with your idyllic views and believe I have an ax to grind in this review or chalk it up to a preconceived personality disorder, in which whining is a symptom on my part, because you direly want to go to China and are willing to consider any offer. But this review is a very real warning and I urge you to continue your search for a college or university that supports its foreign teachers and takes the responsibilities for their welfare seriously.

Those schools do exist in China, but, unfortunately, Huaibei Coal Industry Teachers' College isn't one of them.