I first came to Hong Kong four years ago, straight after finishing my undergraduate degree, and for the same reason, I suppose, that most 18-21 year olds find themselves doing so: I had no idea what else to do, and desperately wanted a break and an adventure after being cooped up in education for so long. So I signed up to teach English to kindergarten children in the New Territories. And consequently hated it.
Well, no, that is not entirely true. From this vantage I can look back with some fondness and a degree of partiality at the times spent singing, clapping and playing games with two-year olds; at living on the 27th floor of a 40 story building in a shoe box with barred windows, overlooking a fishing village turned concrete jungle; and the live frogs, fowl and seafood in the wet market below, the nonchalant butcher taking his cleaver to them with one hand while drawing on his cigarette with another. I can recall calmly the complete sense of conspicuousness and alienation at being the only gweilos (literally translated as 'white ghosts' ) in that sprawling mass of tower blocks; the first week in the kindergarten, making the children cry and being touched and stroked as if to make sure I was real, and ever after being stared at on buses and trains and misunderstood in the supermarket, or just ignored in the 7/11, while in McDonalds always being given Chicken Nuggets when asking, in your best Cantonese, for Iced Lemon Tea; and never being able to find your way back out of the shopping plaza as the increasing sense of panic sets in that, like Hansel and Gretel, you'll never find your way home out of the forest alive.
So, now when I hear people blithely speak of 'culture shock' I nod and smile and think 'you have no idea.'
Truly having had enough, I left after four months, went home, got several, various jobs and was about to embark on postgraduate studies when I realised, as so often happens, that I didn't have a penny to pay for it; and so, ironically (I guess), found myself coming all he way back to take up a job in Central, Hong Kong, teaching English Literature and Language to international school students. A far cry from my previous teaching experience, but (strangely) the same problem remained of trying to order cold lemony beverages in MacDonalds and always being given something else. Something about that drink they just don't want - or expect you to want - to have.
Now, I remember the day that I arrived in HK (again) vividly. It happened shortly after BA tried to poison me with one of their revolting breakfast omelettes, dripping with condensation and which, at 4pm local time, was never going to sit right, that I stepped off the plane and straight into a wall of August heat. But if that made it difficult to breathe, like wading through a warm bath, it was nothing compared to the slow-burning furnace of latent hostility that was awaiting me. For, apparently moments prior to my arrival, my new employers had just broken up, thus ending a four year romance and putting their business relationship too firmly on the rocks. And, as if this - obviously not quite spelled out to me by either of them until some days, or possibly weeks (I forget quite), in - as if this wasn't bad enough, I was staying with the male half of that once-upon-a-time partnership and could not for the life of me understand why I seemed to be the object of the female's jealousy and rage. Was it just me? Was I making it up? But she seems so nice and they keep saying - over the many dinners we endured together during those first few weeks as I flat hunted and settled into new life, new job - how pleased they are to have me there.
Well, looking back it can't have been a bundle of laughs for them; but if she had her reasons to resent me sleeping every night on the sofa of her only-just ex-boyfriend, then I can't say I was too pleased about it either. Sharing a sofa with two pug dogs in hot and humid weather in a room in which the A/C is timed to go off just as jet-lag is kicking in, and waking up sweaty and covered in hair not your own is, needless to say, not much fun. But one person, I know, had real reason to be grateful for my arrival and that was my male boss, host and owner of pugs: Don Quixote, who had, up until I was drafted in, been English teacher to the poor unfortunate students in his care. And I say poor unfortunates, for The Don, you see, did - or I should say, does, for it is not a fact that has undergone much change over the years - not read. I do not doubt that he can read, though there is no actual evidence to prove this conclusively, but just that.... as he says, when there has been a film made of it, and someone's kindly Sparknoted it, why would you want to waste your time on the book? Well, as an English student who was made to read Spenser's The Faerie Queene one summer and all of Shakespeare the next, I can quite sympathise that reading takes time. Unless you're Stephen Fry, it does not happen by osmosis and usually requires slightly more than 90 minutes concentration over popcorn and diet coke. For example, if one Shakespeare play takes a company of actors three hours to enact, how long would 37 plays take one person to read? But I leave the maths to you. As to the rest...Never to have read Pride and Prejudice, Bleak House ... Not even to have heard of Marlowe? It is best not to go there. Anger boils, rage seethes....The thought of teaching a book you've never read....! Deep breaths. Well, it'll be okay. You're here now.
So I came on board, moved out of Quixote's as quickly as I could into my own apartment over-looking the sea, joined the gym and became heavily invested in all forms of yogic breathing to counter-act the daily doses of attention deficient and hyper activity to be found in our office, not to mention inanity - and that was just my boss. Favourite Donnisms, of just those first few weeks, include the day he introduced me to his gym, Fitness First, gave me a guided tour and was just about to leave me to relax over my first workout when I felt him lingering outside the female changing room doors, not quite wanting, it seemed, to move off. So I lingered too for those awkward few seconds until he must have finally summoned up the courage or found the right words to say in a leaned in whisper: "Just to warn you: There might be naked ladies in there." And with that, left me standing there speechless, hardly daring to laugh. Was he being serious? Was he joking? Was he getting off on the idea or showing real concern about an English girl's modesty? Well, I guess I will never know for sure, but evidence collated in the months and years since point to the former. But, if that was funny, it was nothing compared to the time he offered to bring into work an old pair of swimming goggles for me to use at the plush rooftop pool of the Sheraton Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui. I thought it was very kind and generous of him and was looking forward greatly to getting my stroke back up to speed under the water, when I came into work to find an enormous snorkelling mask on my desk. Bright florescent green rubber and thick, barely see-through lens. I held them aloft with a loud laugh, exclaiming something along the lines of 'what the f*ck are these?' To which my female boss turned round and replied in dead-pan, matter of fact earnestness, 'Don said you wanted goggles for swimming.' Err, well, yes, but.... did he really think they were what I'd had in mind? and was I really going to offend him by giving them back? Well, give them back I certainly did. I could not with a straight face even pretend that they were anything but ridiculous, even though I appeared to be the only one to think so. After that curious incident, I never did get around to buying proper goggles - nor have I to this date - but I do occasionally look with interest at the eyewear of those other bathers in The Sheraton pool and I can assure you I have seen some strange sights, including most recently a man in wetsuit and rubber gloves resembling Toad of Toad Hall doing aquatic exercises while perving on my sister; but never have I seen any of those fit, burnished, athletic Hong Kong species swimming breast stroke while wearing snorkelling gear. I just don't think, even amongst the most earnest of swimmers, it would be done. Enormous frog-type gloves, perhaps. Snorkelling masks, no.
But despite this, and a host of ever-increasingly bizarre and inane encounters, I found myself arriving back in Hong Kong for the third time earlier this year to, once again, take up residence at their school, but this time as English Teacher Number Two. I must say the presence of just one other quiet, book-reading, ever so slightly eye-brow raising English accomplice - a fellow conspirator, not least in detecting and drawing out irony wherever it lurks - makes life a little more bearable. But not so much so that I have not been casting about for other jobs. I tell this to you now, of course, in the strictest of secrecy: I am an English teacher on a great escape, planning a jail-break. My success or failure, however, is yet to be seen... but herein lies, in my experience, how best to be an English teacher: harbour rebellion in the bosom of your soul and nurture it in others - wherever you may find it.
