Chapter 2

“The Oral English Teacher, Wilson Edwards”

二

Despite studying at a 2nd tier college, Lijian was highly impressed by his professors. They were all party members. And they were fluent in English, most speaking with clean, clear British accents. In contrast to many of Lijian’s classmates, who’d sit slouched, sleeping or playing on their phones during lectures, Lijian sat in the front row of every class, sitting upright, straight as a bolt, hanging on his teachers’ every word.

There was one class, though, he detested. His Oral English class. And this was because it was conducted by a man named Wilson Edwards. A foreigner. A cockroach of a man! It was actually the first and only foreigner Lijian had ever met. And the foreigner was just as disgusting as Lijian could have imagined.

The foreign teacher Wilson was a middle-aged white man who’d show up to class in rock band T-shirts and dirty, rumpled blue jeans, flip flops. In addition to the man’s slovenly attire, his appearance was also suspect. He had a hulking potato of a nose, fleshy bags under his electric-blue eyes, and a receding hairline of scruffy, dandruffy, salt and pepper hair. He was thick in the waist, too, with a floppy beer belly hanging over his belt, protruding so far that if he were a female, he’d probably be mistaken as pregnant.

The foreigner often smelled of liquor and did nothing in the class except sit in a chair at the front of the room, playing children’s games with the college students. Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Duck Duck Goose. Simon Says. His most earnest attempt at teaching would be to write a word on the blackboard, in a childish scrawl, often misspelling words, then attempting to have a conversation with the class, about the word, the stupid slob sitting down and asking, “So do you guys like barbaque?”

Worse yet, most of Lijian’s classmates were girls, and for some unexplainable reason, the girls LOVED their foreign teacher. They’d laugh hysterically at everything the teacher said, as if he were a comedian. They’d even smile and snap silly selfies with him. It all made Lijian sick. Sick! Did the girls need new glasses? Did they not see what a dog’s fart, what a scoundrel the man was? What was he even doing in China, teaching Oral English? Why wasn’t he back in HIS country?

Everything about the class made Lijian’s blood boil, had him hot with resentment. He’d rather skip the class altogether, do something more useful with his time, like studying Xi Jinping Thought or Marxism. But he knew the college monitored attendance, and he couldn’t risk losing any morality points. He couldn’t and wouldn’t risk anything that might imperil his future party application.