The Journey is the Goal

Having worked in China for over a year now I would say that during this time I have become significantly desensitised to practices which, back in Sydney, we could classify as being ‘wrong’. Now you could say, ‘it’s a different culture and things work differently here’, but I’m not one of those people who think right and wrong are relative terms. That said, even given the context I don’t think it is acceptable in either Australia or in China for people to say one thing and do the opposite and I think, perhaps to a smaller extent, I don’t think either culture praises people for maintaining habits like spitting or not lining up. However, unlike these examples, there is one aspect about living in China that goes directly contrary to what I have been brought up to believe growing up in Sydney which, given recent revelations, sickens me somewhat.

To a degree, since I started working in China I’ve come to accept that while I do have a degree majoring in Chinese Studies as well as hold an ESL teaching certificate and am a native English speaker, from an employer’s perspective I am as much being employed to the position on the basis of my qualifications as I am because I am a caucasian. In my last job this wasn’t much of an issue because I didn’t think this really was the case, my colleagues were from all over the world and of a whole range of ethnicities, although prior to arriving in China I was warned that I should expect that sort of mentality both from the average person on the street and from employers. Certainly when it comes to classes, ethnicity can have a significant impact both to one’s teaching and social experiences here, but in my mind there has always been a difference between an institution distinguishing people on the basis of skin colour and the prejudices of the average person on the street.

What has spurned me to write about this has been a recent discovery at my present place of work in which I overheard a conversation among management regarding the eligibility of new employees. The details of the conversation were that the school is presently looking for new staff and as such is posting many job ads as well as collecting as many resumes as it can. On each resume they receive they require a photo to be attached. One such resume they received was from a person in Beijing, but he didn’t attach a photo claiming he was concerned about the security of his internet, as such he wanted to come in in person for an interview. As one of my managers said to the other, the name of the person in question was Spanish in origin and he was concerned that he might be of Filipino descent, as such he didn’t meet the ‘ethnicity requirements’ of the job.

At first when I overheard this I felt indifferent, I guess I accepted that being in China and having encountered this mentality before, there wasn’t really anything to be surprised about. It was only after I reflected upon it for a few days that I realised that this was the first time I had actually witnessed what could only be described as blatant institutionalised racism. Now granted of the ten foreign staff working at my school, eight of them are caucasian, one is partly Asian and the last is Hispanic. I couldn’t help but notice this when I first started working there (after living in China a year, seeing lots of pale faces together in the same place in China is truly a spectacle to behold), but I didn’t think much of it at the time. Now, however, I have confirmation that even if a prospective employee did get to a point where they were speaking to one of my managers and it was discovered that they were not ‘of the correct ethnic background’, they would be flatly denied the job.

Thankfully I handed in my notice over a month ago and so, in a couple of weeks, I will no longer be working for them, though I do feel quite dirty about it all the same. Partly because my reasons for leaving are not those that I have mentioned here and partly because my reasons for leaving are due to this mentality prevalent in China. My exact reasons for leaving are because I am unhappy with the number of hours I work, the distribution of these hours throughout the week, the rate of pay I receive for these hours and the rate of overtime pay (which incidently is at a rate lower than regular hours). The thing is that, hmm, well, by Chinese standards, my work conditions are excellent and I get the impression that my employers are perplexed as to why I would want to leave because they perceive that these conditions as being well above average.

I however know that I can earn substantially more money for significantly fewer hours each week, I tell myself it is because I have a degree from a reputable establishment, I have a teaching certificate, I am a native English speaker and I have over a year’s teaching experience, but after going through what I have above, I suspect that even if I didn’t have these things I would still be able to get a better paying job solely because of my skin colour. It makes me feel quite shameful in some respects, but I can’t really see a way out of it, save going into business for myself. I was considering that, given all jobs here require you to submit a resume with a photo I could just not submit the photo and take what comes afterwards. The thing is that I can understand why they want people to attach photos and it does make things much more convenient. No respectable school in China wants an employee with nose piercings, chains, tattoos or dreadlocks and would probably frown on double-platted beards.

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