It’s been a while, but that doesn’t mean “mei banfa” experiences aren’t happening all around me. To the contrary, they are so common that patterns have started revealing themselves. It’s chaos theory over here. I’ll save the insights for another time and give you this overdo dose.

No matter how many degrees, how much money in your account, multinational your company, or big your Benz, Chinese people, all of them - your co-workers, business partners, friends, people on the streets and in the clubs - see you only as one thing: A resource*, and more specifically, an English teacher. It doesn’t matter if you are European and come from a country whose official language is not English.

I promise you, when I go back to the States, any Chinese I see in a suit - proper business people - I’m gonna approach them and say, “oh, have you thought of opening a restaurant? I’d eat lunch there”.

It’s so insulting, but so natural here. It is…mei banfa.

*expanded discussion to come when I have time