To Elizabeth Regina.

There are some things in China that just flat out amaze me.
I'm not talking about things like 长城 (Great Wall) or 颐和园 (Summer Palace), which are of course in and of themselves splendiferous, i'm talking about things like blatant and unabashed racial discrimination.

Let me, for example, give you a direct quote from an email I just receieved from a potential employer:

"Only white-skinned teachers will be hired."

I'm not really even sure that I can make a comment on that stipulation. All I really have is-wow, nice. Bravo and round of applause. The balls on that statement sincerely impress me. In fact, they (in all of their elephantitis induced glory) almost impress me as much as the business call I took today in the midst of which the mother of a prospective student suggested that I use a British accent when i teach her son. Cause, you know, it sounds nicer. And because that is so not absolutely ridiculous and bordering on rather insulting.

At this request, as you can only imagine, my silence was thunderous.

But then, ludicrous as the request was, it briefly crossed my mind that it might be incredibly fun to spend an hour faking a british accent for pay. Of course, it would be horrible for the student, who would probably come out with pronunciation like the love baby of Sean Connery and The Crocodile Hunter (which is what i sound like when i try to do a British accent) but hey it'd be kind of fun. And then I came back to my senses and told her to maybe find someone actually from the United Kingdom. I refrained from asking her if maybe she could start speaking to me with a Shanghai accent. Or better yet, in Cantonese. I mean, Mandarin and Cantonese are really just dialects of the same language, so if she can speak to me in Mandarin she should be able to manage Canto too....right? Oh, thats not how langauge works? Oops. My bad.

Speaking of the United Kingdom (and switching trains a little), I got into a barfight last night. With two British guys. Which i may or may not have incited. Our interaction started out nice enough with a toast towards Queen and Country (hence the title of the post), but then I said something about Margaret Thatcher and Great Danes. Followed closely by something about Tories and black holes where your heart should be. Now, you guys may or may not know this, but one of my favorite activities when confronted with British people is to commence Tory bashing. Usually this goes over alright because, well, most people I know are communist tree hugging lefties (which is what the Brits from last night dubbed me) and wouldn't be caught dead helping a Tory from a burning building. Unfortunately for all involved, the Brits I met last night were coddled right wing soulless Tories (which may or may not be what I called them) and didn't take well to me insulting Maggie.

I think at this point, lest you all get the wrong idea about my political savviness, I should mention that everything i know about Margaret Thatcher and Tory party i learned from this . Don't judge. It's very informative film.

I think I should also mention that one of the guys had just graduated from Cambridge (major, political science) and the other from Kings (major, you guessed it, political science).

Luckily i'm good at fooling people into thinking I know what I'm talking about (this blog, case in point) and so was able to sustain a half an hour to hour long (rather passionate) debate about welfare reform in England circa 1995. And it probably didn't hurt that it was about 3 in the morning and we'd all been out for quite a while. It most definately didn't hurt that I'd spent the previous half an hour talking up the bartender, who kept sending incindiery beverages our way, slowly but surely steering us away from coherent trains of thought.

And I may or may not have ended it all by throwing my clutch down, pushing up my sleeves, and declaring that the only way to show an illegitamte tory his place was by arm wrestling.

Cause I'm an idiot like that.

love&luz
jess

*note: i don't really have anything against tories, its just really fun to rile up british people. they're so cute with their quaint and outdated english!