Broken English

In "Broken English" I tell what happened the time I tried to be an English teacher, what went wrong, what hostilities occurred and what almost caught fire. I'll tell you why I should have gotten in trouble but didn't and why some people suspected me for no reason. I never thought it was going to be easy or anything, but then I wasn't trying to be an English teacher in a familiar place under normal circumstances. You see, after nearly finishing college I went on a little adventure over to China, leaving the western world completely for the first time. There are other countries I probably could have gone to, but I wasn't going all that way just to be a teacher. I was also going to discover. Those high school and college years that should have been some of the best years of my life were actually rather painful and empty, causing me to wonder whether all that suffering was just part of life or if there was some way to overcome or avoid it. I took some classes in western philosophy, theology even, but found it all quite meaningless. I wanted to go past the familiar and find a better way. I can tell you everything that happened right It didn't go the way it was supposed to.
I received very little information about the city I was going to. I knew only that it was called Tianjin, that it was heavily industrial and that somebody would pick me up at the airport. From the minute I landed something didn't seem quite right. The trouble started right away when I found out I wasn't the kind of teacher they expected. They seemed totally unaware of it though, which just made it all much worse. The authorities who should have been watching me closely seemed to pay me no attention at all. Some of them, in fact, were so anonymous they were impossible to identify. It was awfully difficult, but in that time I got to know all kinds of people, the other teachers, some of my students as well as exchange students from all over. Those who did suspect me, my erroneous neighbors mostly, watched me closely but for no valid reason. I did some sneaking around over there, sure, but it's not what it sounds like. I was just doing some petty trafficking in counterfeit goods and trying to make enough money to travel during summer vacation.
Sometimes it was terrible. I'll tell you what happened in Building 55. I'll tell you about the garbage in the field, the mentally ill woman in the taxi and the murky water. I'll even tell you who died. Sometimes it wasn't serious at all though. I'll tell you about the syndicate I joined and how we bought a giant toy washing machine. I'll tell you about the international duck debate, what countries were represented, what the issues were and who drank the most beer. I'll also tell you how I encountered such unknown beauty over there it changed the way I thought of the world and my place in it. Then I'll tell you how two bundles of incense and a colorfully painted Buddha also changed the way I look at the world. It has been quite an experience writing "Broken English". I hope reading it will be too.