I'm flying home from China just over 8 months after landing in Shenzhen. It has been an interesting experience, difficult at times, but I feel I can come out of it with my head held high.
Although I left my contract early, I didn't let anyone down and fulfilled my obligations up to the 7 May in the Bell office. The whole CAFA IFC program is/was a very Chinese, very false and very abusive excuse for a program. Full of misguided hope, exaggerated aspirations and a lot of fluff and nonsense over content. Some kids, however, are potential studio-owning artists in the making, some showed great determination and promise and took a tremendous stride towards study in the UK or other western civilisation. There are some who will go abroad but struggle, while the rest, around 25% are going nowhere... as hopeless as they were back in September when the course begun, being pumped full of promises about how they going to be miraculously transformed through no effort of their own.
My time with CAFA ended co-incidentally with the big send-off ceremony. Never mind that the 25% still have to attend classes after graduation (true!) and the English program is now all-day instead of just in the mornings. I wanted to document the whole affair, with a fly-on-the-wall expose, juxtaposing hyperbole with criticisms... but everyone had been injected with happy drugs and no-one had a bad word to say about anything. The closest we came was when one excellent student, Jin Weixin, gave a speech saying it had been 'a struggle'. She had been 'paid off', however, with a 10,000 Yuan Scholarship... so she took the money and ran.
Despite not being able to elicit negative comments from the students in a botched attempt to bring down the regime, I managed to get closure as I was fed and watered on the 3rd floor of the CAFA cafe. The students raised a glass and many fellow teachers gave me oodles of compliments. The whole CAFASTROPHE (c) Phil Longwell had ended with smiles and relief... no grudges and no whistle blowing.
The above shows a selection of Bell employees as of Wed 5 May. All but 2 of these people will have quit their jobs by the beginning of next month, leaving Jane Huang (centre) the spineless skipper of a sinking ship. My new line manager, David, has had enough of playing Jane's monkey and will be off to Thailand before the month is out. All the teachers, who were battered and bruised, humiliated and abused behind the scenes, have decided that recent departures are too much to take and will jump ship soon. I will return to the UK and fire missives from a safe distance towards the head office.
Anyway, I had a nice send off at a Thai restaurant on Friday before getting soundly drunk at the Mississippi, a Jianguomen watering hole where everything is 2-for-1. I crashed out at Angela's place for most of the week, stopping over at Lisa's for Thursday night and Saturday night... in an attempt to end things with her as sweetly and peacefully as possible. Despite protestations of leaving and not coming back.. she was still harbouring hopes that I would return to see her in Beijing in 2-3 weeks' time. She nearly persuaded me to change my mind and postpone my return... her preferred return date of 1 July was never viable and I don't want to miss the 2010 FIFA world cup.. and lots of other things besides.
So, it is truly over... I know, because I have managed to escape and get on a plane out of that and head towards an ash-free yet strangely grey Tory-Lib Dem coalition government UK. I never thought I would see the Lib Dems in power... I never thought I would live and work in China... I never thought I would live with a 37-year sociopathic Chinese IT and Solutions Manager. But these have all come true.
I will see you very, very soon!
Over and out.
Teacher Phili xxx
