Dear Diary,

This morning Good Buddy Roy invited me for breakfast to discuss a job opportunity. Through Shanghai’s contorted channels of guanxi (networked friends with benefits) one of his friends was enlisted to find a creative director for The Toy Factory, a manufacturer of inflatable sporting goods and toys. Good Buddy Roy was now presenting me with this opportunity. 

With any opportunity one must conduct a pro/con analysis: what is good and bad about the current state. What opportunities are possible in the future state and are these worth the chaos that typically accompanies transition? My current situation is nice and easy, but not without problems. The new opportunity is an epic challenge.

I currently teach design courses at Shanghai’s most prestigious design school, however, amongst my colleagues the school is referred to as The Scheme. The Scheme’s official tagline “Success by Design” is a total contradiction considering the school’s a business first and foremost. The school’s real mission is to get as much cash out of the students and reinvest it in the owner’s other ventures, which I completely understand. The Scheme’s value proposition is imported teachers with classes taught in English for students who aspire to depart the mainland for offshore opportunities. However, beyond the imported teachers, The Scheme doesn’t provide the equipment technically required to operate a design school. For example, the office computers are too old to run the software required by the curriculum. The software is also pirated and constantly breaking down. The internet barely works. The desks are too high for the chairs, the chairs are made of cardboard and not designed to accommodate eight consecutive hours of use. The buildings are literally falling apart and the toilets are unbearable. Still need to get the job done, teachers need to be very creative when planning classes without equipment. We also must make our students very happy, they are paying customers after all. Imagine photography classes without cameras and strobe lights, video production without video cameras. The Scheme’s cost-cutting strategies are so pervasive that I am perpetually surprised there’s poo-poo-paper in the potties.

But I like teaching, it’s a lot like stand-up. There’s a paying audience I need to entertain with presentations and punchlines, that must transcend our cultural divides. I also like the hours of work, about 18 a week. But the cash-money is so-low. Life for the most part is comfortable at the school however, I am paranoid about being fired due to the fact that The Scheme is literally running a surveillance operation to track EVERYONE. While it’s mandatory to be in the office, I haven’t spent more than 60 consecutive minutes at my office desk over the last two years. In my defense, the office is intense because my colleagues are constantly complaining about crazy culture shock. I too suffered crazy culture shock, and I’m empathetic to their experiences, but I’m over it. I should note that employee turnover at the school is very high. New teachers arrive and realize they’ve been Shanghaied, then disappear without notice, catching flights home after a few short weeks. During my two years, I have seen my entire department turnover not once but twice. I get it, traveling around the world for a new beginning, full of optimism and enthusiasm only to realize that The Scheme is a sham. Culture shock then sets in and with no psychological support they slowly or quickly go insane.

And the Scheme appears to genuinely enjoy torturing teachers. If you were to meet a teacher from The Scheme alone in a dark bar they would go on for hours, much like I am now, complaining about their adversity – like how Satan, the head accountant refused to pay their salary because they didn’t punch a timecard. Timecards track teachers and make sure they are always in the office suffering from the dysfunctional computers and desks that are too high for the cardboard chairs. The Scheme’s official policy is that teachers must punch the timecard every day or else lose half to a full day’s salary depending on the teachers’ nationality. My Southeast Asian colleagues suffer much worse than Western-white-folk. This brings us to The Scheme’s salary structure which has a distinctly racist dimension: American’s make more than Canadians, Canadians more than Europeans, Europeans get more than Australians, and our African and South East Asian friends are paid the worst.

While teachers have it bad, so do the students: broken chairs, overbooked classrooms, not enough computers or chairs, a library with no books that’s rarely open, illegal software, the list goes on… Unfortunately for the students, they don’t realize how bad it is until it’s too late and they are halfway in their programs. Most stick with it because they’ve paid so much that what’s the point of stopping. Yes, the students are a bitter bunch and they can’t complain for they could ruin the reputation of the school and risk devaluing their very investment.

Thanks for hearing me out Dear Diary, I think I’ll take up Good Buddy Roy and join The Toy Factory…