Anyone who has been a foreign teacher in a small Asian town knows how easy it is to get bored. This coupled with the fact that I have a predisposition towards mischief and a blinding hatred for many of my kids does not generally mix for a peaceful school environment. Still not being able to speak Chinese very well and the locals still not used to my unusually white skin I have been forced to entertain myself in a variety of ways, my favorite being coming up with ways to prank and otherwise torment the Chinese teachers and some of the children.
On a lazy Friday afternoon with nothing better to do and restless from the lack of drinking I decided to test my students problem solving skills with a little game. I call this game the “Hanging Scavenger Hunt”. This is where I get a ladder, some string and about thirty hard candies that the children love and go hang the candies just out of reach all around the school and surrounding dorm rooms. The corridors in the halls of the school are very wide with high vaulted ceilings and in most of them the heat ducts are tucked away in the corner with various straps and hangers in which I can tie candy on to. Included in this is a lot of the classroom halls are somewhat open to the open air so I can go a floor above and tape or tie candy to hang down in view of lower floors.
I like to start while the children are still in class and I will go with the only ladder in the school down every hall and begin hanging the candy both from the ceiling and from the lower reaches of the balcony like parts. This entire time the children will be watching me do this wondering what I am doing and straining to look out the window to see my work. They will be ignoring their schoolwork though and will get in to trouble for doing this from the resident teachers in every class. This is part one of my prank/game; they get into trouble for doing something their natural Chinese instincts order them to do. I have never once seen a Chinese person leave an unknown situation alone, adults too cannot stand mysteries. This whole culture has to know what is going on with everyone else at every given time and so it has bred a nation full of gossiping old women. They will see me with candy early on, become excited from it and start bouncing in their seats desperate to get out of class and start the hunt. Cue part two to my fun, the teacher being Chinese is distracted by what I am doing; this makes them more aggravated towards the students and in turn escalates the situation.
I finish off as many of the thirty hanging candies as I can; my speed enhanced having prepared many of them before setting out to do this. Having done this before I know simply looping a string around an exposed screw or bolt will not be sufficient for this game. The students are stupid but they are resourceful and will easily get any untied candy by throwing objects until it is dislodged. This originally was insulting to me, no way was I going to be outsmarted by a bunch of miscreants so now I find secure pieces and tightly wind the string and tie it off securely. Although more work is involved the payoff is completely worth it.
Which is the beginning to part three of my plan; the end of the class bell tones throughout the school. All two hundred of the children come screaming out of the classrooms in a mob of chaos, many straight towards me putting my equipment back in my classroom. For the most part they want to know what I was doing and where I put the candy. I simply shrug and tell them to go look as I laugh and lock the ladder away.
The following twenty minutes of recess is a large reason why I am hated throughout this part of the world now. Some would call me a bad person, others would say misled by a generation of misfits and MTV and all of them would be wrong. I am simply a bored person in an uninteresting place with bland people to associate with, looking for some entertainment… and I am a bad person. Students start to find the hiding places of the candy and start dragging out desks and chairs to stack to try to get the candy. This is not to be, I planned better then that carefully gauging the height of the tallest student and hanging the candy beyond their reach even if they were to stand on something. Many tactics are tried to outsmart the douchebag of a teacher the most hilarious include taping cleaning tools together, stacking poorly made Chinese furniture and forming unwieldy human pyramids. The latter by far is what I derive the most amusement out of, often the pyramid tumbles to the ground on a tangle of limbs and pissed of Chinese children. The other teachers having “cleverly” deduced what I was doing frown at my hysterical laughing, but as long as I am not hurting the kids (much) they don’t care. The more intelligent and enterprising students will ask for help from one of the teachers displeased by this chain of events. The teachers, always out to thwart me are quick to lift the students into positions where the candy can be tenuously untied.
Few if any of the candies are retrieved by the end of the twenty minutes and a lot of somber pissed off students will return to class empty handed. Wiping the tears from my eyes I will return to the office and play Call Of Duty until the next recess and repeat the process, only this time I will tell the gullible little jerks that instead of hanging candy I have spent the time hiding it all around the school and they can find it easier then trying to reach the hanging ones. How many you ask? I tell all of the students that I have hidden upwards of a hundred candies in numerous areas everywhere within the compound. I have not in fact done this, which is why it is phase four of my fun. They will waste their time fruitlessly looking everywhere ignoring the candy that actually does exist. This is where my promotion from bad person to appalling example of Canadians happens.
The candy will remain attached to the ceiling until the janitor lady takes down all of the strings with a ladder that night bitterly cursing my name. I am redeemed somewhat by the fact that the janitor will take the candy home to give to her impoverished children. Sometimes I do have a benevolent agenda even if it only affects two or three Chinese children too poor to go to school… Nah I will probably just go watch the students vainly try to go after the candy again with Wild Mike the security guard on the security tapes he has of the compound.
By: Alex Murray
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