Hexuan wrote:
I think this qualifies. Names, places, and times have been changed to protect the innocent. Otherwise this account is unembellished.
The sun had just set on another hazy summer day in Nantou as I entered the classroom. After a three-day self-imposed hiatus I was ready to teach. As it turned out, the local police were even more ready.
It was my favorite class. Jamie, sitting in the front row with an angelic look on her face, ran a local tea shop with her sister, who was sitting beside her. Combined, they had convinced me to try my first (and last) deep-fried chicken foot, claws and all. They’d also gotten me hooked on milk tea and thick Taiwanese toast with peanut butter. The other 12 students couldn’t have been more diverse, from the eager 14-year-old boy to the 70-year-old man who could speak only Japanese and Taiwanese but was serious about working on English. Middle-aged housewives, auto mechanics, even a police officer. We all got along well and had a great time in class. They even did their homework, for the most part.
The classroom was on the second floor of a 4-storey building, one floor down from the taofang I called home. We’d known for quite some time that the local foreign affairs police were beginning to crack down on illegal foreign teachers. Back then, in 1991, that was about the only kind there were. I was unique in the area because I was actually applying for a work permit. But when Fabulous Freddy, the underling foreign affairs officer, deported his first victim after taking her out for dinner the night before, I stopped teaching immediately and told the boss I wouldn’t start until I was officially legal.
After 3 days of losing money, the owner of the school had a chat with the head of the local police department and worked out a deal that allowed me to teach until I got my work permit sorted out. So when I walked into the classroom I was more at ease than I had been for some time. Apparently the laoban hadn’t spoken to the right people.
The police didn’t use lights or sirens when they raided us, slipping through the reception staff with barely enough shouting to tip me off that something was amiss. Panicked, I decided to try to make a break for it, slipping out the door in front of a classroom full of students and hightailing it up the stairs toward my bedroom. What a sight that must have been.
Sometimes in dreams when I’m running away from something I just can’t seem to get my feet under me. The harder I try, the worse it is. That’s what my trip up the stairs was like. My feet slipped out from under me halfway up to the landing, and I had just managed to get them back under me when the police shouted for me to stop. I did.
That was probably my worst teaching experience.
I was on an airplane out of Taiwan by mid-afternoon the next day. The school put an ad in the paper for a new teacher a few days later, or so I heard, and I waited a solid half-year to come back to Taiwan. Couldn’t help myself.