Invitation Letter Arrives!
At last! The mysterious (but now angelic) Mr. Gao has finally come good! The postman banged on my door early this morning for me to sign for a “package” - This package contained the penultimate piece of the “working in China” jigsaw… The Invitation Letter! Well.. I assume it is. What else could it be? The problem is that the two rubber stamped pieces of paper contained within are written in Chinese, and Chinese only.. There’s only one thing for it! I had to see “My Mate Jeff” !!
Let me introduce you to Jeff. A few months ago I was in town doing some window shopping. I live in a town of about 50,000 people I suppose. It’s not very big but has some nice pubs, shops and restaurants all the same.. Talking of shops, one of them in the arcade is a Chinese Herbs and Acupuncture Centre, I suppose most towns have something similar. Anyway, I was reading all the literature in the window and I suppose I must have been there longer than I suspected because someone came out and said “Hello!” Well, I just happened to know the Chinese for “Hello” so I replied confidently “Ni Hao!” and the poor Chinese girl’s jaw nearly hit the floor!
“You speak Chinese??” she exclaimed, and her face lit up like a beacon. Eager to impress further I continued to use up two thirds of my total Chinese vocabulary by saying “yes” or “shi” in Chinese.. Boy, I could tell that I’d impressed her and she invited me into the shop.
By now, I’m on a roll but quickly became unstuck when, in front of the other 2 Chinese employees she rattled off for 30 seconds to me in Chinese.. I’m totally confused by now and naturally didn’t understand anything she’d said. What did I do? Like a fool I used the last word of Chinese in my armoury… “Thank you” or “xie xie” in Chinese.
Amazingly this was greeted with smiles and vigorous handshakes from the 2 male employees… What the hell had she said? I would never find out, but I did figure this was the time to come clean about my Chinese language abilities… Fortunately laughs all round and I was introduced by “Ri” or maybe “Ree” to the other two. One was introduced as “Jeff” and the other as “Dr. Wu” (Yes, really!)
I casually dropped it into the conversation that I was going to work in China later this year as a teacher of English. They were all excited by this and they asked “Which City?” I was expecting deathly silence when I replied “Harbin” as it is really a remote, though large, city and it’s not exactly as well known as Beijing and Shanghai.. Imagine my surprise when the word Harbin was greeted with whoops of laughter and smiles all round… It just happens to be Jeff’s home city! I sensed that I had already become Jeff’s best mate in the UK, and he spent the next 90 minutes telling me all about Harbin! What a result. We exchanged email addresses and I was invited to pop in at any time to discuss anything with “My mate Jeff”.. Today was one of those days!
So I popped in and politely asked if they were busy.. “Yes”, replied Jeff… “OK, I wanted your advice but I can call another time” I replied, turning towards the door.. “No, please! We aren’t that busy!” came the reply in unison from Jeff and Ri.. (Dr. Wu was in the back doing a kidney transplant using acupuncture, probably)
“Ah good! I hope you can help me with these documents I received from China today.”
They read them with interest and informed me that I had a letter of invitation from the province inviting me to work there as a “Foreign Expert”.. I said “Are you sure?” - “Yes! It says here, Foreign Expert” and they pointed to the relevant heiroglyphical characters which meant nothing to me but I nodded anyway in some sort of acceptance.. You must take them to the Chinese Embassy to get your visa!
“Foreign Expert” I was thinking… That’s a step up from “Foreign Teacher” - In fact, a huge step up from what I’ve read - Experts get a lot more than plain old Teachers.. Watch out for the next post in which I’ll try to explain the difference of an “Expert” from a “teacher”..