Two days later I’m ready in my best outfit, rarely worn as the environment and climate is just too destructive for expensive Australian fashion, clutching my documentation and feeling slightly bemused. I acknowledged that there seemed to be few other work options for me other than teaching and realized that a position at a university was probably a lot better than teaching 25 classes a week to 60 16-year-olds at a middle school. Yet I did wonder if I had explored other possibilities enough, and was feeling somewhat ‘organised’.
However an opportunity is an opportunity and we head off past the hotel at the gate to our apartment complex, up the grand palm-tree lined avenue we live on and by the banks and government office buildings that line the road. Soon we enter Chìkǎn (赤坎), one of Zhànjiāng’s two city centers, complete with a couple of modern shopping centers, the site of a local battle against the French ‘imperialist invaders’, a maze of little back streets, and the University. 
Arriving at the University administration building, where we are instructed by signs on the wall to speak Putōng huà (Mandarin) rather than local languages that include Guǎngzhōu huà (Cantonese), I realize Roger’s colleague is going to join me in the interview. So, watched on by both Roger’s old friend and the other staff in the open office, I have a 20-minute wide-ranging conversation, in English, with the Foreign Teachers’ Manager. There is then a lengthy discussion, in Chinese, with Roger’s work colleague, resulting in me being told that, given my visa type and the limited time we plan to stay in Zhànjiāng, she will need to talk to her boss. I will be contacted in couple of days if I’m required to present a sample lecture to students and the Vice-Dean of the Commerce School.
Two days come and go, and, without me telling anyone about the interview, I keep getting asked by Roger’s work colleagues, from the students to the Director, how it went and when will I start teaching. Two weeks after the interview I have still not heard and I learn that Roger’s good friend has followed up with the University. He advises me I’ll be giving a guest lecture early the following week and the day before the presentation he’ll pass the topic on to me. 
Having received the theme, “Education’, on the morning of Tomb Sweeping Day, a public holiday, and being told I will be speaking to up to 60 students, I find myself at the University the next day presenting to the Vice-Dean and the Manager, and five students! Most of the students have decided to extend their long weekend into Tuesday and not attend my non-compulsory lecture. The few students there, and the staff, seem to respond well and again I’m advised I’ll be contacted in two days.
Four days later I’m invited to come into the office to talk. Eagerly I attend and I finally manage to ask some of the questions I have, up until this point, had no opportunity to ask. I am offered a position and find there is no expectation that I might refuse the job. That evening I’m rung up and told, for reasons I could not understand but involve another foreign teacher hurting his foot on the Great Wall, that the plans have all been changed and I’ll be advised what was happening in, surprise, surprise, a couple of days. I do get called 2 days later, at 7.30pm as we are going out to meet a friend for dinner. I’m to let the University know by the middle of May if I want a position for the next academic year, starting in September, but could I fill-in for a teacher the next morning, at 8am!
Life in China often leaves me bewildered and stressed. Frequently I feel I have no basis to interpret people’s actions or modify my behavior to better reach the outcomes I desire, and I can’t count the number of times I have had to race to meet other people’s ridiculously tight deadlines. As far as I can tell organizational planning operates by a completely different set of rules, and usually on a just-in-time basis, and the nuances of social interaction constantly elude me. I fully understand that Roger’s colleagues’ interest and actions are heartfelt and intended only with kindness and to do the best for Roger and his ‘family’ (me), yet I am surprised at the differences in personal space and shocked at my emotional reactions when my boundaries are breached. It is a vivid lesson in the power of social constructs.
