Read Apologies to My Censor for Free Online Page B

sheets of paper.
    â€œA bone to chew?”
    â€œA bone to pick .”
    â€œWhat’s a bone to pick?”
    â€œIt’s an expression . . . never mind.
Anyway, the thing is, I paid for you to make these tests for me , not to make them for everybody in the class. If I
knew you were going to hand out tests in the class, I wouldn’t be paying you to
make them for me.”
    Ms. Song’s eyes widened. For a second I thought she
was going to cry. She said nothing.
    â€œUh . . . I’m sorry,” I said, instantly
regretting being a baby. “It’s really not a big deal. I just thought I’d, you
know, I thought I’d let you know how I felt.”
    After class, Jon approached me at the elevator.
    â€œHey Mitch, I think Ms. Song was really
embarrassed.”
    â€œI wasn’t really angry. I just thought she
shouldn’t use tests for the class that I’m paying her to write for me.”
    â€œYeah, I know, but in China there’s a certain way
of dealing with things like that. It’s a face thing.”
    A face thing. Face is an enigma central to Chinese
culture. It would take me years to figure out how to navigate the labyrinth of
face, but I figure it essentially works like a currency. Face can be given and
taken away, in small, medium, or large increments. The giving and taking of face
can be deliberate or accidental. By confronting Ms. Song in class, I had taken
away her face. Or at least that’s what I understood.
    Later that day an e-mail arrived in my inbox with
the subject “paper case.”
    hi mitch:
    i am ms. song. i want
to explain the paper giving to you. i think i should say sorry to you,
because i havent tell you i gave the paper to other class. But i don’t think
i am wrong.
    i am very happy you
love to study chinese very much, so i want to help you. i hope all of my
student can speak chinese very well, actually, i dont care about you money,
i just want you can get improve and feel more fun with studing chinese,
yesterday i spent 2 hours to make you paper, comperad you payment i think i
spent more time maybe i shouldnt tell you this but i just want you to
understand me, i hope you kown you are my student also friend.
. . .
    i think you shoud not
talk to this thing in my class, you made me so embarrassing, except you and
me nobody know this, and i can not explain in the class using everbodys
time. so mayby because of you words somebody will misunderstand me, thinking
about me is a cheater. anyway, that’s why i give the paper to basic class, i
hope you, friend of mine, can understand me.
    I might have been lost in Chinese class, but being
an asshole, it turned out, translated into any language.
    U nmotivated to work or learn the language, I needed a break—from the
city, the heat, from China Daily . A friend from
Canada was coming to town, and we decided to make a weekend trip to a former
German colonial town on the coast called Qingdao, where an annual beer festival
was about to begin.
    On the flight from Beijing, I was reading a book
and sitting beside my friend George, a former colleague from Canada, when the
plane shook violently. It felt as if we had collided with another plane. A few
seconds later we hit turbulence so bad it made the cabin lights flicker. The
flight crew hit the deck and the toddler behind me started to wail. Beside him,
an old man laughed hysterically, as if to say, I knew man
couldn’t fly!
    The trip went all downhill from there.
    I was excited about Qingdao. The Rough Guide described the city as some kind of
Bavarian wonderland. Chinese colleagues had sung its praises, too: beach city,
boomtown, beer festival. “The port city of Qingdao in the east of Shandong
province makes a remarkable first impression,” the Rough
Guide said. “Emerging from the train station and walking north with
your eyes fixed on the skyline, you could almost believe you had got off at a
nineteenth-century