The thing that annoys me most about China

Well, a little nexus of related things, I suppose...

The lack of respect, the lack of foresight, the not-being-able-to-organise-a-pissup-in-a-brewery

Throughout the early summer I'd been teaching a series of Business English classes at a foreign tech company, intended to culminate in the students - in teams of two or three - preparing and delivering a PowerPoint presentation on some suitably work-related but engaging-to-a-general-audience topic. The presentations themselves had been scheduled for Week +1, the week after the end of the course proper; the whole idea was that the course, or most of the second half of it anyway, was geared towards practising the sort of language forms and analytical skills needed for such a task, and the last three weeks would be spent on my guiding them through the preparation of their talk and a final dress rehearsal; then, they should do the thing in earnest - before various of their managers - a week or so later, while what they'd learned, and the work they'd put in on assembling the presentation, was still fresh in their minds. But... the powers-that-be at the client company put the final presentations day off to the next week, the week after, the week after that...  It ended up being nearly a month after the end of the course (which was pretty much pointless, or at least very much non-ideal, because the students would all have gone stale on the material by then). But they were still very eager that I should attend, to act as MC, and to help assess the performances. And I was very eager to do it, since I was curious to see how well my charges would do under pressure, and I wanted to show my support for their efforts (although I was not going to get paid anything for this 'extra-curricular' participation). Unfortunately, the 'organizer' of the event shifted the goalposts so many times that my patience was quickly strained to breaking point. The date, the venue, the time available, and the starting time were all discussed endlessly, all changed needlessly (after we seemed to have reached an agreement). Eventually, reluctantly, I'd agreed to the date and time finally set, even though it meant having to re-jig my holiday plans in August a little: the event was now supposed to take place on the one day that I was in Beijing between two gruelling out-of-town excursions. Then, they told me on the morning of the event that they had shortened the running time (annoying, but should be manageable - and, actually, a better thing for me!), changed the venue (particularly annoying, since all the previous wrangles about start and finish times had been based upon the limited availability of the large conference room we wanted to use; if there was a suitable alternative venue, why had there been all that brouhaha? if there wasn't, what kind of broom-closet were we going to find ourselves in this afternoon?), and moved the start time forward again (to the middle of the lunch hour: very, very annoying). I was fuming, but.... I had promised to go, so... Then, after I had set out, and was in fact almost at the venue, I received a message that they had screwed up the room booking for the new venue, that there was another meeting in progress there, and it looked like we were going to have to start 40 or 50 minutes later than planned. At this point, my tether snapped: I hadn't slept well, I had a dose of gippy tummy, it was a ferociously hot and humid day, and I had about a million and one other things I needed to try to shoehorn into the next few hours (not least, visiting a travel agency to pay for the ticket I'd booked for my flight the next day, and claiming a refund on a flight that had been cancelled the week before). I decided NOT TO GO. Jeez, people, I rearranged my whole f***ing holiday schedule for you, to be available on this day, between these times.... and you can't even stick to that.... and you can't even let me know that there's a problem until 20 minutes before showtime??!!

Bearing silly grudges

Now, the client company didn't give too much of a good goddamn. My students were disappointed I couldn't come to support them, but I think they appreciated that, a month after the end of the course, and after so many reschedulings, it was a tad unreasonable to suppose that I would be available. I'd never met any of the 'organizers' of the presentations competition or the senior managers who were supposedly going to be present. And my liaison with the client was supposed to have apologised for my absence, and explained that I was unwell (which was in fact true). So, there shouldn't have been any problem there. But my employer, the guy who'd set the course up, he got in a ridiculous tizzy with me. Some sort of 'loss of face' thing, I suppose. He'd promised the client I would be there (even though it was clear that it was going to be very difficult for me to be there, impossible for me to guarantee it [owing to the uncertainties of travel in China]; and even though he had refused to pay me anything for this), and so felt embarrassed when I wasn't. And he blames me for it terribly. And he will probably never forgive me - even though we'd previously enjoyed a very warm relationship, and the feedback on this and a couple of previous courses I'd done for him had been extremely positive.

Lying so blatantly

When I finally got around to collecting the last tranche of money this employer owed me for that course - two months after I'd finished teaching it, a month after the aborted 'guest of honour' appearance - I was hoping that he might have cooled off a little, got over his peeve. Alas, no. I asked him how plans were shaping up for a repeat of this course (it had supposedly been a done deal months ago, with four groups being lined up for this training, and us only being able to take on two at one time; and there had already been discussions about the same or similar course being run shortly for even more groups). And he muttered about 'Nothing having been decided yet', while avoiding all eye contact. It was the most painfully transparent lying I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot in this country).

Ah, well... at least it put me in mind of a song...