Jeffrey’s Journey

Fucking Taiwan.

Today I sent in my resume for an English tutoring position. Within an hour, I was sitting in the classroom of the English tutoring company filling out an application.

When the lady gets in, I greet her and she asks me: So tell me about yourself.

So I answer.

After that, she says, ‘Ok. Those are all my questions. Do you have any questions for me?’

I’m thinking, ‘What. that’s it, what just happened here?’ Interviews are one of the few times where I go in smiling and prepared to bend over, willing to endure anything they want to give me and thanking them for it after, and this was all they wanted? Didn’t even cop a feel? Feeling like I obviously failed to impress them and had nothing to lose, I ask, ‘So what was your impression?’

She says: ‘To be frank, we are looking for a white person. I’m sorry.’

I’m thinking, it’s a little too late to be frank, isn’t it? You could have been frank: A) When I sent you my resume with the last name LEE on it. B) When I walked through the door of your racist little establishment in all my Asian-ness (I’m pretty damn sure I looked Asian when I did). C) When you came into the room, saving me from answering your fictitious interview question as well as the time it took to answer the stupid generic application that asks all the questions everyone dreads seeing.

I had so much ammo I wanted to unload but I bit my tongue and acted like a gentleman… because she was cute. I guess all of us judge and modify our behavior based on appearances in certain situations. Normally, when I have the right-of-way to act like an asshole, I drive through it like a bat out of hell, but she’s lucky she was cute, that and I’m such a putty-brained horny bastard.

Who would have thought, the place where I would experience racism would be Taiwan, the same place where my Mom and Dad were born and where all my extended family lives. At one point, she even said, ‘ I know your Engrish is perfect.’ Well, no shit my Engrish is perfect; it’s the language I’ve been using for 25 years, the language I dream in, the same language I innately sprout out some of the foulest words in when I get cut off, and the language I should be tutoring her in. But, you know, she was cute n’ all, so I didn’t exactly say that verbatim. Ok ok, I didn’t say any of it at all.
This isn’t the first time I experienced such overt and flagrant racism. When I was in 1st or 2nd grade, I went to a school in Houston. The ethnic make-up of the school was 50% Mexican, 49% Black, and the other percent was me (or that’s how it felt). Little kids can be mean as hell, and I vividly remember when there was a group of kids that ganged up on me, calling me chink and spitting at me. I remember feeling so helpless because there were so many of them and I was alone. Fast forward today. It’s me vs. one cute chick. Even though the variables are a little different the same helpless feeling was there. Not because I was outnumbered but because today, someone was essentially telling me that no matter how hard I tried or what I did, I wouldn’t be able to do something I wanted to do. Being told I was not good enough or undesired (however you look at it) because of something I had no control over is an awful and helpless feeling.

The funny thing is, I wasn’t even serious about getting this job. I figured, while I’m here, I should learn more about the option of teaching English in case things don’t work out when I get back to The States.

About half an hour after the interview, the woman texts me the following message: Jeffrey, I am sorry for what I said. I shouldn’t have said that to you. If you really want to teach English in Taiwan, please try -the name of some other English teaching organization-. Good luck!

I immediately responded: While we’re on the topic of appearance, today wasn’t a total waste of time, because at least you were cute.

I wasn’t sure if I was trying to be nice, offensive, or just being a horny bastard again. I think it was probably all three, with a little extra dash of the last reason.