THE LAOWAI TIMES: Professional Foreigner

Every laowai likely enjoys a few jobs as a professional foreigner during their time in China. Thanks to some awesome guanxi (connections), I landed a gig as a judge at a national English competition for primary and middle school students. All I needed to do was show up and judge how well the contestants spoke English. My qualifications you ask? Simply being a foreigner. Yes, today The Laowai Times stoops to muckraking journalism about China's black market trade in foreigners for hire.

These kinds of jobs are nothing new here in China. Almost everyone I meet here has a story about somewhere they appeared or something they did as a professional laowai. For example I once got paid 1000 yuan ($166) for giving a speech at a prominent aviation engineering university. I was barely older than the students, and I knew absolutely nothing about aviation or engineering. My only qualification was that I am not Chinese. The school didn't even give me a topic for the speech. I could have chosen whatever the hell I wanted to talk about for an hour and a half. I settled on "Cultural Awareness". My speech ran spectacularly short, and I finished in an hour.

Tang Qi served as our Simon Cowell

During my time in China I have heard some good stories about foreigners for hire. Someone once told me about their career in television, someone else about their tenure as a ceramics expert, and one guy I know hosted a news radio show on Chinese state radio. Needless to say, it came as little surprise when I got the call up to the big leagues of professional English judging without even playing in the minors. This isn't to say I didn't take it seriously. One of the telling things about my judging experience was the fact that the other judges and I seemed to take the event more seriously than its organizers.

The gigantic hotel hosting the event had the North Korean atmosphere that many fancy places in China exude. It sat on the edge of the mountains outside Beijing, magnificently adorned with gold and marble, and almost completely devoid of human life. The actual judging of the event went well aside from one contestants meltdown from nerves. I felt terrible for her. She was doing fine and studdenly she just starting balling. As many of my readers may know, I don't handle situations like this well. Unluckily for our panel and the contestant, our female judge was also from Indiana and doesn't handle that kind of situation well either.

It has a banner. You know it's legit.

Some of participants had intricately choreographed and well rehearsed routines. One even did a standup comedy routine. The difficult part was weeding out who had the best English and who had the pushiest parents. This usually only took a simple question like what is you favorite color?. No small task considering the stakes at the International English Elitist Tournament. That's right. Elitist. Don't think they are using that word correctly, but I am just the judge.

I enjoyed my lucrative stint as a judge on the Chinese equivalent of Toddlers and Tiaras. The contestants were about 50/50 between those who actually wanted to be there and those whose parents forced them to participate. As people in China continue scrambling to learn English, I hope to swing a few more of these jobs in the future. Maybe I'll compete in the Chinese version of this contest someday. I'll get working on my standup routine right away.

P.S. Enjoy these photos from Tang Qi and my trip to Tangshan for Chinese New Year.