I took advantage of our 21st century classroom and showed the English majors a video.

I OK’d it with Elise beforehand and asked her how to get the key. No problem, she told me. Just go get it from the first room.

In there, the keykeeper sits threading. I bring a student with me, and we walk in. The student explains that we need a key, and the woman starts yelling. She slams the table and expresses herself with all the subtlety of a toddler weaned off his baba.

When we left, I asked the student what she said.

“She says only real teachers should take the key.”

Good to know how I’m valued around these parts.

For non-English majors, English can be a fun elective or a cursed requirement. When you’re an only child under enormous pressure to succeed by getting into a top university, doing well on your tests and getting a good enough job to take care of Ma and Ba (Chinese for “father”) in their old age, you’re obviously going to value major classes more than some damn elective. Especially when said damn elective is poorly organized.

Elise changed the schedule. I knew it was coming, but that didn’t make its arrival any more bearable.

Molly was teaching class nine all week, so Elise asked me to come Friday afternoon and visit class nine. Well … she didn’t ask, more like told me, and when I said no, Elise whipped out the big guns.

“If you do not want to help Molly, I will find someone else.”

But no! I do want to help her! Elise’s cunning ploy worked to perfection, and there I was on Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. Class usually begins at 2:30 p.m., but Elise told me I could come at 2 if I wanted. I told her yes.

I show up at 2, and the computer is locked. Uh oh. I creep into Sacred Key Keeper’s domain and disturb her threading yet again. She yells something in Chinese that I do not understand. Because there are no students present to translate her whining, I call a friend and try to hand her the phone.

She yells some more. I push the phone towards her, and she throws her hands up and begins to shout into the phone and thrusts it back at me. Translation?

Another teacher has the keys. Or rather, a real teacher. A real teacher who teaches real classes, the real classes being the ones for their major.

There are students who appear on the first day and then disappear until the test. Or the exam. I told my students about “the test,” and they did not understand me. Once I used the word “exam,” all systems were go.

They take English grammar and reading taught by Chinese teachers. In Chinese. The goal here is not to foster an environment conducive to learning English but rather to get them ready to pass the test. That damn test.

They come to me for oral English. Five foreign teachers and four or so Chinese teachers teach them oral English, supposedly. The reality is that we stand there and talk while they listen. We can try to teach them stuff. (The material is up to us, remember?) But I believe they could get the same thing from watching an English-language DVD with the subtitles on.

The purpose of the foreign teachers is first and foremost to make the school look good. They have foreign faces, people who speak English fluently, so enroll here. Give us money.

We laowai cannot do everything. You need something more. What’s in a name? Better yet, what’s in a catchy memorable name?

“What is your favorite part of this Concentration Camp?” Elise asked during the test last semester. She did this completely oblivious to its meaning, oblivious thanks to senior laowai, who understands full well what it means.

In a further effort to give legitimacy to these classes, they unveiled a mural with the name of this program. As you know, everyone stated the obvious about “Concentration Camp,” but they resisted. Yes. Because senior laowai created the name and knows how to grease the wheels, they resisted changing the name from Concentration Camp to something decent.

After a semester of complaints and tired explanations, the Chinese teachers finally changed the name. They asked us for suggestions that they immediately discarded in favor of “Concentrated Oral English Training Centre.”

This is what the mural reads. Concentrated Oral English Training Centre. Here’s my question: If no one had complained, would they have gotten a mural reading “Concentration Camp”? It may have been worth it just to see one.

It would have fit well with the bars on all the windows.