By SHI FU
Education Correspondent

This undated photo shows educator Kyle Majors charming the pants off an impressed student in School Bar

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – A fearlessly edgy English teacher has spoken out, after having had his visa denied by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – effectively expelling him from the country.

Kyle Majors, 27, told media that his tough stance on education at the Beijing University of Technology & Agricultural Pesticides made him a thorn in the side of the administration  – and by extension, the Beijing government.

Majors’s class – ‘US sitcoms, 2004-present’ – was described by the teacher himself as “utterly uncompromising in dealing with the political reality in China.”

Majors recalls he first blew his students’ minds during an episode of season one of Game of Thrones, in which he casually compared Joffrey to Mao Zedong.

“There were a few nervous titters,” Majors recalled. “Since then, I have been taking it further and further.”

Majors’ academic-awareness campaign has included absenting himself from Saturday-morning classes, striding onto campus wearing a ‘Tiananmen Tank Man’ T-shirt and persistently mispronouncing the names of Zhao Ziyang, Hu Yaobang and Fang Lizhi.

But it was his outrageous observations on the recent Bo Xilai case that needled the faculty most says Majors, a former high-school student and McDonald’s junior operative .

Others partly agree with Majors’s assessment.

“I would certainly describe Kyle as an irritant,” agreed fellow pedagogue Jim Anderson, a PhD candidate in Ming Dynasty studies, currently doing archival research in Beijing.

At least one student backs up his claims.

“After reading about Neil Heywood, Kyle asked us if anyone would want to poison him,” recalled Li, a student in Majors’s sitcom class. “We all agreed it was highly probable.”

It was shortly after the Bo case broke that Majors had his visa application declined, forcing him to leave the country and travel to Thailand.

Local police claim the decision was made after discovering a drunken Majors curled between the feet of an unconscious prostitute, with an expired tourist visa. The former teacher dismisses this as “a convenient lie, although it’s partly true.”

Majors says he now joins the ranks of such enemies of the Chinese state as blind dissident Chen Guangcheng and recently exiled Al-Jazeera correspondent Melissa Chan.

“They can remove me but they can’t silence me,” Majors insists. “I have a new gig now at a kindergarten near Bangkok, teaching Buddhism. I won’t be afraid to expose the truth about Nirvana – and who really killed Kurt.”

Follow breaking China news at @chinadailyshow on Twitter

[UPDATE: Majors has since informed us that his sudden expulsion may, in part, be due to a recent series of New York Times exposes,concerning the financial affairs of, among others, Premier Wen Jiabao.  “They don’t want to make the NYT reporter a martyr,” explained the bitter pedagogue. “So they take it out on me.”]

By TIANTIAN XIANGSHANG
Education Correspondent

Benvolio's image was once used to sell everything from Western-style cutlery to hair perming kits

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – The mystery behind the spread of “Chinglish” – an Asian version of English that commonly includes weird and wonderful verbal contortions – appears to have finally been solved.

The bizarre alternative language has been conclusively traced to Mario Benvolio, an illiterate Spanish-American teacher who emigrated to China in 1981, where he quickly became its foremost authority on English teaching.

At the height of his fame, Benvolio, the illegitimate son of an itinerant blonde hippie and a Chilean dictator’s son, was China’s top-selling author. In 1983, his Easy Learning is English series outsold Quotations from Chairman Mao by sixteen to one.

Benvolio regularly taught rallies of up to 50,000 students where his catchphrase –  “Now is time for punching the English books!” – became a national rallying cry.

Yet today, little is known of the millionaire linguist.

Documents seen by China Daily Show demonstrate that the man who would one day come to be known as “Big Nose Teacher” spent his formative years in a Mexican detention centre, where he learnt English from Spanish-language TV.

“It was his dearest wish to some day become a teacher,” said ‘Pablo,’ one of his former cell guards. “Probably because he never had one himself.”

Benvolio originally came to China to learn guitar, with the apparent hope of forming a Uighur prog-rock group. He ended up changing his plans, however, after being mistaken at the border for a Turkmenistani rebel leader and badly beaten.

“At this time, China was opening up and looking for foreign experts to come over and aid in their development, of which English learning was critical,” said Sir William Buckfast, a noted expert on China affairs. “But this was thirty-odd years ago, so they were accepting anyone. The teaching environment remains much the same today, in fact.”

On being released from jail, Benvolio agreed to teach English at Beijing’s top Communist Party School, where his fame quickly spread.

“I love English, in China is good, but also the applauding. Whereas, so happy now, it makes me smell,” he was quoted as saying in a 1984 copy of People’s Daily – by which time he was making upwards of 5,000 yuan a week in book royalties.

The linguistically-challenged pedagogue went on to marry four times, sire seven children and was interviewed in some of China’s most influential and respected publications.

“Now a days to learn English, it is necessary for the every people,” Benvolio told That’s Lanzhou magazine in his last interview, explaining  the popularity of his English-teaching textbooks. “Most of people use the English in foreigner. And as China is a ‘developer country,’ it also increases the life standing.”

After 1992, though, Benvolio gradually receded from public view, and was replaced by a succession of similarly inept teachers from developed countries such as the US, UK and Sudan. But the legacy of his teaching lives on in menus, street signs and posters across the nation.

As for Benvolio himself, the once-iconic English teacher has not been seen in China for over a year, having decided to return to the US to support Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.

The Republican nominee’s standing has since declined in the polls. Benvolio, meanwhile, has been detained indefinitely under the Patriot Act.

Follow this and other top China news at @chinadailyshow on Twitter

Advice and tips from Easy Learning is English (1981)

Food: “In the USA, it is fine to eat with just the knife and the fork with the spoon, and maybe it is the pizza restaurant or a Japanese place or any restaurant is fine.”

Filial piety: “It is most important you to study hard learn English for futuring times, but also lovemaking with your father and the mother all the day.”

Studying: “Doing the examining when you are go to college. Please to say one day hope you speaking English as best as me!”

Follow this and other English-language tips at @chinadailyshow on Twitter

Benvolio personally oversaw the English-translation work on much of China's modern urban signage

Higgs's attempts at photography (here, at the Forbidden City) displayed the total lack of talent that is his forte.

By HUI JIA
Foreign Correspondent

SHANGHAI (China Daily Show) – A foreign traveler who arrived in Shanghai two years ago, hoping to discover his untapped potential, spoke yesterday of his pain at coming to terms with the brutal realization that he was almost entirely without talent.

“As it happens, just going to a country which is in the limelight doesn’t make you special,” William “Bill” Higgs told China Daily Show. “Turns out, I’m actually kind of a waste of space.”

Higgs reluctantly concluded he possessed absolutely no potential whatsoever at approximately 8:30 on Saturday morning, after a set of shelves erected only minutes before collapsed, smashing an entire collection of jade  Zodiac animals he had spent months sourcing from various antique markets in Yunnan Province.

But Higgs admitted the realization itself came after a string of failed endeavors.

“Bill first moved to Guangxi Province to work as an ESL teacher and, while the profession does play host to some very interesting and professional teachers, Bill was not one of them,” Yangshuo English Corner deputy principal Michael Watson recalled with a sympathetic smile.

“He didn’t know what he was doing and just sort of read textbooks aloud. Didn’t really matter though; parents don’t know the difference,” Watson added.

Higgs said he spent many days dreamily cycling and hiking through Guangxi’s beautiful karst landscape.

Despite bringing a notebook and set of paints on his travels, however, Higg’s muse yielded nothing more interesting than a series of insipid watercolors and banal written observations on China, that even he admits to being “sophomoric.”

The latter, published in a now-discontinued blog, caught the attention of Beijing Normal University literary expert Mao Mashan, who retweeted Higgs’s unqualified musings on politics and local cuisine on his Weibo account.

The resulting torrent of derisive comments forced Higgs to abandon to any artistic ambitions and instead attempt to go into business.

Higgs then tried his hand at translating, IT work and venture capitalism – but failed to make a single fen.

Many expats suffer “potential shortage,” says Beijing-based life coach Atkins Peiterman.

Maria Sharie, originally from Manhattan, came to China in 2002 already speaking fluent Chinese, but now works as a “freelance marketer and journalist” in Dalian. Yesterday she declined to give China Daily Show details of her recent commissions or published articles.

In fact, Peiterman estimates that around 60 to 70 percent of all expats have absolutely no potential or talent whatsoever.

“People like Mr Higgs often can’t seem to figure out that, despite their ability to pick up and move to another country, they are still just as pointless here as they were back home,” Peiterman noted. “Bill seems to have just twigged this. That’s good. It won’t help him in the slightest but at least he knows that now.”

Higgs, and foreigners like him, face an uncertain future in China– but will likely still remain for a long time. “I’ll probably stick around a few more years,” said Higgs. “Just to be sure.”

Tylenol contributed to this story

Follow this and other breaking China news at @chinadailyshow on Twitter

Dear English teacher with a hangover,

I am wondering if you could pep up the lessons a bit, because frankly –  I’m just as bored as you are. I learned the Alphabet Song when I was two. Santa Claus crafts aren’t doing it for me (nobody in Beijing has a chimney anyway) and if I have to read Spot Sees a Bee one more time, I will repeat my noodles on your business casual/hangover Uggs. Honestly, I am six and we’re in first grade already. So how about you work on a decent curriculum over those Tsingtaos?

A New York Times crossword puzzle? The literary symbolism of Tolkien? Maybe some algorithms for building rockets? My God, our relations with Korea might be going to hell and we need to have a serious political discussion about it.

But instead we spend fifteen minutes every day repeating the class rules and talking about the weather – with flashcards. And – surprise – every day it’s “cloudy and cool.” All of this might be good for your headache, but can you take it up a notch? Maybe a lesson on global warming and the effects of smog? Hell, bring in a fog machine, do a pollution dance. Anything.

Jesus! If only I could speak English I could tell you all of this. Anyhow, thanks for listening. Good luck and gan bei.

Yours educationally,
Ambosia in Anzhen

Man, this teaching English gig would be awesome if it weren't for the fucking students

English teacher with a hangover says:

Christ, I feel like shit. Hang on, are you one of my students? OK, OK. What time is it? Fuck: Class was 40 minutes ago! Where’s my phone? Oh, shit – five missed calls from the university. What’s this? Jesus, I called Fang Fang last night at three… oh man. Bad idea. Wait, wait… so who was that chick I was doing shooters with – Bingbing? Lingfling? – what happened to her, any idea? Oh God, Mr Wang is gonna be major-league pissed… wait. Where the fuck is my wallet? Goddamit, Bingfling!

Last week: Ask a hooker outside Smuggler’s at 4am on a Friday

Next week: Ask a paranoid foreigner working in a state-owned enterprise.

Send your questions to cds@chinadailyshow.com

Follow this and other breaking China news at @chinadailyshow on Twitter

By TIANTIAN XIANGSHANG
Education Correspondent

The English teacher's attempt to emulate the Robin Williams character quite literally backfired

SHENZHEN (China Daily Show) — An English teacher’s decision to stage an act of individuality in front of his creative writing class Tuesday resulted in 14 maimed students and one dead poetry teacher.

Students at No. 2 Dongguan Polytechnic arrived for class expecting a colorless continuation of Monday’s lecture on iambic pentameter, only to discover that their teacher, William Carlos Wallace, 27, of Lancaster, Massachusetts, had spent all night arranging a pyre of firewood beneath the whiteboard, upon which he had drawn in large letters “CARPE DIAN”  (“Seize the Electricity”) in Latin and Chinese.

“He was upset that the university had cut the electric in his dormitory,” said English major Li Song, 21, who happened to be with Wallace when his power stopped working.

In an interview with China Daily Show,  Li said the two had been watching Wallace’s favorite movie, Dead Poets Society, which stars Robin Williams as a literature teacher who encourages his class of New England students to carpe diem or “seize the day,” rather than follow the staid orthodoxies of the traditional educational establishment, when the juice suddenly failed.

“It was at that moment that he decided to show his power against the school,” said Li.

The next morning, Wallace welcomed his students, locked the door, stood atop the pyre and lit a torch he had constructed and labeled “Prometheus.” He then called administrators on his mobile and was quoted as  saying, “To thee misguided nanny state Confucians, desist and cease your human rights abuses. Restore the use of nightly lumination, else face the wrath of fiery retribution.”

When administrators failed to understand Wallace’s English, they called  police, who arrived moments later and promptly tear-gassed the classroom.

These are the facts:

Administrators have employed grievance counselors to help students come to grips with the teacher’s senseless act of Western ignorance, and have recharged the late pedagogue’s electricity meter, which had inexplicably run out of credit four months ahead of schedule.

The 14 injured students from Wallace’s class are currently lying in the burn victim’s ward at Shenzhen’s Last Hope Memorial Hospital.

In lieu of flowers, their parents have asked mourners to donate a steady supply of traditional, status quo-promoting examples of Chinese cinema.

William Carlos Wallace boldly and independently soared head-first out of this six-story window