By TIANTIAN XIANGSHENG
Education Correspondent

Xiao is very sorry for her behaviour and hopes Ethan can somehow forgive her

BEIJING (China Daily Show) – An English student has spoken of her regret, after drunkenly sabotaging a burgeoning language partnership with an American filmmaker by sleeping with him.

Xiao Lingling, who likes to be called  “Josephine” or “Happy,” placed an advert with an English-language website seeking a native speaker for “language partners, so we can learn each other.”

The ad explained she was “funny, liked family, am easygoing and pretty.”

Within minutes, former Michigan resident Ethan Morgan replied offering assistance. The two met at a downtown coffee shop and quickly hit it off.

“Ethan hadn’t brought any of the study guides we talked about on the email and his Chinese was very poor at the time, but we still managed to learn things from each other,” Xiao recalled. “I taught him to count to five in Chinese, and he showed me how to make the coffee ‘Irish.’”

Unfortunately, Xiao – who also goes by the name of “Sally” or “Dreamcatcher” –  felt dizzy soon afterwards and had to be taken home. It was here, she admitted, that the meeting went awry and the pair ended up in bed together.

“I woke up much later, and Ethan had left a very kind note, saying how much he enjoyed our talk, but that he felt uncomfortable continuing our exchange under the circumstances,” said a tearful Xiao.

“I totally ruined our language partners!”

Morgan didn’t respond to emails but China Daily Show managed to catch up with him by replying to another advert he’d recently placed, seeking “a Chinese friend to swap culture, stories and language. Women only.”

Morgan agreed to discuss the aborted relationship after a few drinks.

“I met Jennifer at Starbucks, where she immediately asked me to call her ‘Fluffy.’ We had a couple of drinks, flirted and went back to hers. That was it, really,” shrugged Morgan, a former student who recently began working on an independent documentary project, which is as yet untitled.

Meanwhile, Xiao says she is determined not to let the matter affect her further education.

“I’m putting this mistake behind me,” she said. “I have already met a very nice English man on the subway, called Bernard. He is eager to meet us at a place called the Vic’s Club, next Friday at midnight.”

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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.

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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!”

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

By TIANTIAN XIANGSHANG
Education Correspondent

Cooter, pictured here at a recent PTA meeting, says his heart is no longer in the job

HANGZHOU (China Daily Show) – An English teacher has spoken of his sense of betrayal, after an attractive student’s plea for extra assistance turned out to be nothing more than that.

“There’s this girl in class. We’ll call her Bright Eyes, because that’s what she calls herself. She’s always giving me funny looks,” irate teacher Earl Cooter told China Daily Show. “So one day, right, she comes up to me after class.”

According to Cooter, Bright Eyes spent several moments shuffling her feet before shyly requesting assistance with an application for a fellowship to an Ivy League university.

“I like to help out where I can, so I offered to take her out to dinner. So I could, you know, get to know her better. Information such as her interests and whether she has a boyfriend could prove vital when writing up her personal statement,” Cooter reasoned.

After several informal mealtime conversations and an intense Q&A session back in Cooter’s Hangzhou Number 4 Technical University apartment, he agreed to write the statement on the condition they maintain contact.

“I think it’s vital to continue these assessments for as long as it takes,” Cooter explained.

Shortly after preparing the statement, Bright Eyes’s application was accepted. She begins her term in the US next year – but Cooter is dissatisfied at the outcome.

“I was delighted to accept her invitation to a lavish celebratory dinner. But was naturally surprised when she introduced me at the restaurant to her brother, father and some long-term fiance she’d never even mentioned.”

Since then, Cooter has received no acknowledgement for his selfless extracurriculaur assistance, other than a card, bouquet of flowers and an assortment of vouchers for a local foot-massage parlour.

“I feel betrayed and let down,” Cooter said bitterly. “I’m speaking out now as a warning to other teachers. Be warned: some of your students may not have ulterior motives.”

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By TIANTIAN XIANGSHANG
Education Correspondent

Cooter, pictured here preparing for a class, is believed to have fled China after an exceptionally shitty day

BEIJING (China Daily Show) — An English teacher has fled the country after a series of mishaps, misunderstandings and mistakes, accumulated over a 24-hour period, finally proved too much.

Earl Cooter, 33, of Delberville, Mississippi, had kept a conspicuously low profile ever since his TEFL certificate was exposed as fraudulent.

But last Friday’s events have put the wayward teacher back into the headlines again.

The day began innocuously enough when Cooter, already awake from a neighbor’s jackhammer, received the early-morning news that the friend he had recommended for a kindergarten position turned out to be an escaped mental patient.

“It’s happened before but both times, I swear I had no idea,” Cooter told friends. “At least no one got hurt this time.”

As he went to prepare breakfast, Cooter discovered both his gas and electricity cards had run out overnight  and there was no trace of the roommate who’d promised to replenish them. After accidentally locking himself out of his apartment, Cooter used his last 100-yuan note to hail a cab to work, only to find himself the victim of the classic “fake-note switcheroo.”

Cooter is reported to have lost the ensuing fistfight, along with his wallet and laptop, and from that moment on, according to a friend, “the day began to go downhill.” Arriving late for work, Cooter plunged headlong into a grueling four-hour schedule, without benefit of PowerPoint, plan or DVD player.

“We had a lunch date, which he forgot. Earl always only thinks of himself,” said Cooter’s long-term girlfriend Fang Li, 19. “When he arrived for a coffee time with no money, so I throw the coffee in his face.”

Called in by university chiefs for a routine ticking-off concerning over-stringent marking, the American ESL teacher is said to have finally lost his temper. “There was the shouting, then I heard a glass break,” said assistant Zhao Wei.

“Any one of these incidents taken individually could be enough to trigger extreme irritation and even anger,” explained Beijing-based life coach Atkins Peiterman. “Two or three together might reduce a man to tears of impotent rage. But taken as a whole, and in just one day, most people would be driven to hunt down every single last one of those motherfuckers and personally drive a blunt stake through their chests.”

Cooter was last spotted at the Beijing airport departure lounge, after his housemate reported a small backpack and “some books and stuff” were missing from their apartment. Whether the teacher is US-bound or not is unclear but a China Daily Show investigation suggests not, as we can now exclusively reveal:

• Cooter owes child support to a Minnesota mother of two
• Résumé claims that his interests include “Kunqu Opera, Tang poetry and Taoism” were dismissed as both “hilarious” and “complete bunkum” by fellow teacher Carl Wade, 28
• Neighbors at his former trailer park describe him as “unemployable, even for these parts”
• Cooter’s father is engaged in a long-running court battle to disown him

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By JONAS WHALE
Entertainment Correspondent

Lohan is reported to be giving serious thought to taking up an academic position in China

LOS ANGELES (China Daily Show) – Lindsay Lohan’s cellmate has revealed that America’s least favorite actress and noted cocaine lover is considering teaching English in China as part of a “personal journey of self-discovery.”

An anonymous prison guard from the minimum-security Brentwood facility confirmed yesterday that a screened telephone call was placed by Babs ‘the Beast’ Bellavaqua, 43, of Compton, Los Angeles, to her lawyer, in which the Mean Girls actress’s intentions were revealed.

“’I want to get as far away from drugs as possible,’ that’s what she said,” Bellavaqua told her attorney in a tape heard by China Daily Show, yesterday. “Lindsay feels unwanted, unloved and unable to get a job in her own country.”

Experts agree that a working visit to China seems the obvious solution.

Phone calls placed by China Daily Show to Lohan’s parents were not immediately returned. But a visa agent in Beijing has reported receiving the passport of one Michael Joseph Lohan, Sr, shortly after the news was released.

“He wanted the one-year tourist visa,” said the agent, who preferred to remain anonymous on account of legal complications regarding her agency. “As for his daughter, I don’t know.”

A Peking University source, who wished to remain anonymous, claimed that the university was on stand-by to sack its current Visiting Emeritus Professor of Literature, Toni Morrison, and hire Lohan at a moment’s notice,  should the actress decide to pursue academia in China.

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By TIANTIAN XIANGSHANG
Education Correspondent

It has been alleged that Cooter is working in China fraudulently

BEIJING (China Daily Show) — An English teacher who hit the headlines recently after canceling a Saturday morning lesson appeared to be in further trouble today, after a routine background check found an apparent anomaly with his English-teaching (TEFL) certificate.

Earl Cooter, 33, of Delberville, Mississippi, told university staff in his application that he was a graduate of the University of Mississippi and had completed a four-month post-graduate course in Teaching English as a Foreign Language at the Mountainland Applied Vocational College.

“Because of the cancelling, so our dean had asked me several times to checking Mr Cooter’s certificate of the qualify,” said class assistant Zhao Wei. “Whereas, they had found no detail of the record of the enrolling or graduating ceremony. This made no sense totally.

“We had later discovered that the School of Mountain Applied Vacations had not existing at all. So we knew the possible of the fraud had been slippery through the security bypass of the reference had checked it.”

If true, it would mean that Cooter has been blithely teaching English, Applied Engineering and Sociology at Beijing’s No. 6 University of Horticulture & HVAC Repair without apparent difficulty for the last four years. The possibility has baffled university staff, who assured parents and staff on Friday that, if true, such a case of academic fraud would be unprecedented in the history of both the faculty and the Chinese university system at large.

“All English teachers in China are subject to rigorous background checks and professionally assessed as ‘Foreign Experts’ according to Chinese law,” said an official at the Exit and Entry Administration Bureau today. “It would be quite impossible for a incompetent, unqualified or unprofessional foreigner to be granted permission to work in China.”

Calls to Cooter’s mobile phone went unanswered and there was no response when China Daily Show reporters knocked on his apartment door.

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By TIANTIAN XIANGSHANG
Education Correspondent

Cooter, 33, pictured at a wine-tasting event

BEIJING (China Daily Show) — An English teacher at Beijing’s No. 6 University of Horticulture & HVAC Repair called administrators Sunday to inform them that  “yesterday’s Saturday morning class has been canceled.”

Read the full story

BEIJING (China Daily Show)- According to several Facebook status updates, more and more foreigners in Beijing are getting their feelings hurt. Several passive-aggressive-sounding status alerts in the China network show: “Feeling depressed…” “Not so good…” “Kinda bummed :(” and “browsing hongkong.craigstlist.com.”

“I had to wait fifteen minutes for a taxi this morning,” Chris Madsen of New Haven wrote as his Facebook status yesterday. “The taxis were empty, but they all drove by. That definitely hurt my feelings.”

“It used to be that I could cut to the front of the subway line and nobody would say anything because I’m a foreigner,” wrote Natalie Turner, of Dallas, in her LiveBlog. “But today everyone was shouting, ‘Hey! Get in line, fattie!’”

“My feelings were hurt by the cute woman at the PSB,” Twittered James Fowler, of Missoula. “When I smile at her, she usually waives the late penalty on my L visa renewal. But not today she didn’t!”

Many Chinese have posted notes of encouragement on their foreign friend’s Facebook walls, telling them not to take it personal, but to learn to acknowledge China as a major world player.

“Am sorry you had got your feelings hurt recently, but do not take it as a personal,” posted one Facebook user to all her foreign friends. “Their upset was not meant as hurtful, but just try to show that we were not stupid and knew how to spoke for ourselves.”

To lighten spirits, the Chinese Ministry of Happiness, Prosperity, and Longevity has planned a public dance this Friday at Tuanjiehu East Gate.

“All Beijing-registered foreign friends are invited to engage in multi-cultural activities for mutually enhanced understanding and furthered economic cooperation,” said the ministry’s website.

For more information about the event, appear in person with your passport at your local PSB.