The Headmaster, the Terrorists and Me

10.05.04 | 9:37 PM ET

Nobody liked the headmaster. That much I figured out by my second week in China. The morning of my arrival, he stood at the school gates and issued nervous orders through cigarette-stained teeth to those who had worked hard to make my teaching assignment there possible.

A 50-ish man of rural stock, he was clearly pleased to have reached local prominence in this dusty little town where Shanghai’s urban echoes dissipated beyond the last ring road. Two members of the English faculty translated his welcome to me, but in their nonplussed tones I detected a red thread of embarrassment. He may preside over this fiefdom, I thought, but he doesn’t hold their respect.

Soon thereafter, I discovered my presence had given the headmaster much to gloat about. As the first foreign teacher in the school’s 99-year history, I represented a bureaucratic coup that enabled him to trade significantly on his all-important guanxi, or connections, across working class San Lin. I heard rumors he was lording it over the other headmasters in town, and was surprised when English teachers from neighboring schools began showing up at my weekly teacher training sessions. My first impression had been on the mark.

Our Waterloo, the headmaster’s and mine, came about two months into the school term. That week, terrorists bombed a nightclub in Bali packed with young Western travelers. More than 200 people were killed. The attack had left my Australian friends teaching in China particularly unnerved. I didn’t think the Shanghainese had taken much notice of the event until my department chair relayed a message from the school district: An unnamed administrator suggested that I not be allowed to leave the school grounds often due to the “threat” against foreigners.

I laughed off the overreaching directive—I lived on school grounds, so enforcing it would have meant virtual imprisonment—and assured my department head I was safer in Shanghai than at home in Washington, D.C. I was about to learn that authority couldn’t be so easily dismissed.

Days later, I received an invitation to one of my first grader’s homes. Aileen’s mother had decided to throw a Saturday afternoon party for several of the school’s teachers. She sent a rose-embossed card with a party agenda carefully presented in girlish English, explaining the event was being held “For the healthful growing up of Aileen Lu.” Charmed, I told Mrs. Lu that I looked forward to attending.

To my surprise, word came late Friday that the party had been cancelled. Disappointed at a missed opportunity to visit a Chinese home, I assumed an emergency had arisen. Mrs. Lu’s breathless appearance at my door that evening told me otherwise.”

Something has happened,” she warned. “The school called and said I must cancel the party because it is not safe for you.”

The headmaster, I said to myself, much in the manner of Jerry Seinfeld declaiming, Newman. There was no threat, real or perceived, that could possibly arise between the school gates and the Lus’ home, a mile to the west in a semi-rural middle class neighborhood. The man was using the specter of terrorism to manipulate my social life. Why, I wasn’t sure, but I was faced with a split-second decision: cause a very public loss of face—a pernicious offense in China—or draw a line in the sand, assert my independence, and restore the happiness of a heartbroken 7-year-old. I told Mrs. Lu I’d be there.

The following afternoon, the Lus greeted me with a surprisingly authentic American-style pizza, made with the expert guidance of an Italian friend, and Aileen was ebullient. The party went off without a hitch. As the days slipped by and no one commented on my transgression, the line from the Wizard of Oz ricocheted in my head: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Foreigners in China often find it hard to deconstruct decisions reached behind closed doors, and in this case the truth was no easier to grasp than a curl of smoke, lazing ever skyward. I asked to meet with the school’s deputy administrator, Mrs. Tang, in an attempt to decipher the headmaster’s gambit.

A doughy, good-natured woman whose face conveyed a middle-aged sensibility beyond her 33 years, Mrs. Tang was a beloved mentor who had risen through the ranks of the English department. She worked long hours to instill a sense of pride in the school, conducted telephone diplomacy with the mysterious “school leaders,” and struggled to raise two high-strung, 11-year-old twin boys. I hoped we could talk openly. Another week passed, and a message filtered through: She was too busy to meet with me, and the issue was “complicated.” I was chastened. If I could skirt cultural imperative, Mrs. Tang was bound by it.

Eventually, the truth trickled out over a bowl of rice. One Thursday during lunch period, as a tinny children’s song about a seagull played over the school intercom, my Chinese deskmate looked up from her meal and let it slip that the headmaster wasn’t on good terms with Aileen Lu’s grandmother. A story unfolded: The grandmother had worked for years in the school library, retiring the year before I arrived, forced out by the headmaster before she was ready to go. Putting the pieces together, it seemed he simply didn’t want this particular family to have the honor of receiving the foreign teacher in their home. Hubris had ensnared me where the terrorists couldn’t.

The headmaster kept a studied distance for the remainder of my stay. I had stood my ground, my moral compass quivering at true north. How much my actions had eroded his authority or changed the school’s dynamics remained cloudy. Our wordless battle had been a riddle wrapped in an enigma, and I supposed it a draw. My last day in China, the headmaster insisted on driving me to Pudong Airport in his shiny Volkswagen Santana, accompanied by the English department head as his designated translator.

I left him as I found him: smiling nervously and nodding, blessing my departure with a hurried Zaijian. The unanswerable lingered in that curbside moment: Had he lost face? Had I?  I turned to leave, my luggage rolling in fits and starts across broken cement. As with so much in China, I had to accept that I would never know.

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