'Upon entering, abandon all reason'

“Why can’t I use one of our new classrooms downstairs when I teach on weekends?” I asked Cindy, the campus manageress.
It’s too dangerous,” Cindy replied.

My eyebrows rose as I tried to figure out that one.

One of the really good private schools I freelance for in Shanghai, with the stunningly unoriginal and redundant name, “Learning Education Centre (LEC)”, had recently rented and set up beautiful additional classrooms on the floor below the original school in the World Plaza building in Pudong. We had only used the new downstairs classes during the week for the special summer classes which had finished some time ago.

LEC is mostly private, weekend teaching and the classroom I had upstairs, which I use on Sundays, was desperately small and tatty. The broken metal beading on the floors stuck up like knives. A kid could slip and really injure herself. Both children and parents moaned the room was too small and hot in the humid summer. Whatever happened to customers first?

Somehow, the idea of teaching downstairs in the new, smart classrooms was too much for manageress Cindy. Upstairs would have been okay. Yet the downstairs classrooms had cost a pretty penny to refurbish. There are different, colourful theme wall-paintings in each classroom. For example, classroom “Ocean” has a lavish, comic book wall-to-wall mural of the sea viewed underwater with English labels for the crab, seahorse, dolphin, mermaid, King Neptune, etcetera. The wall is a great English lesson in itself for the little ones.

Now I knew Cindy was going to say no, you can’t use the new, sparkling classrooms downstairs. This is because of her robotic, unimaginative thinking, sadly common among many mainland Chinese people, who are mostly exceptionally sharp at the same time. It seems to be a hangover from the Cultural Revolution. The CR was an exceptionally cruel oppression; its leaders tried their damnedest to make their brand of communism work. Therefore, do not think, otherwise you may not like the injustices being done to you.

So I just knew my breadcrumb of initiative and common sense was going to be too much for Cindy. However, “It’s too dangerous,” had me gob smacked, yes even me, veteran of China for nearly four years now.

I scratched my head, thinking of the kids who ran around downstairs anyway during their breaks, playing hide and seek around the restaurants. There are also security guards present in the plaza. The children go downstairs often on their own to catch the metro after class.

“Why is it dangerous?” I eventually asked, “Both the teaching assistant and myself will be in the classroom.” I was desperately curious to hear the answer.
“A stranger can walk in the classroom.” Cindy said. (And get past me, ex-rugby hooker, 110 kilograms?)
“Put someone on the reception desk that’s outside the classroom.” I ventured. There were several receptionists sitting on the upstairs reception with little to do.

Oriental silence: Cindy’s eyes not looking at anything in particular, refusing to let her eyeballs make that upward movement to access the cognitive area of aha, good idea! or plain bloody reason. She had known me for two years and was tired of my solution-thinking.

I think it scared her.

So the expensively rented and refurbished classrooms remain locked and unused now the summer classes are over. Apparently we can start using them sometime. Sometime. Meanwhile all that rental money is blithely chugging out every month for nothing.

A wag in my watering hole, Long Bar on Nanjing Road, after I told him the tale, reminded me of the quip most ex-pats here know: there should be a sign at Shanghai’s Pudong Airport, in International Arrivals, saying, “Upon entering, abandon all reason”. To which I would add: “and be obscenely wasteful with your business money.”