Halloween Party at the Blue Bar! Snobbery.

Halloween at the Blue Bar was a bore. There were too many people. In retrospect, the school should have held the party at its own location. The mix of Expats having a Friday night drink and students wasn't at all right.

But I should say my mood at the party was tempered by trouble on the home front. Things are peaceful now but only because of the level of the fury before. But at the party, I was the opposite of a genial host. I was more like the head mourner at a funeral.

Being a lowly Expat English teacher in Wuxi, China I have to deal with snobs. I have learned to put up with it, but my wife can't. And China, despite all those years of Communism, the snobbery here is more intense than you would see in the West.

Being in a foul mood, I noticed a lot of Chinese yelling "laowei" as I passed (usually I ignore it), and I then heard them talking a lot about me as they muttered that word at least three or four times in their ensuing conversation. When they come to Canada or America, they would never hear passerbys saying "China Man" to each other.