Foreigners and Emperors

Alex Barteau, a professor of writing and literature, has returned to China after his two-year stint in Shan-An University and a one year stay in his US home in Atlanta. Now he is in southern China but working for an exchange program through a university in Indiana USA. Almost immediately he encounters problems because of communications misunderstanding between his home campus and this new (for him) university in southern China. He also has to work with a young female dean who is hostile to this program in her school because it is, technically, run by an American university that is awarding the final degree for successful students.

As it turns out, hostilities exist on all levels regarding who is in charge and, for example, how many textbooks must be used and the fact that Chinese administrators demand that they be bought in China instead of being sent from Indiana. In an extreme case, Alex is even accused of being disliked for his teaching style, something that is not verified, and of creating demands on the English Department -- demands that he did not make and were, in fact, made by a colleague from Indiana.

Fortunately, Alex is able to remain in touch with a former British colleague in Shan-An and with a former Chinese girl friend with whom he had a sexual affair. The Chinese girl friend even visits him for a short time at one of his new universities. These contacts offer moral support and a sounding board for his problems. He is also able to keep in email contact with a former close friend in graduate school and now an instructor himself in a northern Kentucky university.

Over the next five years, Alex moves from one campus to another after his contract expires or after he sees a better offer with better, so he thinks, teaching opportunities. Along the way, he meets several new friends -- ladies and male students. However, he is forever haunted by the figurative dark specter over his shoulder
that seems to want to sabotage his experience as a "foreigner" teaching on campuses filled with "emperors" (spoiled young male students who are almost all guaranteed of graduation or an occupation because of his family's connections) and constant cheating which is often supported or overlooked by Chinese faculty members. He is often at odds with local faculty members, who resent his even being there, and with administrators, particularly when he pens an article about what it is like to teach in a Chinese educational institution.
(Characters from FORBIDDEN VOICES also appear in this follow-up novel.)