Imagine this: It’s 9am on a Saturday, sun still lazy over the Gobi fringe, and your phone rings with a voice that sounds like it’s been dipped in soy sauce and shaken. “Bobby, it’s Yi. You’re Jewish, right?” I was, but I didn’t know whether to laugh or start packing. “I have a job for you that only a Jewish man can do,” he said, as if he were offering me the keys to a secret temple. “Good pay, too.” I didn’t ask for details. I was already in the van, rolling through dust storms and forgotten factories, heart thumping like a *dumpling* being pummeled by a seasoned chef. The slaughterhouse loomed ahead—blood-streaked concrete, a steel door that groaned like a disgruntled dragon, and a man in a stained apron who looked at me like I was a rare specimen in a lab. “We need someone to *kosher* the meat,” he said, as if it were the most normal request in the world. I wasn’t sure if I’d come to China to teach English or become a modern-day *shochet*.
Then there’s the man who taught *Chinese opera* to a group of French tourists—but only in the style of *The Phantom of the Opera*. Yes, really. He didn’t just teach them the moves; he coached them on how to weep dramatically while twirling a fan, how to sigh with operatic despair between every *qi* breath. One tourist asked if they could perform it at a local café. The answer? “Only if you wear a white mask and sing in a voice like a broken flute.” He wasn’t hired by a theatre company—no, he was recruited by a quirky travel startup that wanted to monetize “exotic cultural fusion.” Now, every weekend, you can watch a Frenchman in a dragon robe attempting to hit a high note while balancing a bamboo pole on his head. It’s not art. It’s performance warfare.
Another gem: the ghostwriter for China’s most reclusive billionaire who only communicates through poetry written in *Pinyin*—and only at midnight. This job isn’t about writing copy. It’s about deciphering cryptic, metaphor-laden messages like “The moon is a cold teacup, and the sky has forgotten its umbrella” and turning them into press releases about “innovative solar-powered moonlight harvesting.” The foreigner? A former London journalist with a penchant for haiku and a fear of being trapped in a poetry trap. The pay? Five thousand yuan per moon phase.
Let’s talk about the woman who became the official “smell tester” for a new line of Chinese incense marketed to Westerners. Her job? Scent the air with a blend of sandalwood, dragon’s breath, and “soulful regret,” then rate it on a scale from “mildly nostalgic” to “I think I’ve seen my mother’s ghost.” She once said, “I once smelled something that made me cry for 47 minutes. The client said it was ‘perfect.’” She’s now on a first-name basis with the scent of existential longing.
And who could forget the guy hired to be the “emotional support dragon” for a children’s theme park in Hangzhou? No, he didn’t wear a costume. He *was* the dragon—literally. A massive, animatronic, 12-foot-tall mechanical beast powered by a foreign engineer who had to live in a trailer behind the park and perform daily maintenance on its “emotional circuits.” His job? Ensure the dragon’s voice didn’t glitch during storytelling sessions. One time, it whispered “I love you” to a kid during a thunderstorm. The kid cried. The parents cried. The park manager cried. The dragon didn’t. It was just a machine. But it *felt* like love.
If you’re thinking, “Okay, this all sounds like a fever dream,” then you’re halfway there. The beauty of working in China—as a foreigner—is that reality bends, stretches, and sometimes bursts into a flamboyant dance. And after a few months of testing incense, whispering to robots, or koshering lamb in the desert, you start to believe that the world is far stranger—and more colorful—than any job description could ever predict. So pack your bags, don your most expressive face, and bring a sense of humor sharper than a *dumpling* knife. The next job might be waiting for you in a noodle shop in Chengdu… or under a haunted moon in Xinjiang.
And yes, before you go—pack a good travel insurance policy. Not because you’ll need it, but because the moment you step off the plane, you’ll realize: the real adventure isn’t just surviving the job, it’s surviving the *stories* you’ll come back with. The job might be odd, but the memories? They’re priceless. And if someone asks why you have a dragon-shaped USB drive, just smile and say, “It’s my emotional support tech.” They won’t understand. But that’s the charm.
Categories:
Chengdu, Hangzhou, Xinjiang, English, Mongolia,
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