Thursday 10^th June, 2021 1800

After I had posted Monday's entry Jody came home with her news.

For two years now she has been trying to get the release papers signed (sounds as if she is a prisoner, which in a way she is) so she can go and teach in South America. I persuaded her that Colombia was too dangerous and so I believe now she chooses Mexico.

She was refused last year because of Covid – although I gather a couple of other teachers were in fact allowed to go. On Monday she was refused again. She has been working her whatnots off for a year doing extra hours and work in order to ingratiate herself, we are talking fourteen hour weekdays and weekends twelve. Ridiculous. I told her there was no loyalty in Chinese schools but she wouldn't listen.

And now she knows I was right because her boss told her on Monday that as long as he was in charge she would never get the authorisation. She could transfer to her old boss's department and next year he surely would give her what she wants. Except such is the system in China that both heads of dept have to agree to the transfer. That presumably is the price to be paid for what is effectively a job for life. I told her she should immediately refuse any extra work and in fact work to rule.

On Tuesday she came home with the news that next term her dept will be abolished and everyone in it will be placed under her old boss, the good guy! Naturally that cheered her up.

And universities are in the news lately, what with dons refusing to teach until Rhodes falls (sack the lot of them, I say) and now stupid kids removing the queen from Oriel. Closer to home for me, a university teacher in Shanghai was murdered (stabbed) by a fellow teacher he had disagreed with. In the taxi going to campus I told this to Jody and suggested perhaps it was because the stabbed one was the boss and he had said as long as he was in charge......

She saw the funny side.

And then today there was a story wherein Nanjing Normal University students kidnapped and held their principal to ransom for 30 hours, he only being released when riot police with shields, sprays and batons crashed the campus. Maybe this IS a dangerous job after all! The stabbing story is in Chinese media, the ransom one when I looked was very firmly not.