I am reminded how difficult it is to gauge cross-cultural mania. I have lived in China the better part of two decades and speak Mandarin on an intermediate level. I am, however, unable to judge the personality or mental stability of Chinese for two or three weeks after meeting them, whether speaking English or Chinese. After a time, you can observe behavior, but the language and cultural cues of someone being 'slightly off' are almost impossible to detect.
Among the dozens of foreign teachers that I have work alongside at Universities in China, two stand out in my memory.
Jxx, a tall obese U.S. citizen, informed the Foreign Language Department head at a 'waijiao' meeting that it was necessary for him to fail 150 of his 180 students for the semester. When the other foreign teachers suggest ways to 'augment' his grades, he placed his fingers in his ears and flapped his lips, droning out our voices like a 3-year old told to eat his vegetables. It was the last FT meeting that year.
Cxxxx, a balding U.S citizen, always salivated from one corner of his mouth and observed the world around him like a chick newly hatched. He routinely sat in front of his class, smoking cigarettes, crying, sharing the tragic details of his life. The University finally moved him into a subsidiary 'xueyuan' class of students who were unable to understand anything he was saying. At year end he moved on to a first level university in Chengdu, but fell down the escalator stairs in the airport and ended up in the hospital where, detoxing, his madness became evident and he was deported.
As a New Yorker I am accustomed to people suffering from psychiatric and pharmaceutical challenges, but these individuals would never be hired as teachers while exhibiting symptoms that are obvious to native speakers. In China the FAO departments are unable to identify these poor souls when hiring foreign teachers. Only months later do they recognize they've made a mistake. Firing the teacher would be an admission of guilt, so routinely they are just not offered another contract but given a recommendation when hired by another clueless school.
It is merely coincidence, I hope, that these two most notorious misfits were from the U.S. They barely 'beat-out' the Australian ex-professional wrestler and his son, a commercial chicken executioner. Then there was the South African who for the entire semester after his girl-friend dumped him only played movies in class, sitting in the back, nursing the hand he broke assaulting a tree, scouring WeChat and TanTan for love.
And then there was the Brit who ....