I’ve debated (with myself) the wisdom of writing what is printed below. I’m not annoyed because I’ve not come away with much more than bucketloads of experience, as that experience has been invaluable. I’m pissed off because not only is someone trying to pass off my work as their own, they’re doing it so poorly.

Neil showed me an e-mail from a friend in Xiamen. He’d scanned the editorial page from the last What’s On Xiamen he’s seen. In it, the assistant editor I’d picked to replace me on my departure said she was so stressed working so goddamn hard on the content to deliver the issue to her dear readers after I left suddenly and without warning.

Yes, she worked really hard writing that editorial and getting other people to do her job. I got a teeny tiny thank you at the end, with no mention that I’d done practically all the work remotely (one skim of the articles and the editorial makes it clear they were not written by the same person — I write using grammar and punctuation). She’s probably already been paid more than me because she’s salaried and I wasn’t. And she’s asked me to help her (free of charge) with taking over the website (and her first questions concerned how much profit it makes, followed by saying she has no clue how to administer a website so if I could tutor her through it she’d be very grateful).

My dear girl who spent a year studying in England but only hung out with other Chinese students and did not make one British friend, I lived in China for three years. Complimenting me then trying to scam me isn’t gonna work. If you want to do it, you’re gonna have to find help somewhere else, and I can guarantee you that your new foreign friends are expecting to profit from it, too.