Economic reform, privatization, and social stratification

The year 1978 marked the start of China's economic reform from central planning to market socialism as Deng Xiaoping regained political power. While people had enjoyed relatively high job security under the planned economy, their lack of entrepreneurship and initiative supposedly contributed to the underperformance of many state-owned enterprises (SOE) (W. Zhang Reference Zhang2000). Many SOEs were then privatized, and, meanwhile, individual entrepreneurship was also encouraged to allow for the legitimate co-existence of private economic entities. During this process, the assignment system, wherein people's jobs were assigned via central planning as an ‘iron rice bowl’ (permanent job), was gradually replaced by a flexible labor market, with people being allowed for the first time to work in a position of their own choice (W. Zhang Reference Zhang2000; Hoffman Reference Hoffman, Zhang and Ong2007).

The privatization of SOEs resulted in massive layoffs and high job insecurity (Bian Reference Bian, Davis and Wang2009:177). But Deng showed his resolution in economic reform through his famous South China Tour in 1992. The Tour was meant to further reform China through experimentally opening its economy in certain special regions (W. Zhang Reference Zhang2000; Ong Reference Ong2006). The experiment was first introduced in coastal cities (e.g. Shanghai) and special economic zones (e.g. Shenzhen) before being implemented in other parts of China. Shanghai was transformed into the commercial center of China, whereas Shenzhen, in Guangdong Province, also quickly became one of the most developed cities in China due to its geographical proximity to Hong Kong. As regional disparities began to emerge and enlarge, an unprecedented scale of internal migration started and continues to this day as people pursue better opportunities outside their official place of residence (hùkŏu). These transformations have effects on the way people perceive their work, the job market, and also their self-identification as working professionals, pushing Chinese society towards what Deng calls a ‘personal responsibility system’ (Harvey Reference Harvey2005:168).

China joining the World Trade Organization

Concurrent with this process of economic reform is internationalization, in particular by opening China to foreign direct investment (FDI) since the 1980s. In the early phase of opening up, overseas Chinese played an important role, as their cultural and linguistic ties made them a privileged group to explore China's market (W. Zhang Reference Zhang2000; Harvey Reference Harvey2005; Q. Zhang Reference Zhang2005; You Reference You2013). The financial market of China, however, was not yet fully open to the outside world, which helped exempt China from being affected as seriously as other countries during the Asian financial crisis (1997–1998) (Rofel Reference Rofel2007). But witnessing the contaminant consequences of neoliberal globalization on other Asian countries, China did become more aware than ever that the world has now become a global village and no country can exist in isolation, which helped accelerate its decision to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) (see Rofel Reference Rofel2007:ff157).

Upon its entry into the WTO in 2001, China faced the difficult work of further reforming its economy as well as opening itself up to international finances. But, run by a single-party system and an authoritarian state, China proceeded with its market reform not through political hearings or debates, but through what Rofel calls the familiar Chinese political ritual of ‘educational campaign’ (Rofel Reference Rofel2007:171), intending to change people's consciousness about the WTO and indeed globalization. Most notably, Rofel (Reference Rofel2007) observes that, Wu Yi, one of the key negotiators of China's entry into the WTO and later Vice Premier of China (2003–2007), attempted ‘the intimate articulation of economic policy and subjectivity’ (Rofel Reference Rofel2007:173). As China finalized its WTO commitments, Wu delivered the speech below to Chinese political cadres:

As Rofel (Reference Rofel2007:176) shows, such discourse that links political economy with the transformation of self can be seen as a classic example of neoliberal governmentality (Foucault Reference Foucault, Burchell, Gordon and Miller1991). Similarly, Ong (Reference Ong2007:6) observes that ‘more striking than in Western contexts, in Asian milieus of development, neoliberal thinking is directed toward ‘the promotion of educated and self-managing citizens who can compete in global knowledge markets’. In this historical process, we see the growth of a new generation of Chinese working professionals in the job market, who constitute the emerging middle class, as both the key players in the global economy, and yet also the most direct targets of neoliberal thinking (Hoffman Reference Hoffman, Zhang and Ong2007; Ong Reference Ong2007:6).

Language is deeply embedded in this changing political economy of China. Among others, the restructuring of the job market has effects on the way people access, evaluate, and use language varieties. For example, Qing Zhang (Reference Zhang2005) shows how in the early phase of opening up, when overseas Chinese played a prominent role, urban professionals in wàiqĭ appropriate transnational Chinese (Hong Kong and Taiwan) varieties to construct their yuppie identity. Such an appropriation, as Zhang (Reference Zhang2005) convincingly shows, is largely motivated by class distinction and consumerism. In the case of English, however, as I show here, its more recent adoption in wàiqĭ is not to be explained only in terms of social distinction, but also as professionalism and neoliberal subjectivity. With the further globalization of China, Chinese urban working professionals are not just demonstrating the coolness of white-collar identity (Q. Zhang Reference Zhang2005), but facing great pressures, especially among the lower middle class, to make rational choices and practise ‘self-enterprise and self-reflexivity in the face of market uncertainty’ (Ong Reference Ong, Zhang and Ong2008:184), including quitting jobs to improve English, the language that is defining what personal success means in globalizing China.

Research site and data collection

Yangshuo is located in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southern China. As early as 1978, Yangshuo was designated as one of the first tourist destinations open to foreigners, and has been gaining in reputation and popularity among foreign travelers because of its karst mountains and rivers (Storey, Goncharoff, & Liou Reference Storey, Goncharoff and Liou1998:774). However, since the 1990s, with the lifting of constraints on geographical mobility among Chinese nationals, the domestic tourism market started to emerge and quickly expand (Gao Reference Gao2012a). Against this background, Yangshuo, in an attempt to attract domestic travelers, started to capitalize on the availability of a large number of foreign travelers, and to promote itself as an ‘English corner’, that is, a public place for people to practise spoken English. Under favorable local government policies, private language schools started to be established, recruiting English-speaking foreign travelers on flexible contracts. My interviews with foreigners teaching English show that they took up teaching positions mainly to support themselves financially while travelling around Yangshuo, though they may not have had equivalent teaching experience in their home countries. This conforms to Uriely & Reichel's (Reference Uriely and Reichel2000:270) observation that:

Notably, foreigners (老外) are highlighted in tourism promotional discourses as figures of linguistic authority and authenticity so as to attract English language learners (Gao Reference Gao2012a; see also Seargeant Reference Seargeant2005; Henry Reference Henry2010, Reference Henry2013; Park Reference Park2010b). In this process, therefore, English comes to acquire economic value, and English-speaking foreigners become moving subjects to be managed for the ‘territorial concentrations of resources’ (Sassen Reference Sassen and Sassen2002:2, as cited in Hannam, Sheller, & Urry Reference Hannam, Sheller and Urry2006:7). Such mobilization of foreigners and commodification of English boost the local economy by attracting an increasing number of Chinese nationals. Statistics show that ‘the number of the schools once reached a historical high of 48 in this small region. From 2004 to 2009, more than 50,000 people came over to learn English, along with more than 200,000 friends and relatives visiting as tourists’ (Jiang Reference Jiang, Tang and Xianzhong2009:59).

At the language school where I did my fieldwork, the regular students were working professionals, most from small or medium-sized transnational companies in the Pearl River Delta. Below is an extract from the website of Samuel Language School,Footnote ³ provided in the Q & A session as a reply to ‘Who is this school for?’.

When people who did not understand asked why he quit such a good job, he explained like this: (i) You have all the chances in the world to make money, but there are not many chances like having a good time studying here. You can not only improve your English, but also relax among the nice scenery of rivers and mountains. (ii) The expenditure for learning three months here costs even less than learning for just one month in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, or Zhuhai. The price is so good. (iii) The learning environment here is unique, and cannot be found in other places in China. Every night you can chat with foreigners over beer. Where else can you find such feelings?Footnote ⁵

As we see below, actual language learning in Yangshuo is not as glorious as this sketch might suggest, but even so, the large number of foreigners and relatively low cost of learning have made Yangshuo an attractive and affordable place among lower middle-class working professionals seeking to improve English.

Samuel Language School, established in 2001, was one of the oldest and most popular schools in Yangshuo, with its motto being ‘success in English, success in life’. According to news reports at the school's website, during his visit to Samuel Language School in March 2012, Xin Changxing, vice minister of the Chinese Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, applauded the students’ spirits of self-development after learning that many had come over to learn English after quitting their jobs, wishing them success in achieving their English dreams.

During my fieldwork in 2011, I carried out observations and interviews. My original plan was to audio record interactions between students and foreigners, but such interactions turned out to be too opportunistic to be properly recorded—a student would talk to a random foreigner at a random time/place, which meant it was impractical for me to obtain participants’ consent beforehand and record the conversations. I therefore carried out some on-site observations, but mostly relied on interviews with foreigners and students. These interviews, as I show later, provide accounts of how students made sense of their interactions with foreigners, which cannot be obtained by looking at recorded interactions alone. In other words, these interviews produce meta-discourses of interaction that turn out to be crucial in revealing the language ideologies—‘conceptions of … the nature and purpose of communication and of communicative behavior’ (Silverstein Reference Silverstein1987:1–2, as cited in Woolard Reference Woolard1992:235)—underlying interactions between students and foreigners.

Altogether, I interviewed twenty-four adult students and eight ‘local foreigners’ (本地老外 bĕndì lăowài), a local term referring to foreigners living in Yangshuo. I asked students questions about their reasons for learning English, and their English learning activities inside and outside of school. Interviews were conducted in English, as required by the School, but before one-to-one interviews with students, I always told them to feel free to use Chinese if they preferred. Generally speaking, they were working professionals (aged from twenty-two to forty, average age 27.8) who used to hold lower-rank positions in small or medium-sized enterprises dealing with international trade. They may or may not have college degrees and none of them had studied abroad. But all of themFootnote ⁶ had the similar experience of having quit, or intending to change, jobs before coming to Yangshuo, hoping that better English would later help them find better jobs. Seven of the eight local foreigners I interviewed were working at Samuel's as language teachers while traveling in Yangshuo, with the other one being a former English teacher who was running a coffee shop at the time of the interview. I asked them about their life and work in Yangshuo and their experience of interacting with Chinese people in English. I also made random observations of interactions between foreigners and adult students.

The adult English language learners

With years of working experience, the working professionals’ decision to learn English represents a calculated choice and reflexive decision in relation to the dynamism of the global economy and the labor market (Ong Reference Ong2007:4–5). For example, in (1) Jon told me why he quit his job to learn English.

1. (1) Jon, thirty-six years old, used to be a salesperson in Guangdong, had been studying in Yangshuo for seven months

   because it's not easy to get more order in the market now… because it is difficult time for many companies. Maybe in this financial crisis, many companies meet, meet, er, er, this difficulty, so so I think I must I have to learn something to improve myself, and looking for another job.

Such discourse of increasing one's employability through English learning was also echoed by other participants, as they looked forward to ‘the promise of English’ (Park Reference Park2011), that is, a better job with higher pay.

1. (2) Zed, twenty-five years old, car-parts production supervisor, worked in Hunan, had been studying in Yangshuo for more than one year

   actually that's why I quitted the job. I didn't pass the exam for the job promotion. I was the supervisor in the department, and I had to pass the exam to become the manager. I didn't pass the exam. [The exam] it's about knowledge, and relationship, and professional skills, and also English. Because they used English for the interview, every part I did a good job, but interview it's very very bad. …They have three men [examiners], they asked me many questions about cars, my hobbies, and something. I didn't answer [well], because I didn't know their meanings. It was not very difficult questions.

2. (3) Tina, twenty-two years old, salesperson working in Guangdong, had been studying in Yangshuo for two months

   I want to change another job. They want PETS-4Footnote ⁷. I have no choice… I still want to do international business. [But] I want to be a manager, not just a staff. I don't always be a staff or worker. If I learn English well, I get promotion… I have to improve myself.

As Tina and Zed explained, English has become an important part of human capital and a gate-keeping language in global workplaces in China, and their pursuit of English is largely motivated by the need, if not imperative (“I have no choice”), for self-improvement. However, English not only supposedly helps increase the chance of upward mobility; good English has also become almost iconic (Irvine & Gal Reference Irvine, Gal and Kroskrity2000) of professionalism, the lack of which could even become a target of contempt. For instance, Amy, with almost ten years of working experience, was already a manager in charge of her company's business transactions with about nineteen countries. She nevertheless quit her job, not just because of her incompetence in English, but also because this had led to disrespect from her employees. Below is what she said when I asked her why she wanted to learn English.

1. (4) Amy, thirty years old, manager of a company in Guangdong, had been studying in Yangshuo for about ten months

   Because I want to be 名正言顺的经理 [a manager in the real sense of the word]. No complaints from my employees. Sometimes my assistants would compare with me in a quite sensational way. Just like, why you don't know English and you can get higher salary than us? And if I let them do the translation, 有时候假装没听到, 尤其是 pay day [they sometimes pretended they didn't hear me, especially when it was the pay day]. I can feel that. Sometimes I asked them to do some extra work, they refused me. They said “I don't like to work overtime, because my salary is too low, my position is low, you can do it, don't ask us”.

For Amy, her weaker English language competence, as compared to that of her subordinates, is not simply a practical problem that interferes with her job performance as a manager; it is also an issue of professionalism, which ultimately leads her to question whether she is “a manager in the real sense of the word”. Through improving English, she said, “[I hope to] do my future work well without translators. If I have a high position, I also need an assistant, but not for translating”. Therefore, while having an administrative assistant testifies to Amy's high professional position as a manager, having a language assistant, or translator, only undermines her professionalism. In this way, the English language is naturalized as an indispensable component of the ideal professional identity, and investment in English internalized as a moral issue. A good command of English not only helps improve work efficiency but, more importantly, authenticates a professional identity through the demonstration of English as proof of legitimacy, credibility and authority (Wee Reference Wee2008:261–64). Amy's bold move to quit her job and invest time and money in learning English is precisely a way of realigning herself with this neoliberal ideal, as it positions her as willingly taking risks to improve her English rather than remain secluded in her already-achieved position as a manager. It is in this context that Chinese working professionals in the present research started their quest for English.

The FACES method

English learning in Yangshuo is based on a folk language learning method—the ‘FACES successful English learning method’, developed by Zhang, a former tour guide who spearheaded the English education industry in Yangshuo back in the 1990s. Despite having no academic background in English language education at all, Zhang managed to obtain support from the local government due to the great contribution his entrepreneurial initiative could make to the local economy. Zhang elaborated on the FACES method during an interview with a local radio station:

Each character, as Zhang further elaborated, stands for one submethod of learning English:

• Face to face with foreigners

• Ask and answer

• Change and change—change one sentence to ten sentences; change short sentences to  longer sentences

• English to English

• Swimming successfully

English here is advocated as a ‘skill’ as opposed to ‘knowledge’. This discourse of ‘skill’, abbreviated as FACES, makes it convenient to technologize and commodify English (Block Reference Block, Block and Cameron2002; Kramsch Reference Kramsch2005) by erasing the complex social embeddedness of interactions (Gaudio Reference Gaudio2003), which in turn exacerbates potential tensions in actual interaction, as we see below. Indeed, at the school, there are no explicit guidelines as to how exactly students should approach foreigners and how to manage these conversations. Nevertheless, all twenty-four students, like the exemplary student Harry promoted on the school's website, told me they would proactively seek opportunities to talk with foreigners. Philip, an English language teacher from Canada, also observes about English learning here:

While the absence of specific regulations seem to empower language learners (‘you have all the chance in the world to practice English’), it in reality only intensifies the degree of self-control (‘if someone really wants to’)—a manifestation of the key paradox of neoliberal governmentality. In other words, the FACES method works by capitalizing on people's desires (Read Reference Read2009) for authentic English and interaction, as opposed to merely sanctioning or regulating people's actual learning behavior. The ideal learner therefore is supposed to actively seek learning opportunities through self-governance (Olssen Reference Olssen2006). How exactly learners conceptualize and manage interactions with foreigners therefore becomes a key site where we can observe the effects of neoliberal governmentality.

Intrusive exploitation of interaction: Foreigners’ perspectives

Based on my interviews and observations, there are mainly three public places in Yangshuo where foreigners tend to predominate, and also where interactions between foreigners and students could be frequently observed: school areas, business streets, and bars (or similar establishments).

Peter came from the US and had worked at Samuel's for the longest period of time (about two years) among all of the teachers I knew. He explained to me at length about the popularity of Yangshuo and how talking with many foreigners here was like ‘immersion learning’. Nevertheless, when asked about his own experience of talking to people on the street, Peter framed it in a different way:

Here Peter first said he could not have such conversations because he was usually quite busy, which turned out to be a polite excuse when he added that a more honest reason is that he was not outgoing. Such self-exclusion as a potential interlocutor with English learners, however, was not just a matter of temperament (outgoing or not), as Peter himself claimed. As I found out, since foreigners are constantly approached for a talk in English, many of them, like Peter, have learnt to avoid such conversations which, according to their own account, tended to be repetitive, simple, and boring.

One afternoon, I was sitting on a bench outside the school building, having a small chat with a couple of teachers. Several students then walked out from the building and eagerly ‘helloed’ to join the conversation. “Not a moment's break”, Philip whispered helplessly to another teacher, Sam. When the students came over and sat down, one of them asked Sam with not-so-fluent English, “Are you a new teacher? Because I haven't seen you before”. “I've been here for about one week”, he replied, “and you?” “I am an old student. I have been here for for three, three, three weeks”. Obviously, she was searching for the word week. “I thought you were going to say three months”; he looked at Philip and they grinned to each other (field note, 8 July 2011). Seeing this, I was reminded of the interview I had with Sam several days earlier (4 July 2011). Reflecting on his experience of being approached for a talk in English, he said:

As he finished, he looked at me with an awkward smile. On the one hand, he did teach at the language school and got paid for his work. Yet, on the other hand, being constantly approached for a talk in English made him feel unreasonably exploited for his linguistic capital. Adjusting to the interlocutor's pace of talk (“think slower, talk slower”), being more attentive (“listen very carefully”), and spending greater efforts to figure out meanings of interaction (“change your mind a little bit”), these otherwise unnecessary accommodations seemed like doing extra work (“sometimes you feel like if you get paid”). Indeed, that day immediately after my interview with Peter, I asked whether he was going upstairs to a social event organized by the school. “Yes, I will”, he replied. “You know”, he then added, “I wanted to start our interview earlier because they [the school] just told me this afternoon, they want me to be the judge of the speech competition [the theme of that day's event]. I definitely wouldn't go if they hadn't asked me” (field note, 14 July 2011).

The school area is not the only place where students would seek out learning opportunities, however. Business streets and bars are actually more popular among students. In the extract below, Steve, from Ireland, raised the issue of always ‘bumping into’ students at bars:

Here, Steve explained that while there were occasions wherein “you can have a laugh you can have a joke”, he also had talked to so many who had “very little English and kept repeating themselves”. In such situations, he would thus have to try to exit from the conversations to safeguard his own social time.

But basically any place popular among foreigners tends to attract students. Kay was from South Africa. Like other local foreigners, he took up a job as an English teacher when he first arrived, but now he was running his own coffee shop. He said he had been stopped on the street for a talk in English so many times that he had learnt to avoid such “attempts to create interactions” that might be full of repetitive simple questions (Where are you from? Do you like China? How many cities have you been to in China? How many countries have you been to?). But there were also other concerns for him. Since he was running the coffee shop, there were also regular Chinese customers who would come and speak to him “just as a foreigner”; some even offered to work for him for free, as he told me below.

While free labor seemed like a good idea, Kay said this actually didn't work well because “they only want to do the nice work, they don't want to do the bad work. They don't want to wash the cups. They only want to make the coffees, and serve the customers”.

As we have seen, foreigners were not always ready to talk with students, and would try to find ways to avoid such interactions. Talking to foreigners, therefore, would not happen as easily and conveniently as the FACES method prescribes and promises. Indeed, conversations never occur naturally but have constraints—the social situatedness and embeddedness of interactions as well as the necessary language competence required mean that there are always minimum conditions to be met for interactions to occur in the first place (see Gaudio Reference Gaudio2003 for details; Goffman Reference Goffman1959). Successfully managing such conditions, therefore, could be vital for students to have actual access to authentic English and interaction. As already mentioned, however, the technologization of English as a ‘skill’ meant that knowledge of English and communication was discarded as irrelevant and not taught at schools. The adult students would thus have to find their own ways of approaching and talking to foreigners. As we see below, the students did not complain about the insufficient institutional support or the false promise of the FACES method. Rather, they became proactive learners who were managers of their own self-development (Olssen Reference Olssen2006): they showed their initiative, reflected upon the difficulties, and internalized such constraints as problems to be tackled on their own.

Excitements, frustrations, and strategies: Students’ perspectives

In stark contrast to foreigners who may well dismiss such interactions as simple and boring, adult students told me how complex talking to foreigners can actually be for them—there were moments of frustration as well as excitement, and they would have to actively seek out strategies to preempt and mitigate potential tensions in interaction.

Mary had studied at Samuel's for about six months and described talking to foreigners as both nervous and exciting. She told me she was often nervous about not being able to express herself fluently in English (“just one word, one word, very slowly”), but was excited to have found an Australian friend with whom she was still in touch via Skype. Hearing this, I congratulated her on having found a friend with whom to practise English, but she responded with some frustration, as shown in (5).

1. (5) Mary, twenty-seven years old, salesperson and human resource officer working in Guangdong, had been studying in Yangshuo for six months

   but sometimes I can't find the topic to talk, half an hour, and don't know how to continue.

   [And there're] many times because they know we want to practice our English, so they go away.

Here, Mary hoped to be able to carry out longer conversations, and identified the problem as not being able to find enough topics. Also, she revealed that she might not be taken as a legitimate interlocutor because of her weak competence in English (“they know we want to practise our English, so they go away”). Similarly, another student Tina, a salesperson from Guangdong, told me that because she did not always know what to talk about, “they [foreigners] will feel very boring, and go away… I think it's very embarrassing, because we can't communicate with them, oh my God, what a pity, because we want so much to talk with them”.

Here, we see that adult students were aware that they might come across as nuisances to foreigners (“they will feel very boring, and go away”). But they did not take the problems and difficulties as deriving from the false promise of the FACES method; instead they blamed themselves for not always being able to initiate or sustain conversations (“it's very embarrassing”, “what a pity”) and yet still showed their perseverance. In order to be able to speak with foreigners, they tried to overcome their nervousness, and identify possible reasons for being ignored. In other words, students internalized the interactional tensions and constraints that have been exacerbated by the neoliberal enterprise of language commodification in Yangshuo, and at the same time were persistent and proactive in finding ways to mitigate such tensions so as to pass for legitimate interlocutors—a key manifestation of the dynamic relationship between neoliberalism and active learning (Olssen Reference Olssen2006). For example, Lora had come up with a seemingly passive way to improve her English, as she told me below.

1. (6) Lora, twenty-four years old, logistics worker in Guangdong, planning to be a salesperson, had been studying in Yangshuo for four months

   When I went [name] bar, I just sat there quietly and listen to others, classmate. Said nothing. I didn't say anything. … even though I can't speak, but I can listen, I believe several times later you can speak and your listening will be better.

For Lora, being silent does not mean being uninterested. Indeed, if we rely on recordings of interactions alone, people like Lora may well be left out of the analysis because she had no voice. Nevertheless, as she explained, not talking at all does not mean relinquishing the opportunity to improve one's English; rather, it is a self-initiated strategy based on her reflexive understanding of learning (listening first, speaking later), so that ultimately one can speak out. Another student Carl told me how he and his friends managed to find the ‘right’ foreigners to talk with.

1. (7) Carl, twenty-eight years old, business owner from Guangdong, had been studying in Yangshuo for two months

   I think foreigners em like beer, er he he usually oftenly sit in bar, er only drink beer…

   I usually go to bar, conversation with foreigner… I came with my friends, four or three together… if I I only talk with foreigner, er, ((laughter)) I I speak a little time, I talked a little time 只能说一会，然后就没什么说的了，一般是3、4 个人一起，这个不会那个说一下，这样会时间长一点吧，如果我一个人在那跟他说的话，说两句，不知道说哪里去((laughter)) [I can only speak for a little while, and then have nothing to say. So usually we three or four people go together. If one person doesn't know what to say, then another person can try to say something. This way, we can talk for a longer time. If I were there alone talking with him, maybe after two sentences, I don't know what to say next ((laughter))] … If many people together, 我不会过去 [I won't go], if em, he only sit one there, em maybe ((laughter)) talk with foreigner.

Like many other students, Carl went to places popular among foreigners (bars), but he also opted for the strategy of finding foreigners sitting alone, who tended to be more approachable than those hanging out with friends. And he would go together with many Chinese friends so that there was always someone to fill in otherwise embarrassing silence. These strategies showed that Carl took the initiative and came up with strategies to turn potentially boring and fallible conversations into successful and more interesting ones. Another student, Lucy, planned to work in Yangshuo after finishing her study at the school.

1. (8) Lucy, twenty-eight years old, housewife, planning to look for a job, had been studying in Yangshuo for five months

   after I study here, maybe I will find a part-time job here at some beer bar, about one month or two months, just to practice my oral English, and then go back to my home, find a good job… because you know… the foreigner customer want to buy something, you can communicate with them.

In the above excerpts, we see that students were eager to practise English but may have difficulty sustaining or even starting conversations. However, they were not easily deterred by these difficulties, nor did they complain about the FACES method. Instead, despite these difficulties and constraints, the students internalized these problems as something to be worked out on their own and tried to adopt varied strategies to create interactional opportunities and/or manipulate potential interactional structures, for example, by choosing the place of interaction (going to bars and shops popular among foreigners), purposefully selecting the participants and managing the topics of interaction (multiple people engaging in conversations with solo travelers), and designing one's roles during interaction (being a quiet listener, or working at a local shop). Through using these tactics based on their own reflexive thinking, they exemplify the image of an ideal neoliberal self (Foucault Reference Foucault, Burchell, Gordon and Miller1991) who, instead of passively relying on external support, shows self-discipline, internalizes constraints upon themselves, and exhibits reflexivity and calculative thinking to make an unfavorable learning environment work for their own purpose.

Talking to foreigners, therefore, turns out to be a precarious genre. The legitimacy of such interactions needs to be constantly negotiated, established, and maintained. In order to practise English, students had to carefully manage the accessibility of foreigners, exploit opportunities amid constraints, and skillfully sustain the conversation, so as to preempt possible avoidance. This informal way of learning English differs from English learning within formal educational institutions in China, wherein learning tends to be exam-oriented and the learning process subjected to regimented procedures and guidelines (Pan & Block Reference Pan and Block2011; Peréz-Milans Reference Peréz-Milans2013). Learning English in Yangshuo corresponds more to the model of a proactive and self-responsible learner, for whom the neoliberal logic of autonomy, self-improvement and self-governance is incorporated into their everyday learning process (Olssen Reference Olssen2006).

It is worth noting that such interaction derives not from crosstalk, that is, misunderstanding or breakdown in cross-cultural communication (c.f. Gumperz, Jupp, & Roberts Reference Gumperz, Jupp and Roberts1981), but from technologization and commodification of English that erases the social embeddedness of interactions and thereby exacerbates potential interactional constraints and tensions as students pursue the valuable linguistic capital of English. Students are caught up in this neoliberal enterprise, and have to constantly reflect on potential interactions, including what topic might be relevant (e.g. extract (5)), how the conversation should proceed (e.g. extract (7)), as well as overcoming anxieties (e.g. extract (5)). What appears to be naturally occurring conversations with foreigners therefore involves reflexive thinking at the backstage (Goffman Reference Goffman1959, Reference Goffman1963). As mentioned in the introduction, the term interactional straining is proposed for such manipulation of interaction, defined earlier as the reflexive and strategic manipulation of interactional contents and/or structure so as to establish oneself as (pass for) a legitimate interlocutor. Interactional straining, as documented in this study, provides a key site to observe the dynamic relationships between language and neoliberalism as it is embedded in the active and yet contentious pursuit of linguistic capital and the cultivation of human capital under the neoliberal regime.

Specifically, interactional straining involves both subjective and semiotic processes of managing conversations. On the semiotic level, it can be understood as a deliberative interactional practice based on a particular language ideology, that is, ‘conceptions of… the nature and purpose of communication and of communicative behavior as an enactment of a collective order’ (Silverstein Reference Silverstein1987:1–2, as cited in Woolard Reference Woolard1992:235), the collective order here being neoliberal governmentality. Without explicit instructions or guidelines, the adult students in the present study showed their initiative in language learning and self-development through actively designing and manipulating interactional contents and structure. On the subjective level, it also indicates that there are mixed emotions and anxieties as students tried to align themselves with the role of a legitimate interlocutor, instead of being merely a learner of English. Neoliberalism shapes, not determines, subjectivity—the ideal image of the neoliberal self is not seamlessly reproduced without struggles. There are always tensions in negotiating or manipulating potential interactions, regardless of whether interaction actually occurs (ignored or not), how it proceeds (boring or not), and how it ends (sustained or not). As the lower middle-class working professionals align themselves with the ideal image of the neoliberal self, they are caught up in a precarious process of strategically exploring interactional opportunities amid constraints, and skillfully sustaining conversations so as to become legitimate interlocutors for the purpose of language learning.