This can only end badly

So as part of this program I'm in, we all do volunteer placements with organizations around Shanghai. The one I'm working with, Shanghai Lequn Social Work Service, is one of the first "professional" (read: government-approved) social work organizations in China (well, technically the first in "mainland China," because Taiwan is also part of Zhongguo, don'cha know). It works with migrant worker children. These kids get the shaft: Because their parents come to Shanghai from other provinces looking for work and to fuel this city's madcap development, they don't have Shanghai hukou. This hukou is an outdated municipal citizenship-type thing and it wouldn't have much contemporary bearing except it determines how you access all government-funded social services, such as education and medical care. Because migrant workers don't have Shanghai hukou they can't access those services in Shanghai, and they could work here for years without being able to transfer it. Organizations like Shanghai Lequn try to provide privately funded schools and physical checkups for these kids, which is of course hugely problematic. Anyway--bad scene, but this group seems to be doing incredible shit in an attempt to fill a gap the government can't or won't address. Would like to find out more about where this money comes from--is it from corporations who benefit from these kids' parents' underpaid labour?--but the result of it seems excellent and judging from its modest, understaffed office, Lequn certainly isn't swimming in cash.

Where I come in, apparently, is working in these migrant children's schools. I'm going to teach English and help run an after-school broadcast and print journalism kind of program, where the kids put together a mini-magazine and have a classroom "radio" news show. The idea is to help give them a better sense of perspective, or agency, or something. I'm also helping with medical check-ups.

Sounds great, right?

Except there's one problem: I can't speak Mandarin. Or read/write Chinese. At all. Functionally illiterate doesn't even begin to cover it.

I can count and string together some basic sentences and queries, and I can recognize a handful of characters. But for fuck's sake: The very idea of trying to edit a newspaper I can't read or comprehend is laughable. I can't imagine how I'll teach English to Chinese-speakers when I can't translate that shit to save my life. I may be able to help with medical check-ups if accompanied by a medical professional issuing directions, and if I use muddled hand gestures. But seriously--to whom does this seem like a wise idea?

I actually asked the supervisor, as she was explaining the program through a translator, whether she knew I didn't speak Chinese and whether that would be okay. She laughed.

"Mei guanxi, mei guanxi!" ("Forget it, forget it.")

Um, okay. Whatever you say.

I have to be honest: This is a very cool-seeming program that will no doubt teach me a lot, and about which I'm really excited in a really selfish way: It'll be interesting and enlightening to see how these schools work and just how circus-fucked what appears to be a massive urban underclass is.

But I can't imagine my trying to help out will end in anything but tragedy; I would hate to be one of those annoying, saccharine volunteers that parachutes into a foreign country expecting to save the world. Here's hoping I can just get by with dumb but well-meaning and harmless foreigner.

Bad fucking news.