Beijing: city of dreams for all its residents

We sat in the corner of a dimly-lit bar, the hum of conversation and drone of music buzzing in the background as the night entered its wee hours. My friend leaned closer, lowered her voice and narrowed her eyes. "You know what the dirty secret about foreigners in Beijing is?" she asked. I kept a cool exterior, but shuddered with dread inside.

"Everybody teaches English."

My friend thinks of herself as a photographer, or an anthropologist. I call myself a journalist, but our shared reality is that we both pay the rent by teaching Chinese students English. The money isn't bad, either.

One of the things I love about Beijing is the number of expats striving to make their dreams come true. People start their own theater companies, launch hedge funds, publish magazines and become rock stars. It's your willpower, not your qualifications that count. In Beijing, you don't need to be Irish to open an Irish bar, Italian to open an Italian restaurant, or a teacher to teach.

Many people succeed, sometimes on a grand scale. Cupcake bakers, Chinese historians who can't speak Chinese and rapping strippers all make it big here. Beijing may one day be best known musically as the home of strip-hop.

Disenfranchised Americans are flooding here faster than the "Lost Generation" coined by Ernest Hemingway poured into Parisian bars. A lot of them are taking risks. Sometimes they fail, and fail spectacularly.

Business plans collapse. Partners flee with money, or push you out by revealing your name is not on the paperwork. Indie films get big laughs or move people to tears at private screenings here, but fail to get picked up by major festivals. Artists win residencies at 798, only to have a dozen people come to their openings, mostly other artists drawn by free wine and canapés.

Recovering from fiascos like these back home would be tough. You have to pump a lot of gas or sling a lot of lattes to pay for a movie or take six months off to "do art."

But in Beijing, even people who don't speak fluent English can teach English - at least, as long as they "look English." English can pay in many other ways here. A generation of Chinese children may turn heads when they say "out and about" because of me. A proud Canadian, I was paid to read dialogues that go with language textbooks.

Once, I got paid 500 yuan ($79.40) for saying the brand name Oldsen, or "Aoleisan" as it sounded in Chinese, into a microphone. I thought I made out like a bandit, but for about half a year every time I took a cab ride I heard my own voice enthusiastically endorsing the appliance brand on the car radio. There is good money to be made in Beijing, and not just for Westerners.

For everyone from migrant workers to expats, Beijing is the city of dreams. It's the place we can go to build the life we want for ourselves. Westerners are lucky because if our dreams fail, we can teach English, and not fall totally flat on our faces. Let's face it, despite the snobby attitudes of some, teaching English is something we should be proud of. After all, it can help our students make their dreams come true as well.