I’m in a small restaurant just outside the university campus where we teach, about an hour and half away from Shanghai. We arrived a few days ago and still have two and half weeks to go. Across a big plate of dumplings sits my colleague, let’s call him the dinosaur. The dinosaur was dragged out of retirement to teach C-programming, I wonder how well he does this considering he barely knows how to operate his own phone. Then again, the computers here available to our use run on Window 7 and look about as dusty as he does. Next to me sits another fellow teacher, he teaches Solid Works, he’s my age. Both of us have been on this teaching trip twice in the Spring. Partly because of the amazing dumplings this restaurant has become somewhat of a go-to spot for us. As of recent he has a boyfriend, I wonder if the dinosaur knows this and how he feels about it. I’m here to teach Basic Control Systems, a course I can manage only by reaching very, very deep down to the remnants of what I learned when studying physics ten years ago. Our whole delegation consists of 12 people, four teachers, and eight assistants, providing three engineering courses, all men plus me.

The dinosaur fumbles with his chopsticks while trying to pick up one of the dumplings from the large plate in the middle of the table. He tries once, twice, and finally resorts to stabbing it, only to drop the dumpling on its way from the serving plate to the small bowl with chili oil and then again between the bowl and his mouth. It leaves a small splat of red oil on the table. Yikes. All the while he talks of how things used to be. He’s also been on this trip before, six times, the last time was before covid. Things were different then. The teaching team existed only of old men like him. They solely went out for stuffy steak dinners during the weekends in Shanghai and to avoid Chinese food during the weekdays on campus they ate at Pizza Hut or Burger King.

The subject falls to our female students, who are about as wildly outnumbered as I was when I studied physics. Back when I started studying, there were seven of us in a freshman class of a hundred students. We were outnumbered even by Ricks in that year, even though only by one. Both the dinosaur and the SolidWorks teacher have ideas about how to distribute the girls into project groups. I based my groups solely on GPA and didn’t pay any mind to gender. The SolidWorks teacher made sure that the girls are at least two in a group, so they’re not so alone, which I think is sympathetic.

‘But you really don’t want too many girls in one group together either.’ The dinosaur replies, still poking at the dumplings.

‘Why?’ I ask. His glasses have dirty little specks all over them, it’s distracting.

‘Well obviously, because the work won’t get done.’

Excuse me, obviously?

‘What do you mean?’ I say as dryly as possible.

‘You know how groups of girls are.’

‘I guess I don’t know.’

‘Well, you know…’ He inhales sharply, looks away, back to me, imploring me to finish his sentence for him. I give him nothing, I keep my face expressionless. ‘Girls together…’ He looks over to the colleague on my right, who, much to my amusement, also gives him nothing. ‘They get nasty and mean to each other. It happens everywhere where mostly woman work together. You know how it is.’

The way he keeps saying ‘you know’ makes my fingernails itch. The ease with which he’s basically saying he thinks women suck has me slightly lost for words. And the confidence he has that I would agree with him, as though he’s simply uttering some basic universal truth like water is wet is baffling. ‘I can’t say I agree with that.’

‘Well, I’ve worked in many different places, both universities and companies and this is always the case. Girls just don't work well together.’

I think of the assistants I taught this course with last year, three women, one handling administrative stuff for me, one singlehandedly tackling the practical experiment part of the course, and the last, probably one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, spend every day being bombarded with student questions I wouldn't know how to answer. And much of these things they did without me having to ask them. The boys assisting me now are fine, quite good actually, but they don’t hold a candle to my previous team, especially when it comes to acting proactively.

‘Yeah no,' I shake my head. 'I very much miss my female team.’

He either didn’t hear me, or pretended not to hear me and continues, ‘I once worked at this place, all of my co-workers were men, but a female boss.’ He tuts and shakes his head, again he puts on that suggestive face, expecting us to continue his train of thought.

‘Okay, and?’

'You can guess what that was like for us, right? You know...’

NO, I DON’T FUCKING KNOW.

I inhale sharply as I supress the urge to clench my fists. On the exhale I relax my fingers and reply, ‘I really, really don’t.’

‘Well, of course that wasn’t exactly fun for us.’ He chuckles as he says this, like he’s reliving the way he must have brotherly bitched and moaned about it with his co-workers during coffee breaks. It makes me wonder what the team of assistants here think of me, whether I’ve already been too demanding, too directive. And at home at the skatepark – just before leaving to China again my boss complimented me on how naturally I take on a managing role – do the guys there ever think of me as a bitch? I’ve been told plenty over the years that my directness makes me seem cold. I truly don’t think the people that say that about me, say that about men.

I hate how this old man, who doesn’t even know how to hold chopsticks, who hasn’t in the seven times he’s been to China bothered to learn any other word than Ni hao, can make me question myself like that. I hate how he could not even fathom that anything he is saying could be offensive. But mostly I hate that he expects me to agree with him. You know. You, you as an engineer, as someone who’s used to being outnumbered, you should know. On top of that, you should be an exception, one of the guys. You should agree with blanket misogyny and laugh along when your whole sex is put down, and somehow not take that personally. And alas the truth is, while I was studying physics as an undergrad, I told myself I was the exception, and I did agree, and I laughed along. I still regret the female friendships I didn’t invest in at the time because of an internalized rejection to all things feminine. It’s a shame because looking back, I think having the strong female friendships I have now could have saved me from a lot of hurt at that particular time.

The colleague on my right faintly shakes his head in disapproval but unfortunately doesn’t voice it. I look directly at the dinosaur, whose chuckle subsided to an awkward smile due to our silence, and say, ‘I don’t know what you want from me. I’m not going to agree with you on this.’

I just want this conversation to be done. I put some money on the table and excuse myself saying I still need to get some groceries. For the rest of the trip I’ve been cordial but limited the interactions I had to have with the dinosaur. I could not be bothered getting wrapped up in another discussion about his outdated views. You got to pick your battles. I would rather save my energy to argue our contemporary Reddit/YouTube rabbit hole Nice guy-misogynists, while simply watching the dinosaurs of the world go extinct.