Beware nation's ego pollution

China has little crime, but it's a dangerous place. Murder, muggings, assault - these concerns do not keep me up at night. It's my ego I'm concerned about.

At last Wednesday's English Corner, a sprite clearly too young to be in my classes came up and introduced himself. Charlie has a loud grin and a brave confidence that stomps all over the mumbling false starts of my other students. And he speaks English so fluently I have to rub my eyes to double check the fact that he is three years younger than all of my students capable of half as much English.

"I've heard about you," Charlie declared. "We've all heard about you." He grinned with the satisfaction of drawing the center of attention.

"Oh, really?" I said. "What grade are you in?"

"I'm in second-year middle school," three years below the students I teach.

"And everyone in our grade's heard about you. We talk about you every day. We don't even know your name or where you're from, but we all know who you are." He paused. "You can't imagine how popular you are."

After English Corner ended and the kids had returned to their dorms, I felt light headed. My ego started to inflate like a helium balloon as Charlie's words rattled in my mind: more popular than you can imagine.

This was my first run-in with China's insidious ego pollution, and the worst part was that I had come completely unprepared. Even the laziest American tourists in Cancun have been warned about Mexico's infamous Montezuma's Revenge, the diarrhea that strikes anyone careless enough to drink local tap water.

But no one on my flight to Beijing warned me about drinking the local ego shots. So the six Gs of going from zero to hero in an instant went to my head.

It's not hard to spot foreigners who are drawn to China by the thick clouds of ego pollution. I see it in the old men who hand me cards flaunting their "foreign expert" status. I see it in the guys who wear sunglasses in dark bars at night and spike up their bleached hair like the vapor trails from their soaring egos. I see it, and I'm reminded how hard I have to work not to drink the ego water.

It's not easy. Keeping my ego down takes the strength of a kid refusing candy from a stranger. I have to remind myself that the compliments I get come from politeness, not adulation. But the candy looks delicious. "My Chinese is astounding? You say it's better than yours? And I look like Brad Pitt?"

Laowai life is so out of hand that more than half my foreign friends have been on Chinese TV. You know your ego's out of check when you have to come up with a reason you haven't been on TV yet.

But the worst danger of ego pollution is what happens when the skies clear and the adulation disappears. If I'm not careful, I'll be in for an A-bomb of reverse culture shock when I land on American shores expecting a welcome parade, movie deal, and book tour. Or at least a guest spot on Oprah.

"If it makes you feel any better, I don't think you're that great," my friend Emily told me later that night on the phone.

Do me a favor if you happen to visit: bruise my ego a bit and save me from the choking ego pollution before it's too late.