They may indeed be drifters in a foreign land and I hope that some of them can snap out of it because it's an easy trap to fall into.

Some of the younger ones may be merely victims of the modern economic situation, as many good university graduates struggle to find graduate level work. So you can imagine the situation that those with no so high grades or those coming from not so well respected universities face (although in the E.U, most public universities are more than good enough). Sharing one room in a shitty, overpriced Dalston/Williamsburg apartment with 3 other flatmates isn't possible for every young, excessively ambitious and deluded university graduate. So, China becomes an option.

Some probably go to China, intending to only stay for a year or two and then end up staying too long. Some get attracted by the possibility of chasing a dream, but of course, not all dreams can come true. How many young (and maybe old too) FTs have you met that deny being an English teacher? Sure, some of us really do only teach for the visa (in the past, myself included), but when you start denying that you are even a teacher at all, that's something else, a really strange kind of fantasist behaviour. At least, even those fools are realising that ESL isn't all that it is cracked up to be.

Another thing that is definitely worth noting is the fact that many new fresh off the boat, young FTs are nice, but inexperienced and naive people. Unfortunately after getting a spoilt by the locals and then becoming a minor celebrity, many of them develop an inflated ego and will behave in quite a terrible manner, as they do not have to face the social expectations of their local peer group back home.

Therefore getting shitfaced drunk on a work night, womanising and openly abusing drugs becomes very normal for them; they get the impression that they will get excused for everything, because they are a foreigner. They have nobody to answer to. No parents or family, no kind of competent boss or colleagues, no village gossip circles, nothing. Even if the police arrest them for something, a bribe can be paid. This falsely gives them the impression that they are more 'free' than back home, even if home happens to be 'the land of the free.'

Those people seriously need to question themselves. If I was regularly coming into work, still drunk, wearing flip flops with the smell of booze on my breath(never mind hungover) and f**king and chucking random silly young girls between 16-21 years old that I picked up in a sleazy local nightclub (or the school) and possibly introducing them to the use of illegal drugs, how would people feel? If I was back home, how would my boss react? How would the fathers and brothers of those girls react? How would the police react?

Even though China has on an increasingly regular basis, recently proved itself to not exactly be the classiest country in the world with low standards for everything in general, any foreigner is still a guest in that country and should show the country a little respect. Or failing that, show themselves some respect!