Reported in this paper is an ethnographic study in a Beijing senior high school that aims to examine the pedagogical lived experiences of Chinese EFL teachers against the backdrop of the nation's mandated curriculum change. The lived experiences of teachers gleaned from this study speak to the complexity and difficulty of pedagogical change at the classroom level. In particular, the teachers' classroom pedagogies are found to reflect neither the official curriculum ideas nor their own espoused beliefs. The study points to the necessity of expanding space for teachers' autonomy to achieve more meaningful mutual adaption in curriculum implementation.