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My Life in China |
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Originally posted on my blog in progress http://www.myhealthworkout.com/136-teaching-english-in-china.html
This is the story of my experiences living in China. Keep in mind this is all from the months between September 07 - August 08, where some laws, legislation and attitude towards foreigners were slightly different. I wrote this in response to an 2p2 inquiry on what it's like teaching in China and for any general advice ... so a lot of what you will read is specifically geared to help people become successful ESL trainers and to have a positive experience in doing so:
You'll notice I talk a lot about 'doing your research'. That is because the forums of Dave's ESL Cafe are littered with personal horror stories written by people who allowed themselves to be tricked into some appealing job offer, flew over without doing any research, and proceeded to get bludgeoned into a bloody pulp by school admin who are used to taking advantage of rookie teachers. You need to thoroughly research the school you will be working for, the people you are dealing with, the city you'll be living in and any of the other teachers there. The abovementioned forums are great for that. I would also recommend ESL Teacher's Board and Dave's ESL Board for actually finding jobs.
As a personal example of what happens when you don't do proper research, a friend of mine who I spoke with during my time in China, had such a positive perception of my experiences that he decided to put school on hold for a year and go try it out. He posted his resume on some foreign site, accepted the first job offer without doing any research, and flew off on a whim without contacting me or asking for any help whatsoever. He arrives in Hong Kong, flies over to Hangzhou which was the closest airport to his job, and waited there 2 hours for his "pickup" before grabbing a taxi and showing him the address of the school which he had fortunately printed out. 300 RMB later (which is a very long taxi ride in China) he arrives at the school, finds the director who he had been dealing with, introduces himself and is then greeted with something along the lines of:
Mr. Ming: "Ah, Mr. Adams welcome to China, sorry about the transportation issue we've had a lot on our hands and there was some confusion."
Jason: "Uhh, no problem I suppose. I'm actually really tired and I'd like to get to my apartment which was promised in the contract and rest a bit if you don't mind."
Mr. Ming: "Ah yes ... about your apartment ... it's not quite ready yet so you'll be sleeping in a guesthouse down the street for a few weeks."
Jason: "Uhmm..."
Mr. Ming: "And as for now, go ahead and leave your bags in the teachers office. We have a class starting in 15 minutes and the parents would like to observe you."
The school ended up not having a valid foreign teachers license so he wasn't able to get his work visa and was forced to leave the country 30 days later. The "apartment" ended up being a sh*thole and he wasn't reimbursed for either of his flights or visa costs. Nothing was as promised. He later searched the school on Dave's ESL Forum and found someone who had experienced the same thing. Now this is obviously the worst experience possible, but not an uncommon one and it all could have been avoided by just doing some research. My advice is ask a ton of questions. Post on Dave's. Google the school. Ask to speak with someobody who currently works there and ask them a million questions re the school, management, other staff, city life, nightlife, food, girls, etc. In my experience they have all been more than willing to help. And if something seems shady, look elsewhere.
I'll now begin my own tale. I spent the 6 months prior to moving to China in 21 other countries scattered around the Middle East/Europe. It was the most epic backpacking/scuba-diving trip imaginable ... a long story for another time. I ended up in London with about 2000$ in my bank account and my options limited; it was either go home or try to continue my adventures elsewhere. I had heard about teaching English in Asia before but I had never pondered it for more than a few minutes. I stumbled on Dave's ESL forum and sent out a bunch of PMs asking for life advice. Nobody wanted to help me as I just had a couple college courses under my belt with no TESL certificate nor experience ... and just as I was about to pack up my bags and call it a trip, an angel disguised as a 40-year old degen whoremonger msg'd me out of the blue and said teaching in China woud be np and he'd guide me through the whole process. So I proceeded to research every major city in China, picked 5 I wanted to live in and sent out ~150 CVs/resumes/photos in a 24 hour period. I was taught that Chinese recruitment agencies were super discriminatory and if you had a white face and spoke English you could work just about anywhere. I woke up to 3 pages of unread gmail, and spent the next 2 weeks researching and speaking with each and every school until I had narrowed my choices down. Making sure they were all lockdowns, I immediately flew to Hong Kong as I was beginning to feel I had imposed on my London host way too much at this point. By the way, back then Oasis Hong Kong ([url]http://www.oasishongkong.com/[/url] - now bankrupt) used to run a London - HK flight for 400$, which shipped it pretty crucial considering my bankroll at the time.
I arrive in Hong Kong. Despite my history in travel, the culture-shock of Asia hit me pretty hard. I felt lost and disoriented. I didn't understand anything, I was surrounded by tons of people, I had no money and I didn't even have a legit degree. What if something went wrong? I was scared, but I was determined to make this work. I found a cheap hostel and finalized my China Visitor's Visa (which lasts 30 days), then on the advice of my forum friend I took a tram across the border to Shenzhen. Shenzhen has inexpensive and nice hostels, and is also much cheaper/easier to fly out of once I managed to decide which city I wanted to work in. It was a difficult process because I'm a huge nit and I like to analyze everything down to the last minute detail, but time & money were limited so after a few last minute phone calls and emails, I ended up choosing English First International in Suzhou. EF is a massive franchise with 150+ schools in China, and 1000+ worldwide. Naturally, as a franchise, the reputation of each school will differ greatly based on the quality of its management and the quality of its teachers, so you need to be meticulous when doing your research. The Suzhou location had good reviews, and the manager was a super relaxed Brit who ended up being the funnest, nicest, most relaxed alcoholic degen of a boss I've ever had or heard of in my life. Suzhou itself is an absolutely gorgeous city with both an industrial high-tech Westernized side that has shopping, restaurants, nightclubs, gyms, skyscrapers, large foreigner community, and a very traditional Chinese side with gardens, museums, tea houses, pagodas, street peddlers, canals, archways, ancient architecture and of course the natural hustle and bustle to be found in any major Chinese city. (Wiki: [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzhou[/url]). It's a surprisingly cheap city. Very nice apartments can be found for 1500-2000 RMB and, my favorite, all you can drink + all you can eat very clean and very nice sushi houses for 100-120 RMB. Some of the best food I've ever had in my life, super amazing service, fresh fish and by 'all you can drink' I mean all Japanese imported beers, domestic beers, cold/hot Sake and an assortment of some local stuff that was always too strong for me. Great place to hang out before bar hopping. There were a lot of Mexican restaurants, all the American chains (TGIs, McDs, KFC, Chillis) ... basically everything to keep your culinary side satisfied without being too over the top. Suzhou is also just a 40-minute speedtrain from Shanghai, so very easy to go out for the weekend or even just on a Friday and take the 6AM back home. I spent a TON of time in Shanghai and have some epic stories from those weekends, but I digress. Suzhou, at the time, was perfect.
With an online scan of a fake Associate's Degree (which I never had to show anyone) and no TESOL cert, I was able to get my 1-year work visa with no problems through my employer. I wouldn't expect this to be the case nowadays, especially since our owner had connections in the government ... though from what I hear this seems to be pretty common nowadays so who knows. My salary was 8,000 RMB, from which 1,500 RMB/month was subtracted for my apartment and I would receive an 8K bonus upon contract completion which was referred to as airfare reimbursement. I worked M-F averaging about 30 hours per week including all prep/travel/office time. This is an amazing deal as you will come to learn during your quest to find teaching jobs.
As far as work was concerned, once again because of proper research I was able to do exactly what I wanted. I taught adults only, ranging between ages 16-50. Class sizes as stipulated in the contract never exceeded 20, and averaged around 10. Super comfortable. My students were all eager to learn and I would often be treated to amazing dinners and outings. The classrooms were modern; proper amenities, white-board, chairs, jukebox, monitors, etc. As far as content, all ESL teachers in China generally follow the same guidelines. The students are put in a skill level ranging between 1 - 16. Levels 1-2 are taught by the Chinese staff, and 2+ by foreigners. The course classes will normally be twice a week, for 3 hours with 3 x 10 minute breaks. We covered a wide range of subjects, all designed to improve vocab, pronunciation, sentence structure and essentially allow the students to hold a 2-3 thread deep conversation in any given field. The first class is always a struggle, but once everyone gets going and comfortable it becomes a very enjoyable experience. And what's cool in China is there will always be someone in your class who is super loud and loves to talk without a filter. They are usually extremely friendly and will invite you to eat at their house and introduce the city to you. Because of their perception of foreigners, this will often involve a lot of drinking and girls. I went out with all of my students at least once, and I would say 99% of them were all super friendly and hospitable, but the ones who were loudest were always the most aggressively flamboyant with their offers of friendship.
The students in a normal English course have the option of attending "conversation" classes, which are shared by the entire teaching staff and usually held in either beginner or advanced language levels. They are generally 60 minutes long and can be quite fun. The DOS (Director of Studies - in this case my new British friend) chooses the topics for each week which range across various avenues from entertainment, life in America, grammar, bad habits, music, fashion vocab, business development, etc. Literally everything is covered. All you do is ask a lot of questions, write any new vocab that comes up on the whiteboard and explain anything confusing. Ask students specific questions that generate discussion. Because these classes can sometimes get quite large (20+) I would divide the class into groups of 4, give out discussion sheets with several questions + vocab, ensure everyone speaks English only and make my rounds through each group offering my own insight and giving feedback. Then I'd bring everyone together every 10 minutes and ask what was talked about in each group. Honestly sometimes 1 question will generate enough vocab/discussion for a whole lesson. I actually still have all my old lessons if anyone wants to see them.
Some schools in major cities will outsource their teachers to big companies for some serious money; in our case, we were sending teachers to Logitech, Samsung, etc for 200-300$/hour. I believe the Suzhou-Singapore Industrial Park (SIP) has the most manufacturers in China, if not it's way up there. I was eventually piloted on these programs and became one of our major CLT trainers (Corporate Language Teachers). We were teaching medium to intermediate business language to the upper-level staff, including some of the major management heads. The content and course design was built to cover every possible scenario in their business. While my English is far from technically perfect, I was apparently very good at igniting discussions and forcing all the students to speak in the classroom and use new vocab. I was young and full of energy, and became friends with a lot of my students who I went out with frequently and participated in some insane Chinese debauchery (KTV salons with hundreds of girls, 30000$+ RMB tabs, exotic restaurants, etc.) My DOS and the co-workers I made friends with often joined us. My life was amazing.
This is a picture of me with one of my first ever business classes. This is about the average class size, and a nicer than normal classroom (which is normally a conference room):
And what a *smaller* room in a language center might look like:
I also have some experience with teaching kids. One of our (female) French teachers was fired for sexually abusing some of the staff (myself included), and I volunteered myself to finish off her course, which I discovered was only 2-weeks in so I was basically starting from scratch ... but I loved it. I taught 5-10 year olds as their 2nd English class ever. Very beginner - but they were all super cute and we just played interactive lesson games all day. I started off my first class with a game where I took a big stuffed panda, looked at a front row girl and said "Hi name name is David. What's yours?" and passed it to one of the kids. They had to pass it around the whole class till everyone had a chance to speak. I immediately spotted Jack as being the troublesome one, as he took the bear, ran to his friend across the room and stuffed it in his face, screaming a bunch of local-dialect and lolling on the floor. They all started laughing and it was super easy from there. There are a lot of tools online on how to teach kids in fun and interactive ways. The situations where it is not very fun at all is when you have a classroom of 30 kids, 10 times per week with the parents dropping in on lessons to make sure you are being harsh enough with their child. Once again, proper research is crucial.
But life in China is not for everyone. As I recently pointed out to someone on Two Plus Two, Thailand can be a great first stop for most newcommers to Asia. It's cheap, fun, easy to get by and the culture is super friendly. Not as much of a demand for English teachers or even a structured foundation to find jobs, but they are there and if you decide to teach in Thailand I would suggest using recruitment agencies, followed by individual research. It's a nice, casual entrance into what life can be like in Asia. Do a 6 month stint, and then use your experiences to move on elsewhere if you so desire. That is, if you're able to make it out.
Back to China, a lot of people don't make it here. You need to be extremely open-minded. You need to be willing to learn the language. And you need to be willing to go with the flow as opposed to coming in with certain expectations and when things go slightly awry you get all bent out of shape. When it comes to the Chinese and dealing with foreigners, there seem to be a lot of screwups so if something happens to you during your time here, be calm and deal with it in an appropriate manner. Don't let them run over you, but don't cause a fight either.
As far as culture-shock, most people experience it in different ways. There are a lot of mannerisms in mainland China that a lot of people find repulsive. They spit on the streets, elbow on the bus, don't look when crossing roads, chew with their mouth open and speak very loudly, to name a few. I always thought it was funny, and we all have our vices - but some people just couldn't handle it. As far as racism, it definitely exists. Asian ESL teachers are treated just like any normal Chinese staff. You won't get paid as much as us, and you'll normally teach low level classes even if you have a PhD and graduated from Oxford. I saw very few black/brown people, but from my experience they were not treated poorly at all. Perhaps some slight discrimination, but nothing drastic. If you are white and without heavy accent, it's easy shmeazy. Attach a clean photo with your resume and getting a job will never have been so easy. Everyone wants a white teacher. Lastly, there are a LOT of people in China and this takes a while to get used to. Some people thought the amount of people and blooming business industry created a culturally bland atmosphere, but I feel this way about a lot of major cities so it has no relevance to me.
If you can handle all that, do your research, make a friend or two and land a decent job, you'll have an absolutely amazing time. Chinese girls are beautiful and there is a sexual revolution going on now with the gradual infiltration of Western media and philosophies ... it makes them super curious and receptive to foreigners. Just be careful. I was having such a good time that in my youthful vigor I stumbled into a deep relationship with a married woman who I met in Shanghai and it did not end well. That being said, Shanghai clubs are sick and if you're into live music there was a lot of underground stuff going on when I left. An amazing city, but too congested and expensive to enjoy living for me. The rest of China is super super cheap. I would say that without a doubt the best experience I have ever had in my life was the 2 months I spent with my two friends traveling around China. I highly recommend Lonely Planet: China if you ever wish to embark on such a journey. Just imagining being back there makes me miss it so much. We spent 50 bucks a day and slept very well, ate very well, did a bunch of sports activities and of course, tons of binge drinking with locals and expats. The drunkest I've ever been in my life was a night when we were crossing across Hunan province, we got off at a random village (Xinjiang) and found our way to the only guesthouse in the whole village. Xinjiang we later discovered is listed in LP as one of the few homes to the Miao ethnic minority group, and has some truly epic scenery. The only other people we saw in the guesthouse were the staff who were dressed in very peculiar garments, an Australian couple and a few Japanese tourists. It was getting dark and before we knew it the sub-tropical climates of western Hunan kicked in we and found ourselves in the middle of a massive rain shower. The manager suggested we could all eat together and he'd have the staff cook for us. Without a doubt one of the best meals I've ever had. Anyone who has been to China before will admit that Hunan food is the nuts. So halfway-through the feast as everyone is chatting in Chinese and getting to know eachother, music start playing and a group of elderly Miao women come in singing a local song and holding up a massive pot of homemade "whitewine" (BaiJiu) which is like 60% alcohol and super potent. I couldn't really understand the tradition, and perhaps it was explained to me at some point, but all I recall is everytime they started singing and waving that pot around somebody's head, one woman would tilt your head back and the others would force a funnel into your mouth and drown you in some of the strongest sh*t you can imagine. We had a blast, and to this day it was the only night I've ever completely blacked out on. Woke up the next morning to some beautiful scenery and fresh dumplings, paid our 10$ and took off.
Here are some pictures of the village:
We split up our itinerary, deciding to spend half our time in big cities and half our time in small cities, with the rest scattered around 2-5 day hiking trips (Tiger Leaping Gorge, Yellow Mountain, Juizhaighou, etc). The scenery in China is absolutely stunning. I suggest everyone watch the BBC series Wild China and of course Planet Earth for some extra motivation. I don't have many pictures on my laptop and I'm a terrible photographer but these were taken from the 2 day hike at Yellow Mountain.
An awesome hike, with one of the best sunrises I've ever seen in my life coupled with the most hazardous trail I've ever been on. Wish I had a better camera. The area can get a bit touristy, hence the paved roads, so choose your timing carefully. Coupled with Tiger Leaping Gorge and a tour of their respective provinces, I'd say you have a pretty solid trip. Whatever you do or wherever you end up traveling, try to find someone you mesh with to do it with and it'll make your experiences a whole lot more memorable. China can be a fascinating country for some people, and a hellhole for others. I think if you meet the criteria listed above you should do alright. Best of luck and if anyone needs help feel free to contact me.
Here are more random photos:
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| http://malkasgambit.liquidpoker.net/ | Last edit: 21/03/2010 23:09 |
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GoTuNk Chile. Mar 20 2010 17:19. Posts 2860 | | |
I'm overwhelmed by the quality of this blog entry
I also loled at the women with slaves on 3rd picture from the last ones. |
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LemOn[5thF] Czech Republic. Mar 20 2010 17:26. Posts 15163 | | |
Great post.
Btw how is it with playing poker in China, are there any troubles with that?
And how did you get your visas, do you need to have a firm job offer to get into China fo 6+ months?
My GF Is from Guanzhou originally and I am thinking about going to China just play poker after I graduate |
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| | On March 20 2010 16:26 LemOn[5thF] wrote:
Great post.
Btw how is it with playing poker in China, are there any troubles with that?
And how did you get your visas, do you need to have a firm job offer to get into China fo 6+ months?
My GF Is from Guanzhou originally and I am thinking about going to China just play poker after I graduate |
I wasn't really playing much poker at that time so I can't say. I donked around a bit on FTP but my internet connection was never really that stable. I remember I once lost half my bankroll when I immediately disc'd after starting up like 12 6$ SnGs. My friends had the same issues. So I think if you want to play poker, you need to do a lot of research on finding the best ISP and it'll probably cost you some cheese. I would also be concerned about the rising tension between China > Google and what might be applied to their firewalls in the near future.
Re visas, it might be different now but back then the max a visitor could stay in China was 30 days. Beyond that, you had to get a work visa which perhaps your GF's family can help you out with? I'd google this cause I'm not too certain now.
Also Guanzhou is close to HK so you can always just take a mini-vacation every 30 days to renew your visa. And of course to visit Macau, play some live games and degen it up at their epic saunas 
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| http://malkasgambit.liquidpoker.net/ | Last edit: 20/03/2010 18:52 |
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LemOn[5thF] Czech Republic. Mar 20 2010 19:29. Posts 15163 | | |
Well my gf just pointed out that if I marry her it will be much easier :o
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LemOn[5thF] Czech Republic. Mar 20 2010 19:30. Posts 15163 | | |
And ye if I get the visa somehow sorted out, living in South China seems supercool with Macau so close and living expenses so low |
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goose58 United States. Mar 20 2010 19:41. Posts 871 | | |
Nice TR and those pictures show china is very beautiful |
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Awesome blog.
Keep in mind suzhou is a second tier city and will be cheaper than guangzhou, beijing, shenzhen, shanghai, hk, and macau. It's a lot less developed in secondary cities (Even though it has over 2m people).
Internet is very stable here in Beijing; however, I do use a VPN server to get around a lot of the blocks of the great firewall of china. You'll definitely need to invest in this if you want to be sure you can access anything you need. You can't access many sites in china, it's quite complicated, the most popular would be facebook, youtube, twitter myspace.
Anyway, I'm in Beijing, looking to go to Shanghai on April 3rd, maybe I'll make a side trip to Suzhou. This blog makes it look pretty awesome |
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ToD France. Mar 21 2010 09:57. Posts 191 | | |
nice blog~ come visit me & dennis in beijing when u have time david ~ both u and joe ! |
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Shenny Canada. Mar 21 2010 10:12. Posts 1514 | | |
good experience
| | They spit on the streets, elbow on the bus, don't look when crossing roads, chew with their mouth open and speak very loudly, to name a few. |
I lol'ed. French Canadian definition right there. |
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bigredhoss Cook Islands. Mar 24 2010 20:55. Posts 8649 | | |
"One of our (female) French teachers was fired for sexually abusing some of the staff (myself included)"
go on... |
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