The Contradictory Feelings Thread

[Vijay]

Thanks! From what I've heard, it's not that dangerous, but only one way to really find out, I guess.

[akam chinjir]

I doubt Beijing is more dangerous than New Jersey

Why are the feelings contradictory?

[Vijay]

For several many reasons! On the one hand, I'd finally be getting a job after being unemployed for about six months; I'd be moving to another country far, far away from my parents; I'd get to see what it's like to live in Beijing (I'm always curious about what it's like to live anywhere); I'd have plenty of opportunities to practice my Mandarin; I'd get to live on my own for the first time ever; and apparently, I'd get to play around with kids all the time. On the other hand, I'd be facing plenty of Internet censorship to the point where I'm not entirely sure I could still access this forum; I could risk getting into trouble with the law even without having done anything wrong, especially with the whole trade war thing; I normally suck at getting things done in a timely manner without being told to do specific tasks; I also normally get distracted very easily; I wouldn't get to see family all that often, and I already have a niece and another one on the way; and my Malayalam would probably end up going even further down the drain than it already has been since I wouldn't even get much of a chance to talk to my parents in it anymore.

EDIT: These aren't the only reasons. Other reasons include: I'd get to eat authentic Chinese food pretty much whenever I wanted, and I'd get to meet so many interesting new people, but I'd also have to face much colder weather at times than I do here, and I have to find my own accommodation at least once the training period is over.

[akam chinjir]

I don't have much useful advice for most of that, though you should be able to ameliorate the internet situation if you make sure you have access to a good VPN.

I think for me the most daunting particular thing would be looking for a place to live. Do you know people who live there or who've lived there recently who can tell you how things work? (I could ask some friends if you want, but obviously it's less complicated if you already know people.)

[Vijay]

I do know one guy who used to live in Beijing, and the school also says they'll help me find a place.

EDIT: Oh, and yet another reason why I have contradictory feelings is because...I don't even know for sure whether I got the job yet!

[MacAnDàil]

Do you have an alternative job lined up? Is it possible to communicate with your family via a video link app or site that is not banned in China? I can get distracted myself. Would it not be a good idea to improve your concentration regardless of where you're living and what you're doing?

[Vijay]

I don't know whether I'd say I have an alternative lined up per se, but I do have other ones to try, and my dad currently doesn't seem to be too worried about whether I actually got the job or not. (My mom is a different story, but then, my mom is always a different story ). It should be possible to communicate with them, although I'm not sure whether it'll be possible to communicate with you yet! (Since I have to set up a VPN first, right? Which reminds me, I don't think those are technically legal in China, although I'm not good at keeping up with Chinese law or anything; I believe they did make it illegal at some point even though lots of people use it anyway. Anyway, no matter what, communication still requires way more effort than just going home and "do you want some tea? Nah. Oh what do you want for dinner? Oh I'll have this and that," etc.).

And yes, I'll have to learn to pay more attention anyway. The only problem is whether I'll actually do it! (Hopefully!).

[Linguoboy]

When I was about your age, I considered taking a job teaching English in South Korea. At the time, I was deeply interested in the culture and it would have transformed my dilettantish Korean into something actually useful, but ultimately I decided that the opportunity which came my way wasn't the right opportunity--too many unknowns about accommodation, healthcare, and other important things. For your sake, Vijay, I hope this is the right opportunity and you make the most of it.

[Vijay]

Thanks!

[mèþru]

Looking up online, foreigners don't get locked up for using individual VPNs, but other people do. China will never completely ban VPNs because it'd crash online international business conducted in China.

[dhok]

Sorry for not posting earlier. I was in Chengdu for seven months in the spring and summer of '18, so I've gone through the system.

The first and most important thing is to make sure you are legal. You will need a 120-hour TEFL certificate (there are some decent options online, though from June 2020 you'll need in-class hours) and a BA--I'm sure you have the latter, and it can be in anything. (A linguistics degree may translate to a minor salary bump--they probably won't know what it is, but it sounds good.) Make sure you get your Z-Visa in your home country (the US, right?). Do not go to China on a tourist visa with promises that they will send you to Hong Kong to get it switched to a work visa; it isn't 2009 anymore.

I wrote this guide on Reddit on the authentication and visa process. It should still mostly be good (from early 2018). If you haven't started this process yet, assume a couple months to do it. I assume you're looking at a March start; three months should be plenty of time.

Regarding working conditions: I worked for 11K a month after tax plus an apartment. I now realized I was underballed, and when I left I was actually looking at another gig for 18K that I now realize I should have taken...but oh well. Do not sign onto any gig for less than 14-15K a month after tax plus an apartment, except university gigs, which have low hours and where you're hemmed in by civil-service pay schedules anyways. That's not because you can't live on less--you definitely can. But you're worth considerably more, so don't underball yourself. For Beijing I wouldn't do less than 17K for any gig at all. Incidentally, do not expect Mandarin proficiency to translate into any sort of pay raise or competitiveness whatsoever--employers do not care at all, though obviously it makes your life *way* easier.

Kindergarten gigs kind of suck, unless you're naturally talented at putting on a show for the kids, in which case you have a valuable skill. They pay better than any other job, for the simple reason that demand for them is gigantic and most people don't want to do them. A kindergarten job in Beijing is worth at least 20K after tax a month plus an apartment--if you are getting lower, tell them to pound sand. Make sure you talk in private to another foreign teacher working at your school before you sign. Only a colleague can tell you what the story really is.

Public high-school and middle-school gigs are a decent soft landing for first-timers who don't want to teach small kids. The pay is not fantastic, but it isn't bad. The catch is that public-school gigs in Beijing are fairly competitive because a lot of people want to work there...have you considered a decent Tier 2 like Qingdao, Nanjing, Chengdu, Suzhou or Xi'an?

(oh, yes, regarding crime: large Chinese cities are quite safe so long as you take the precautions you would in any city. Violent crime is rare except in the countryside, which is really another country altogether. On the other hand, drivers are maniacs and petty theft is not infrequent. If you leave your wallet somewhere, there's about a 50/50 chance you'll get it back intact, so be careful if you go out drinking.)

(additionally: if your BA was in some sort of recognizable science subject like math, physics, chem, computer science, bio, econ, or something like that, you can skip the training centers and get a good gig at a private high school, usually billing itself as an international school. A lot of these gigs are kind of a joke, but they pay very well.)

[mèþru]

I wasn't really thinking of violent crime but speech crimes. I'd find it too difficult to shut up myself to stay safe.

[Vijay]

Wow, thanks so much, dhok!

Okay, maybe this job is not a great idea then, though I'm not going to write it off immediately.

I have the 120-hour TEFL cert, a master's in linguistics, 1.5 years of teaching experience (my dad thinks I could claim I have more than that because I also had to help co-workers figure out stuff all the time at my last job but whatever), and I don't have a criminal record, though I'm not sure what I have to do to prove that yet. Yes, my home country is the US. They claim in their ad at least that the pay rate is 14-16K RMB a month, but I think that's before tax (this is the ad just in case you're interested). The last interviewer (they had two interviews with me) told me the students would be 4-9 years old. Yesterday, they told me they'd "get feedback to you within one week" after I went through "our last step before offer [sic]."

I haven't found anything from Qingdao, Nanjing, Chengdu, Suzhou, or Xi'an yet, only one gig each from Jinan, Haikou, and Nanchang. In each of those three cases, this is what happened: I applied for the job, the recruiter e-mailed me for my Skype ID, I sent it, they got me an interview with someone at the school (the principal in Jinan, some teacher in each of the other two), the "interview" was mostly just them talking about their school and what they had to offer, I got the contract in my e-mail, it looked sketchy (always consulted with my dad on this because we're Indian, he's actually from India, and people in India try to cheat/scam people just as much as people in China do, so he has hands-on experience with this that I don't), they kept trying to get me to sign it, I stopped talking to them. I've heard conflicting advice regarding kindergarten gigs; I know most people don't want to do them, but on the other hand, I've looked after kids for years (this is what I do whenever my mom throws a party and there are kids at our house), and also, this. I do mention that I speak Mandarin Chinese in my resume, but it's buried in there, and I never tell them that in person especially because I've heard that some employers (or parents) actually don't want a teacher who speaks it (either because they think monolingual teachers are better at teaching English or because they just don't want somebody chatting in Mandarin the whole time instead of doing their actual job of teaching English; I've also heard that keeping it in your back pocket can be useful in these jobs and that if you tell them you speak Mandarin, they may switch to Mandarin during the interview and then claim later that you agreed to things that weren't in the contract and oh maybe your Mandarin isn't so great after all).

mèþru: Really? I have to shut up to stay safe, no matter where I am.

[mèþru]

mèþru: Really? I have to shut up to stay safe, no matter where I am.

Well that kind of applies to everyone but I'm bad at it. There's a good chance I'll be murdered some day after pissing off an extremist motivated enough to stalk me and shoot me.

[Vijay]

So let me get this straight: Everyone has to shut up to stay safe sometimes, but you're bad at it, but you've lived at least a dozen and a half years without anyone shooting you, but somehow "there's a good chance" it will happen anyway?

[Linguoboy]

So let me get this straight: Everyone has to shut up to stay safe sometimes, but you're bad at it, but you've lived at least a dozen and a half years without anyone shooting you, but somehow "there's a good chance" it will happen anyway?

Makes sense to me. I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up in a traffic accident because of the aggressive way I cross the street. So far the worse that's happened is just that I've ended up on the hood of someone's car but that's more luck than anything.

[Vijay]

So let me get this straight: Everyone has to shut up to stay safe sometimes, but you're bad at it, but you've lived at least a dozen and a half years without anyone shooting you, but somehow "there's a good chance" it will happen anyway?

Makes sense to me. I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up in a traffic accident because of the aggressive way I cross the street. So far the worse that's happened is just that I've ended up on the hood of someone's car but that's more luck than anything.

...Then don't cross the street so aggressively...?

[Linguoboy]

...Then don't cross the street so aggressively...?

I never thought of that!

While I'm at it, I'll also stop eating all meat and cheese and riding in cars.

[Salmoneus]

So let me get this straight: Everyone has to shut up to stay safe sometimes, but you're bad at it, but you've lived at least a dozen and a half years without anyone shooting you, but somehow "there's a good chance" it will happen anyway?

It's amazing how many macho badasses there are, on the internet. Weirdly, you never seem to encounter as many of them in real life.

[dhok]

Wow, thanks so much, dhok!

Okay, maybe this job is not a great idea then, though I'm not going to write it off immediately.

Don't--I mean, OK, if you're sure, but I would advise you to write it off. There are thousands of kindergarten jobs that pay probably double what you are looking at. Kindergartens are businesses in China and cut-throat ones at that.

It's like, suppose you were a commodities supplier and you had a stock of iron ore whose real value was $80 a ton, and somebody made puppy-dog eyes at you to try and get you to sell them a future on it at $40 a ton. You are a valuable commodity, so sell yourself at market rate. Believe me when I say you'll be thankful.

I have the 120-hour TEFL cert, a master's in linguistics, 1.5 years of teaching experience (my dad thinks I could claim I have more than that because I also had to help co-workers figure out stuff all the time at my last job but whatever), and I don't have a criminal record, though I'm not sure what I have to do to prove that yet. Yes, my home country is the US. They claim in their ad at least that the pay rate is 14-16K RMB a month, but I think that's before tax (this is the ad just in case you're interested). The last interviewer (they had two interviews with me) told me the students would be 4-9 years old. Yesterday, they told me they'd "get feedback to you within one week" after I went through "our last step before offer [sic]."

So, 14-16K before tax is, like, a decent rate for somebody with only a BA and no teaching experience working at an adults' training center or a high school in a tier 3--not somebody with a Master's and a year and a half of experience in Beijing!

I also can't help but notice they don't indicate on the job ad how many hours you will be teaching. This is important. I wouldn't go above 22 at the very most. If you're lucky, you can nab as few as ten or twelve in-class hours a week--though realistically only at schools and univesities.

I haven't found anything from Qingdao, Nanjing, Chengdu, Suzhou, or Xi'an yet, only one gig each from Jinan, Haikou, and Nanchang.

You may not be looking in the right places. There are several major sites for Chinese ESL jobs.

Your first stop should be Dave's, which is an ancient site--nearly as ancient as zompist.com, I think--that gets huge numbers of ads and applicants. Put your résumé on there and see who contacts you. You can also take a look at the job board. Just from a quick browse, if you are still OK with teaching young kids at a training center, you could get a job for about 20-22K after tax in Chongqing, 17-22K after tax (probably the latter) with a chain with branches basically everywhere, the yuan equivalent of $2500-$3400 (that's what...17.5-24K) a month plus an apartment in Chengdu...

Or what if you decide you'd rather teach at a university or middle/high school? Try EChina Cities. You could be getting 15-20K (probably 20K) a month plus an apartment for 20 40-minute lessons a week in Shenzhen (that salary is actually a little low for Shenzhen, but it's there). 20-22K in Hefei (that's Anhui, which is kind of a joke in something of the same way Arkansas is a joke to Americans, but Hefei's reasonably big). 24-25K in Suzhou (a lovely city). This is all making me a bit nostalgic...

You have a vast array of options. This is not the American job market.

In each of those three cases, this is what happened: I applied for the job, the recruiter e-mailed me for my Skype ID, I sent it, they got me an interview with someone at the school (the principal in Jinan, some teacher in each of the other two), the "interview" was mostly just them talking about their school and what they had to offer, I got the contract in my e-mail, it looked sketchy (always consulted with my dad on this because we're Indian, he's actually from India, and people in India try to cheat/scam people just as much as people in China do, so he has hands-on experience with this that I don't), they kept trying to get me to sign it, I stopped talking to them.

This is normal. Note, though, that contracts don't mean anything until they have scans of your authenticated documents.

If you don't have a WeChat, you'll need to get one. I think Skype might be behind the Great Firewall--in any case most Chinese don't use it.

I've heard conflicting advice regarding kindergarten gigs; I know most people don't want to do them, but on the other hand, I've looked after kids for years (this is what I do whenever my mom throws a party and there are kids at our house), and also, this.

Like I said, if you can do them...you're worth your weight in gold. You'll have to do a lot of singing of ridiculous songs, dressing in giraffe costumes and stuff like that. I just plain don't have that kind of energy or wholesomeness, which is why I stick to middle school and up, where the kids can actually understand something and you're not just trying to get five words a day into their head via induction. (Kindergarten lessons are very repetitive.)

I do mention that I speak Mandarin Chinese in my resume, but it's buried in there, and I never tell them that in person especially because I've heard that some employers (or parents) actually don't want a teacher who speaks it (either because they think monolingual teachers are better at teaching English or because they just don't want somebody chatting in Mandarin the whole time instead of doing their actual job of teaching English; I've also heard that keeping it in your back pocket can be useful in these jobs and that if you tell them you speak Mandarin, they may switch to Mandarin during the interview and then claim later that you agreed to things that weren't in the contract and oh maybe your Mandarin isn't so great after all).

The first bit, about non-Mandarin speakers being assumed to be better teachers, is true. The second bit about using it as a bait-and-switch tactic, I've never heard of...but it doesn't surprise me in the least if it happens to be true.

mèþru: Really? I have to shut up to stay safe, no matter where I am.

Just don't mention anything sensitive in class, or on WeChat. Nobody much cares what foreigners think, so long as they don't go around trying to talk to the locals about the status of Taiwan. VPNs are fine but tend to get very slow to the point of unusability around sensitive times of the year (early June this year, for example, owing to the thing that didn't happen). And, more broadly, of course, in any society there are things you simply can't say--in America the consequences are social rather than legal, but they can be just as dire depending on your social or employment situation. In some ways it's easier for a foreigner in China, because the lines you can't cross are usually brighter than, say, on Twitter.

Occasionally, some ambitious local bureaucrat will get it into their heads to impress the boss by surveying the religious beliefs of foreign teachers, particularly at universities and public schools. Since this is a bureaucratic status game that is not really about you so much as it is about somebody getting a bigger desk, just give them what they want, which is that you have no particular religion.