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Travel, Teach, Live in China

China: The Good the Bad and the Ugly
By:Yingwen Laoshi
In Response To: china teaching (conrad)

No problem. I'm happy to give you the lowdown.
There are plenty off places in the South of China that will burn your butt off in the Summer, and not be too cold in Winter. You don't have to go to Hong Kong for heat. You can find that in Guangdong, which is the gateway province into Hong Kong. There, it can get pretty hot even in the winter. Luckily the constant showers cool it down a bit.

Just be careful, because in quite a few hotels in the region you have mice and roaches. They're not overrun with them, but they're around. Actually, I've just told the boss in my school, 'Hey! I don't do ROACHES!,' after finding one in my apartment with more meat on it than was on the chicken my girlfriends mother cooked for us during spring festival!

OK, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but it was big enough, and I'm getting a new apartment because of it, so it's not too bad. You can get clean accommodation here, although sometimes it takes a bit of table thumping and yelling.

Visas, visas! They can be a real pain here too. the problem here is that the rules always seem to keep changing all the time.

Here's how it will probably go with you, Conrad. If you come to the China mainland to work, as opposed to Hong Kong, you'll probably land in Shanghai or Beijing with your travel visa, book into a hotel, or better still find a cheap apartment.Then find an internet bar, get on the ESL sites and start scouting for work. Magazines are OK too, but the internet is the best place to start looking for jobs.

If you've got your resume scanned into your e-mail, it will be a lot easier. Just go to ESL jobs, and start firing your resume/CV in all directions. I've found government schools easier to work for. They often have a lighter workload, there's less pressure and they are usually but not always, more trustworthy than the small language schools.

Once you've found a school, they will more than likely send you over the mainland border to Hong Kong or Macao, to get your Z visa. After that you return to your school, and start working.

As for credentials, from my experience I think that a BA degree can land you ninety percent of the jobs offered in the mainland, and an MA on top of that will give you no problem in getting virtually any ESL job.

If you've got no degree at all, don't worry either, contrary to what some people say, the Chinese have got ways of getting you legal over here even without a BA.

Not all can wangle it, but many do. Even many government schools can get you a legal work permit without a BA. HOW they do it is not your worry. As long as you have the legal document stamped in your visa, there's no problem. A TEFL certificate would definitely be handy here. If you've got one of them, get that scanned into your e-mail too.

There is a lot of corruption over here. Don't worry about it. Just don't let any school take you for a ride. Avoid recruiting companies as much as you can. They are more often, not worth the hassle.

If you have a BA, teaching in most colleges will be no problem. Even without a BA, you can teach in some colleges, but it will take a bit of time to find such a college. I'm speaking from what I've seen and experienced in China during three years here. Don't let anybody tell you, that you can't teach in China legally without a degree, because it's possible.

You don't personally have to walk into a police station and announce, 'Hey, I'm in China...'. To book into ANY hotel you will have to show your passport. The hotel staff will take your passport details and I believe the PSB will either be notified or just automatically aware of who you are and where you are.

Don't worry about it. Just concentrate on finding a school. If you can take a fair amount of cash with you to see you through any delay or problems with a school, you should be OK.

Because they're crying out for foreign teachers here and many are coming and going, you should be able to find a job in November without much of a problem. I started at my first school (which was a college by the way ,) at the beginning of December. You won't have to wait for the second semester.

I advise you to get some hepatitis shots before you come.

All the best with your China experience, Conrad.

YT


Messages In This Thread

Warning: James Zhang, www.tefl.cc *Link* -- Larry Romanoff
Re: Warning: James Zhang, www.tefl.cc -- William Messon
Avoid all the schools and recruiters he works with... -- a teacher
More aliases -- Larry Romanoff
Bravo! -- Yingwen Laoshi
China Teaching -- conrad
China Syndrome: The sequel -- Yingwen Laoshi
china teaching -- conrad
China: The Good the Bad and the Ugly -- Yingwen Laoshi
Re: China: The Good the Bad and the Ugly -- Reilly
The Lowdown -- Yingwen Laoshi
James Zhang aka Alin Buuer -- Larry Romanoff
No Response -- Larry Romanoff

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