Escaping the tedium of the office, and salary and the nine to five slog
Doggy waiting to be packed
I have had Darling Daughter stay with me every other weekend practically since she was born. Like most dad’s I really wanted to be a twenty-four – seven, three hundred and sixty five days a year dad, but that wasn’t to be. I have tried to be the best dad I could be. I love my Darling Daughter, but I too have a life.
The goodbyes were swift and painful, tears were spilt, but it was best they got in their car and just went – I had a plane to catch.
Kindle:If you like to read then you need to bring a kindle or other reading device. Purchases from the kindle store download quickly and have been no problem in the five years I have been in China. I now use the kindle app on my smartphone. Bookstores in China barely carry English language books. If they do they are mainly those classics that are out of copyright, Dickens, Austen, some of the American authors, Verne and so on. In Nanjing I have only found one bar that has a book exchange – Blue Sky – The Aussie Bar on Shanghai Lu.
Other Electronic Devices
If you are going to buy electronic devices buy them before you come to China. Computers, Tablets, Kindle, Smartphone’s are all of a similar price here to those back home. Also if you do wait to buy in China the operating system is in, wait for it, Chinese. Some may have an option to change the language but do you want to take that chance? You might get a good deal in Hong Kong if you have a stop over there.
Personally I dumped my iPhone 5 and purchased a Huawei Rio. Huawei is the major competitor to Apple in China. It was fine until I broke it. I upgraded to a Huawei P9 which is great BUT it is so smart that it does block some of the apps we like to use. Twitter is blocked for instance – although I can still use Facebook. Google maps do not work.
Peripheries such as USB sticks, External Hard drives, Headphones, Cables and so on are cheaper here so there is no problem there – just watch out for fakes.
I also purchased a printer/scanner, a Canon (around 400RMB or £40 approx) simply because at my school (and at the other college and training school I have worked at) there is not a communal printer networked to your computer like you might have been used to at home. At my school there is a print room. You take your stick to the print room, use their computer (all in Chinese) to print one copy of what you need, then you give the women the instructions for how many copies you need. You have to do this in good time, like the day before you need them, because they are printing for the whole school. Or you print a copy off using the one printer in the teacher’s office that is attached to another teachers machine. So if he/she is not at their desk and their computer is locked then you are stuffed till they come back.
It was easier to purchase my own printer, so I can do the single sheet printing (I still use the print room for bulk) at my leisure and the scanning of any teaching material I might want to use.
English Grammar for Dummies. 2nd Ed. You will find a free downloadable pdf of the book here.
As we move up through the rarefied caste system of ESL teachers in China we must consider the ‘untouchables’. These are the ESL teachers that have a CELTA qualification and may or may not have a PGCE; nevertheless they are a step up from the RADicles (of course each group is not mutually exclusive and a teacher may belong to one or all of these groups).
This step up is in terms of the types of schools can they teach at and the salary they get paid. In the main this type of teacher might be working for what in China are generally called ‘International Schools or Foreign Language Schools’. Most, if not all of the untouchables that I know (apart from any newbie’s), have been in China for a while and many have Chinese or Asian/Filipino wives and children. To be in this type of a school is very beneficial because the children of said teacher can attend the school at very competitive and discounted rates plus wages are significantly higher than those of the gap year graduate or the RADicle.
As mentioned in Part 1 once you have achieved a CELTA qualification more options for better quality work opens up for you at these better quality schools. At these schools you might be teaching CIE courses aiming towards iGCSE’s or AS/A levels if they follow the English curriculum or you might be teaching the IB or the American ACT or SAT exams.
The most likely place to find an untouchable is in a Chinese High School where the students are being groomed for foreign universities such as in the International and Foreign language schools. This is where having a specialist degree like Math’s or the Sciences comes to the fore as not only can you teach ESL English you can also teach a specialist subject. Similarly at some of the better Universities teaching English and/or teaching a specialist subject is also a possibility.
The thing about a lot of the untouchables I know is that they really think that they are untouchable in the sense that they believe that the terms of their contract do not actually apply to them. Some of these good schools pay excellent wages, if you have a CELTA you can expect to start on around 10,000RMB (approx £1000) a month as a new, barely experienced, teacher rising, with experience and length of service in the school to 20 – 25,000 RMB per month.
Most of these schools have a dress code for the teachers – shirt, trousers, and good shoes. Some might even stipulate white shirt, black trousers – a uniform if you will. Yet some of these untouchables are so conceited that they still want to act like a gap year graduate and turn up in jeans, tee shirts, or shorts in the summer and then they complain when the school fines them as much as 500rmb (£50 approx) for breaking the dress code as per stipulated in the contract.
Yes, these highfliers are so self assured (read arrogant or stupid) that they sign a contract without reading it or at the least without having any cognitive understanding of what the contact they are signing insists over and above the salary and conditions such as the free apartment and health care.
‘But in my last school’ is a popular whine of the untouchable. ‘Im my last school I didn’t have to……………………..’ Please complete the gap fill:
Wear a white shirt
Not wear jeans and tee shirt to lessons
Come to staff meetings
Pay attention in staff meetings
Provide complete lesson plans before the lessons
Be on time
Do extra curricular activities with the students
Sit at my desk and do my office hours
Not leave before 5PM
Fulfil the terms of my contract, which I signed of my own free will, to the satisfaction of my managers
You will notice that generally, in the better schools, the ones paying the higher wages, the teachers are expected to put in a full day. That often means being at ones desk at 8am or earlier and leaving at 5pm. That you might only have two or three 45/60-minute lessons during that day is irrelevant, as you will be expected to stay at your desk, despite being ‘finished’. That’s why you get the big bucks.
What you do at your desk in China stays at your desk. So after you have done your usual school admin, marking, writing your lesson plans, then basically you can do what you want. If you are with Chinese teachers you will notice that they do not need a prompt to get their head down for a nap or two at their desk whatever time of day. Of course the two-hour lunch break is also naptime. In the offices I have worked in the camp beds are stacked up against the wall and come lunchtime they are put to good use by the snoozing teachers. The lunchtime nap is a cultural norm in China and a jolly good idea it is too.
Camp bed in the office
The rest of the time at your desk is yours. You can surf the Internet, watch movies, shop on Taobao, and write that block-busting novel you have wanted to get down on paper/on to your hard drive for years. I am currently writing this blog during my own two-hour office session as per my contract. I have also used this time to write the book I mentioned in Part 1. To write newspaper articles for the Shanghai Students Post, to do the proofreading for a local university, so technically I’m being paid twice for the same time – kerching!
Plus as I’m not physically at another place of work as I would be if I were teaching I can kid myself that I’m not working illegally and in breach of my contact and my Z visa conditions. (Of course the school does know about my book and my writing for the student newspaper it would be difficult to hide them as they are in the public domain but they seem pleased as it adds to my reputation.)
So the school pays the untouchables big bucks and also expects the teachers to work for it, no surprise there you might say. This often includes extracurricular stuff such as going on school trips, meeting parents, being wheeled out to a dinner as the ‘performing white face tame monkey’ on the staff and a myriad of other tasks that often get foisted on you at very short notice.
If there is one thing about working in the Chinese education system that riles us Westerners the most it is the lastminuteism that infects the system from top to bottom. So one might be in the apartment having done with teaching and office hours for the day, feet up, watching Game of Thrones with a beer, when the phone will ring.
‘Rob, where are you?’
‘Here in my apartment, why?’
‘You have a class!’
‘What?’ Frantically checks the diary on my iPhone. ‘ No I don’t’
‘Yes you do. 4th lesson in the afternoon. Didn’t anyone tell you?’
‘No. Nobody told me. What lesson?’
‘Senior B, we have changed the time table, come now they are waiting’
‘Oh Ok’. Frantically pulls on trousers and shirt and leaves to give a class on the fly.
This type of thing happens with a depressing regularity.
Or its Thursday evening, you have made big plans for the weekend, starting with a big Friday night at the bar grumping over a 10rmb Carlsberg or three with all the other RADicles then Saturday downtown, more 10 kuai beer, maybe a curry and more bar stories that you’ve heard a hundred times or more, but are too polite to mention as you try to get your own favourite story listened to again – your phone beeps.
The Spring trip is a regular event in the school calendar – this year was to proto-military place run by ex soldiers!
Chinese teachers enjoying the break
It’s a message on QQ, from the school administrator, ‘On Saturday afternoon the school is having a parents/sports/open day or something ‘ and they want you to be there/give a speech/talk to parents (despite in the two years I’ve been here there has only been one parent with English good enough to hold a conversation with me and she is an academic at a local university) /just be a white face smiling inanely as disinterested parents waltz past to talk to the Chinese staff.
Parents queuing to register their kids for next year
Bang goes the big Friday night as you don’t want to get so pissed that you have a hangover and stink of booze when you are in front of the parents. Plus you now have a PPT to create from scratch or a speech to write that not only will inspire the parents to keep forking out around the 80,000rmb (£8000 approx) per year, (for my school anyway) in fees plus extras for boarding, books, uniforms, trips and so on but also enables you to promote yourself as the BEST teacher they have ever had there in the history of ESL teachers in China. But bang there goes most of your Saturday, although you hope you can leave sharpishly once you have shown your face and given your speech/presentation and best smile and get downtown to meet up with your best buddies for that well needed pint.
Parents event where I am joined by my co -teachers
Parents arriving
Personally, I think it is important, despite the late notice and the fact that they are messing up your weekend, to be there. It shows commitment to the school and I think it shows respect to the Chinese members of staff who work a darn sight harder than the ESL teachers. In most schools the Chinese staff have to be there at around 7:00 am and most if not all do not leave until after 9pm at night, others work later because as my school is a boarding school staff are allocated roles to make sure kids are in bed and nicely tucked up before lights out – these staff tend to stay the night in the dormitories despite having families and young children of their own to go home to.
At my school, which has over 3000 pupils, school starts at around 7:10 when the students file in from breakfast for self-study they have a full day of lessons until 21:00 although formal lessons finish at 17:00. The evening lessons are more about self-study, clubs and hobbies.
My schools winter timetable – the summer timetable advances 15 minutes but still finished at 21:00
Time
Self study
7：10-7：35
Morning
1
7：45-8：30
2
8：40-9：25
3
9：55-10：40
4
10：50-11：40
Lunch time
11:40-13:25
Afternoon
1
13：25-14：10
2
14：20-15：10
3
15：20-16：05
4
16：15-17：00
Self study
1
18：30-19：15
2
19：25-20：00
3
20:10-21:00
On top of being here for so long everyday, the Chinese staff are not allowed off campus without a pass out signed by one of the bosses. For this full week the Chinese members of staff get paid significantly less than the Western Teachers –approximately 6-7000RMB per month, they also have significantly shorter holidays during the summer when they have to work.
As you would expect the untouchable ESL teacher would think that getting involved in this sort of extra curricular activity, especially at short notice, is beneath them. The exhibit a sort of colonial arrogance which exhibits itself as lazy racism whereby they think that they are better than the Chinese who can’t seem to be able to organize things in a logical and timely fashion. They expect things to be done in the way they expect them to be done in the west before they even considering doing something. They want the Chinese to respect their situation and defer to their bewilderment and hurt feelings when they are asked to do something, at the last minute, that is out of their comfort zone. You can hear it in their raised voices as they squeal out their outrage that their bosses actually had the discourtesy to ask them to do something that they feel is beneath their elevated status.
Any change is also seen as a threat. As noted above a common refrain from this type of teacher is ‘Well in my last school, we never….’. Shake their comfort zone and vindictive, insolent, backstabbing bullies drop out of the tree. It is as if they have found their niche, their comfort zone and its just too much hassle to think about doing anything new, or challenging, or even things that might benefit the students and enhance the reputation of the school. Indeed, so self destructive and arrogant are these teachers that just this last week at another school I know an ESL teacher was challenged by both the Chinese boss and the English ‘manager’ about his standard of dress. As I have already outlined many schools, and this is one of them, have a dress code. It’s outlined in the contract that he signed but this teacher constantly turned up dressed in shorts, polo shirt and trainers. His argument, when challenged, was that his dress had no bearing on his teaching ability so it didn’t matter.
His arrogance was such that he had no conception that first and foremost he is a role model for his students, secondly the school wanted to protect its reputation as a good school with parents and visitors who might come across him, and thirdly the school expected certain standards of professional behaviour from someone who was professing to be a professional. As he didn’t get his way in the meeting he had a hissy fit and left his job. This man has a Chinese wife and a child and because he could not put on a shirt in the morning he gave up a very well paid job. No doubt he could get another position relatively easily due to the very buoyant job market in Nanjing but it does tell you something of the mentality of this group. This guy is not an isolated case, believe me.
Just this week I hear more stories about untouchable teachers. First, one who was requested to meet his Chinese boss at, say 2pm. The teacher waltzes into the Chinese bosses office at 2:15, fifteen minutes late. The boss says, ‘You’re late, the meeting was at 2pm’. Teacher shrugs and says ‘What’s the problem? You were sat in your office doing nothing anyway!’ Here’s a thought – Try doing that at home with your boss – see what happens!’ Second the teacher was at a good school, earning good money, 20K plus, his Chinese girlfriend is just pregnant so he has to get married, he was teaching his students English four letter (swear) words. He got sacked (told his contract would not be renewed) although he has to work out his contract – four more weeks. He found a new job the same day, via contacts, but on the other side of the country from where his girlfriend lives and from where his future in-laws/grandparents live. Grandparents, in China play a very large role in the upbringing of their grandchildren. But he responds to this with a shrug of the shoulders, ‘it’s a fair cop’ he says and moves on to the next school.
I have never had the opportunity to ask one of these untouchable teachers, especially the ones with a PGCE just why is it they are in China and why are they so resistant to change in their schools. I have an inkling that these types of teacher would find teaching in schools back home too much like hard work. What with having to come up with lesson plans and doing the admin and filling out forms – “Well I never! Is that what its come too! What? Stay after 15:15 to do a club? In my last school in China….”
If you thing that I am being a bit harsh on these ‘untouchables’ what you have to realize, especially if you do come to China to work, is that here it is every man and woman for themselves. When you join a school, which may have other foreign teachers working there, do not think, for one moment, that you are joining a team. At best, what you will be joining is a loose alliance of individuals who happen to have similar qualifications as you and a range of different experiences either here or in other countries. Some of them will know all the tricks of the trade, they will know everything they can and cannot get away with and push the boundaries of acceptable behaviour to the limit in order to make their life easier and to increase both their guanxi and their salary.
Wikipedia tells us that guanxi describes the basic dynamic in personalized networks of influence, and is a central idea in Chinese society. In Western media, the pinyin romanisation of this Chinese word is becoming more widely used instead of the two common translations—”connections” and “relationships”—as neither of those terms sufficiently reflects the wide cultural implications that guanxi describes. So the jockeying for position and the backstabbing and intrigue that’s more subtle than at the court of Elizabeth 1st is normalized amongst Western teachers in these well-paid jobs. They are just looking out for themselves. Trying to build relationships and connections with their Chinese managers and bosses, just building guanxi so that when the shit does hit the fan they will be well placed to ride out the storm – they hope. We all have to do it. You will have to play the game too, get used to it and learn it quickly.
Of course this all is borne out of an immense sense of insecurity concerning our jobs and our place in China. A lot of these teachers have invested time and money into staying and living in China with wives and children but that could all finish in the blink of an eye should the Chinese bosses decide that you haven’t been pulling your weight or you’re simply not the dish of the day anymore or you are just too expensive so you will be replaced by a cheaper bilingual Chinese teacher as is happening at a large school not a million miles from where I am now. One teacher, I know, was told that he was under threat because he was constantly late for his class. He knew, for a fact, that he had only been late, due to unforeseen circumstances, for one class during the whole semester and this is despite providing a lot of help and advice to the school gratis as it was setting up and opening.
I, myself, was telephoned by my administrator and told I was late for a class that had been re-arranged and nobody had told me about. Which is the example I gave above to all intents and purposes. I had to remonstrate with the admin, quite loudly and forcefully when I saw her because she had started to get annoyed with me and use an officious tone of voice on the phone. I eventually got an apology and the woman immediately rang the admin assistant who had not passed on the change of class to me and tore her off a strip instead. But it is incidents like these which do raise ones level of insecurity because one really never knows how much the Chinese bosses of the school are reading into your, in their eyes, transgressions.
This is why when I teach I dress the part, I look professional, and I act professionally. If I am asked to fulfil a role, such as meeting parents or giving a presentation, even a last minute request, I do it with a smile on my face, a willing attitude and good grace even if it is screwing up my day or my weekend. I mean this doesn’t happen every day or every week, in the main they are blue moon events. But I want to increase my guanxi with the school. I want to work here next year, so I want my contract and my visa renewed. My point of view is that I work very few hours for a decent salary, I am pretty much left to get on with my teaching without managers or bosses looking over my shoulders. So why rock the boat?
It was made official I was on the scrapheap. My voluntary redundancy from the university was confirmed. I had been getting a bit worried as time was moving on and the agency in China had started to talk about getting visa’s and airplane tickets, and seminars in Beijing.
I couldn’t believe I had been at the Plymouth University for twenty-four years. That’s a long time.
Packing for China – the final 20 kilo
In no particular order and with some explanation… plus an afterthought did I need it or could I have bought it in China?
Running shoes
Black shoes for work
Running shorts – Lycra – can buy in China
Running shirt – long sleeves – can buy in China (unless large size)
Fred Perry Polo Shirt
Waxed type Jacket
Black and White Kefeya Scarf
Casual Rugby style shirts x 2 – 1long sleeve and 1 short sleeve
Track suit bottoms – new and thick and warm x1 – can buy
University of Plymouth Hoodie – parting gift from my job – I asked for it, and they are warm and good quality
Large Bath sheet – smaller ones can be purchased in China but not bath sheets
1 pair black jeans – can buy H&M or Uniqlo
1 pair Khaki Chinos – can buy H&M or Uniqlo
4 cotton shirts – for work etc – can buy H&M or Uniqlo unless large size (can be made)
2 x thermal vests and 2 x thermal long johns – I’m told that there is no heating in Chinese schools
6 pairs underpants (M&S of course) – can buy look out for Mini So stores
10 pairs of socks (1 pair a month huh?) -can buy look out for Mini So stores
1 woolly hat (courtesy of Darling Daughter, she bought it in Marrakesh)
1 woolly bobble hat – can buy
1 pair thick socks – can buy
Running trousers (Lycra) – can buy
That’s it in terms of clothes
Also in the suitcase is:
A bag with 6 underarm deodorants (from the £1 shop) – reduced from 10 – apparently you can’t get deodorant in China! You can buy it’s rare and expensive – Find a Mini So shop
Plus 5 small bottles of shaving oil.
Various prescription medicines, 3 Ventolin and 3 of the steroid puffers. 3 packs of Imodium (just in case!), about 12 of my migraine drugs (but hopefully will not need) cliploc bags x 2 boxes for teacher in china. 2 x large bars of chocolate requested by teacher in china.
Swiss Army penknife.
Unfortunately Snooks couldn’t fit as she’s 5.5 kilos….and this wasn’t posed she got in my suitcase – she’s been following me around like a shadow for the past week – I think she knows…..
Im also allowed 7 kilos in my carry on cabin bag and I can take my laptop bag on with me.
My carry on allowance is 7 kilo. I’m using a backpack and have just about squeezed 7 kilo of stuff in.
This is it:
From the bottom up:
Canvas tote bag with a big plastic bag of PG Tips in it! Talk about coals to Newcastle – I’m taking tea to China! – Very important – you cannot get decent tea.
Waterproof jacket
Clean shirt – Ben Sherman
Micro fleece – can buy
Multi coloured fleece – can buy in Uniqlo
Rough Guide to China
Recharging cables for kindle, camera and new mobile phone (you can get the plugs and peripherals everywhere)
Camera
In the front pocket:
First aid kit
Berocca vitamins
Ventolin pump
Shoe polish for the Cherry Reds
Toilet paper (moist) Apparently this is crucial when out and about around the Chinese City (you can buy)
6 migraine medicines
Ventolin
Brown inhaler
Mini torch
Lemsips x 10 (gold dust take more)
Anadia extra (take more) (Also think about your favourite cold remedy and Olbas oil for steaming your chest)
And in my Laptop bag which is also pushing 5 kilo
Photos (to show students)
Spare glasses x 1
Spare sun glasses x 1
4 x teaching books
2 x 100 index cards – useless
Mac book pro and charger (technology is priced the same as UK in China)
Kindle
Note book
Plymouth photo souvenir book – for students
Business cards
Ventolin (be prepared – I was a scout after all)
and Brown inhaler
pen pencil etc
So that’s it apart from the clothes I’ll be wearing,
I am planning on wearing during the trip, blue jeans, shirt, Dr Martens shoes, black jacket – and the crombie overcoat I’ll have to carry.
Tips and Hints if you are a RADicle who wants to come to China to teach.
Teabags: If you are a Brit and you like a cuppa tea then I would bring teabags. Ironically you cannot buy decent ‘black’ tea in China unless you have a thing for that abomination they call Lipton’s English Breakfast tea. You will be here for ten months so you need at least 300 tea bags maybe more if you have a couple of cups a day monkey on your back. Green tea is OK and you get a taste for it. But after a hard 45 minutes teaching I like to get back to my apartment for a cuppa and a digestive. Don’t worry you can buy McVities digestives and Hobnobs here so dunk on. British tea is available on Taobao an online store at a premium price because they are imported. You need to befriend a Chinese colleague who will purchase them for you. But they are light enough to stuff in your suitcase to save the hassle of doing that.
Nuff said
Tampons:In most of the big cities it is possible to buy tampons at the larger supermarkets and a chemist (not a pharmacy) called Watsons. However, they are not that popular in China, and will be difficult to find if you are in a smaller town of city, and if you do find them there is little or no choice. A female American friend had regular supplies sent to her from the U.S. You might have to bring a supply with you until you sort out what the situation is where you are. Tampons are available on Taobao an online store. You need to befriend a Chinese colleague who will purchase them for you. (This is because its all in Chinese and your Chinese bank card, when you get one, needs to be set up for online banking – this is all a hassle, I use a Chinese friend for all my purchases – not tampons btw)
This is in my local Auchan supermarket – its a French supermarket these are all that I could see but the second picture shows that the whole rack of shelving on the left side is for Sanitary products, namely towels. The trolley is halfway down the rack.
Condoms:Sex happens in China. You need to be safe. You can buy condoms in China but do you want to trust Chinese condoms called Jizzbon? Durex are also available. However, the fact of the matter is that Western men are physically different from Chinese men, if you catch my drift. You might want to think about buying a box or two of your favourite brand to bring with you.
Also think about this. If you get a Chinese woman pregnant she mustget married. If she has the baby out of wedlock then that child becomes a none person. If will not have an ID card that means it has no access to health services or to the education system – it has no future. More realistically, if the pregnant woman does not have a husband then the Party or the Police will forcibly take her for an abortion.
Bring condoms.
Clothing:If you are a big guy or gal you will find it difficult to buy clothes to fit you here in China. I am a western L who occasionally drifts into an XL/XXL. A Chinese XL does not fit. A Chinese XXL is tight. There are no XXXL’s that I have seen. There are two stores where the sizing is western – H&M and Uniqlo their XL shirts are OK, sometimes they are a bit tight, they do not do XXL. The trousers and shorts are good too, I am a 36 waist and they are fine.
Find out where your local tailor is an have your clothes made to measure. It’s often cheaper than buying in the stores. I recently had a favourite tweed work jacket copied by my local tailor it cost me 800RMB (£80 approx). I had him copy a favourite Ben Sherman short sleeve summer shirt x 2 for 120 RMB each (about £12). I’ve also had two Linen two piece summer suits made also for 800RMB each.
My other tip for UK teachers is go to Primark buy a couple of work shirts (£8 each) and Tee shirts, even trousers there. They last for a year, then dump them and buy new when you are back in the UK. One of the problems with Nanjing is the humidity. When I get back from my summer break in the UK unless I have protected my shoes, clothes etc every thing gets covered in mould – even if Ive only been away for 3 weeks with no AC on in the apartment.
Part 2 of 4
While the graduate gap year teachers are having a ball, drinking, partying, hopping from job to job, seducing Chinese girls, over in the corner of the bar I hang out in are that group of ESL teachers I am calling the redundant, the alienated and the dysfunctional (RAD from here on in) grumping away into their ten yuan Carlsberg or Tiger beers during ‘Happy Hour.’
Happy Hour
Most of these teachers are older and believe themselves to be wiser than the young itinerant teachers they pour scorn upon whilst yelling for the fú wù yuán for more beer. However, the two groups have more in common with each other than they might like to admit.
Many of these ESL teachers may have little or no teaching experience or ‘teaching’ qualifications over and above the TEFL course they did back in the day or just before they came here. That they might have a degree from a not so kosher university could also be open to some question, especially if they have spent some time in Thailand before coming to China.
At least one ‘teacher’ to my knowledge probably purchased his degree on the Khao San Road in Bangkok, as the ‘UK degree’ he produced to a British colleague of mine when applying for a job at his school, was for a ‘university’ that did not exist. He didn’t get the job of course, he was however, already in a job at a Chinese school for a Chinese agency where it was muttered quietly by the Chinese staff that the Chinese owners PhD was purchased in the US, as was his business partner/wife’s MA from Harvard, despite the fact that she can barely speak English.
Consequently, this group of teachers will be in the sort of teaching job that pays the usual 6000/7000yuan a month plus the standard extras as listed for the gap year graduate. They often, like the gap year graduates, have a number irons in the fire of education and move from job to job as and when it suits them. Most of them will have jockeyed for position from some of the more disreputable training agencies, schools, colleges and universities that first got them their Z visas to much better places, often with an increased salary because, now, they are ‘experienced’ teachers. That they started at these lower grade institutions is more to do with their own ignorance of the teaching market in China when they were applying for work, and the need to get here on a Z visa with the airline ticket paid for.
Calling the fu wu yuan
This suggests that the RADicles are slightly less transient than the gap year graduates. Most of them have been here for a good few years. Some of them will be settled here with Chinese wives and families. None that I know of have a western wife and family here in China with them. So the thrill of actually being here with cheap beer, a twelve hour working week, travel to exciting destinations on the doorstep, beautiful Chinese girls to look at, and screw soon palls. They become weary of the disinterested, unprepared, sometimes arrogant – because their daddy is rich, sleepy, video game addicted, students with the English ability of a 5 year old British kid (that’s being generous in regard to the 17 yr old college students at a college I worked at, who expected, as a rite of passage, to be accepted in a Canadian University without the hassle of really trying).
So when better work at better schools with better money turns up they jump at it so that their place can be filled with a gap year graduate or a new and unsuspecting RADicle. Such is the teaching caste system maintained in China and equilibrium is once again achieved. An important part of being a foreign teacher is to know when your bread is being buttered, and by whom, and when to jump ship before the rest of the rats do.
However, where the disgruntled RADicles differ from the gap year graduates is that despite of, or regardless of, where they got their degrees, or for that matter how long ago they graduated from their alma maters these teachers have learnt the lessons of the University of Hard Knocks. This influences their teaching and their approach to the jobs they take.
The teachers in these RADicle groups that I have met profess, in the main, a real zeal for teaching. Not for them simply babysitting sleepy students, or showing them You Tube Videos/Movies day after day just to keep them awake as per the graduate gap year teachers who spend their lessons counting the minutes until they can get back to the office to have a nap or play video games on their iPad before the next lesson.
In the spirit of openness and honesty I guess I, your good Doctor X, have to admit that to a certain extent I too belong, to this RADicle group. Yes, I sit with these fellow teachers, drinking beers swopping tales of what happened in our classrooms this week. Grumping about the gap year graduates and their sloppy Tee shirts and attitudes (but really for having a better time than we are).
Or how dispiriting it is to have to do, and say the same thing day after day with little evident success. And yet, and yet, we still prepare our lesson plans, we generate classroom materials, we pass on tips to each other about content and things that have worked in the classroom, albeit over a beer, so it’s probably forgotten by the next day.
Nevertheless, we still wake up with the expectation that we might make a difference to these kids, make a difference to China; we take pride in our work. We believe that we can, in some way, help our students achieve their dream of going to a foreign university, pass the IELTS/TOFEL exam, get their A Levels, or simply become more proficient in English. This is why I came to China. This is why I’m still at the same school as I was last year and why I will be at the same school again next year (OK, the money helps, more of which later, in another section).
Doctor X for it is I in full flow
What sets the older group apart is, I believe, a responsibility to the job, to teaching and to a certain extent the need for self-preservation. Some of the teachers I have met, and here I include myself, have been made redundant from jobs in the west. I took voluntary redundancy when it became clear to me that my post at the university I was working at was no longer tenable. It was clear to me even then, when I was in work, that at my age, with my qualifications (a PhD) I was going to find it difficult to find work in the UK. Plus I’d basically had enough of work. I’d worked since I was 16, I’d had enough and it was time to make a change. (Find out more on my soon to be published memoir on Kindle)
However, I couldn’t sit back and enjoy the fruits of my redundancy settlement because it was not that large, I still needed to earn money to pay bills of which the mortgage on my house in the UK was my largest money pit and I knew that I was not going to end up stacking shelves in my local supermarket. Coming to China, teaching English had been in the back of my mind for a while and as redundancy does focus ones mind it became clear that it was time to make that change in my life.
If you feel you need a change and the opportunity arises, do what I did, use the time when you are working out your notice to do the online TEFL course (on your computer at work, like I did, let the bastards pay for your time) and to get your life in order. I have to say, and I am aware it is a cliché, but redundancy was the best thing that ever happened to me. You will find online TEFL courses on www.groupon.co.uk on offer for around £49
Other ESL teacher colleagues faced similar challenges at home. One was a senior manager for a large retailer in the UK but for her enough was enough; she’s been teaching in China for five years too and has never looked back and now is working for the British Council as an IELTS examiner. The great American financial crash was the motivation for other friends to teach in China. Having lived the American Dream and been very successful the rug was pulled out from under them, their business collapsed and effectively the system made them redundant. They changed their lives and came to China, a husband and wife team who have made a great success of ESL teaching and who get to travel around SE Asia as a bonus during the long holidays.
Other teachers, friends, and colleagues I have met seem alienated from their own countries. Rootless, homeless, forever wandering the world, looking for what, I don’t know, maybe the travel is enough. China might be just another stop on their quests itinerary who knows where they will go next? They certainly don’t. What they are searching for in their travels is unknown. They are jobbing English teachers who go where the vagaries of the language takes them. Japan for a year – fantastic sushi, Korea as the head of a language school for two years, Former Eastern Europe for the craic and the top wages, South America for the beaches and the cocaine, the African grasslands for the students who want to be lawyers and doctors to help their own country if only they had a pencil, and finally to end up washed up and beached in China, propping up a bar sinking another chilly 10 kuai beer.
Some of these semi-itinerant teachers, the alienated RADicle, seem to have families, wives and children back in their home countries. They talk wistfully of them and show pictures around the bar. But for all the talk these families could be figments of a fevered imagination. Trips back home are never taken, wives and children never seem to appear on the scene and if they do its only for a week or two and then they are shipped back to whence they came to once again become out of sight and out of mind. A regular moan from the alienated RADicle in his cups, late at night, is that the bitch back home is bleeding him dry and that he needs to go to the bank again to send money, which means ramping up the teaching, finding another part time job to add to the hours already being taught.
Back-stories and personal histories are edited, fictionalised, re-written, boasted about, not mentioned much, spewed out after too many bottles of Bombay Blue. We create a whole web of lies we weave about ourselves, which make us who we are, or who we want to be. In China you can damn well be who you damn well want to be and who knows or cares a damn anyway?
You have to be self-reliant in China, you cannot be too needy or lack self-confidence or you will be lost. If you really don’t like yourself or your life, well then, just damn well be who you want to be. Who cares anyway, we damn well don’t. We are too busy managing our own lives to care too much about yours. In a transient population of English teachers many are here today and gone tomorrow to pastures and schools anew and there are always new friends to be made as they turn up at school or in the bar, fresh faced, eager to make friends, and needy for the inside line in respect of teaching here in China so don’t kid yourself you are the special one.
But they know their stuff these RAD teachers. They can teach a class at the drop of a hat. They have a lifetimes experience; they are raconteurs, fonts of ESL teaching knowledge. They have a practiced ease with new situations that makes them perfect bar flies however, in this case, it’s the shit that circles the fly as the shit tries to learn a thing or two or pick up a swift hint for tomorrows lesson that’s not been planned yet and it’s already 11pm and they’re six pints in, and the jagerbombs are starting to happen.
Thus the bar is a microcosm of life amongst the English Teacher fraternity, and over in the corner, face in his or her beer/laptop/tablet/phone/food not interacting with anyone at all is the dysfunctional RADicle. How they ever got this far, and actually organized a job in China, and the flights, and the visa’s, and actually teach is a mystery because they don’t seem to be able to organize their own existence.
These teachers have little or no social graces. They seem to be friendless in a society where friendships are solidly forged, and are maintained with almost religious zeal. A meeting in the bar after a week or so apart stuck on campus teaching is a love fest of manly hugs, jovial backslapping, inquisitions about ones health, and job status, round buying, food sharing, whispered sweet nothings between friends of similar, and opposite gender, shared experiences in the classroom, tips about good restaurants visited, queries about the family back home. and when and where will you be travelling this summer/spring break, jagerbombing, and the general chit chat of the kind one has heard a thousand times but are too polite to mention.
The dysfunctional RAD stands to one side watching uncomfortably as the bonhomie threatens to engulf him or her. Should someone notice him off to one side, and offer him or her welcoming hug or a handshake it’s a pretty stiff affair as if the very nature of the human contact is something to be avoided.
I have often walked into a bar and over in the corner is Johnny no-mates (we called him Dikipedia because he always new better than anyone – you can meet him in my memoir on kindle) staring resolutely into his, (I have to say this it is mainly a male disorder, maybe the females just stay in their apartment doing cross stitch, or marking or something that I cannot fathom) beer/laptop/tablet/phone/food. If, god forbid, the bar is empty, and you go over to their table for the company, because any company is better than no company, right? The dysfunctional teacher will share a few words, but in the main what’s on the laptop/table/phone is usually much more interesting that whatever it is you might have to say. So you spend your time looking at the door praying to Dionysus that someone, anyone, will step through entrance to give you a reason to leave the loser on his own.
Dikipedia
When the dysfunctional teacher does join in with the band of happy fellows in the bar, often after being encouraged to do so, because if nothing else RADical English teachers are a generally a friendly, and welcoming bunch, then tend to go over the top and get thoroughly pissed. There is nothing wrong with getting pissed; I’ve been there myself after one or two too many pints, and Jagerbombs and/or Mr Jim Beams whiskey.
The dysfunctional teacher often gets the wrong end of the stick, and cannot endure the normal banter of inebriated teachers recoiling from, and diluting the stress of a heavy 10-hour working week. They seem to end up wanting to hit someone, or getting hit or coming on inappropriately to any female members of the group, and the whole evening goes tits up, again, such is their dysfunctional rage.
When one does get to have a real conversation with the dysfunctional teacher it seems that even at home they were just as uncomfortable as they are here in China. Like the alienated RADical they do seem to be looking for something, maybe its personal change maybe just something intangible like getting a personality. They didn’t seem to fit in at home. They seem to be introverted, the type of kid that never got the girl, so they retreated into the world of video games and study.
Maybe they feel that coming to China will challenge them, and eventually change them, and they will become different people. So we can give them kudos for actually getting off their arses and getting here. But it seems that once they are here they find it too difficult to give up those comforting OCD routines that makes us who we are, to throw off the mantle of introversion, for better or worse.
Even so some of the dysfunctional teachers I have met have managed to meet, and keep Chinese girlfriends, some of them have even married the poor unsuspecting girls. I suspect, however, this might be a good thing for the dysfunctional male foreigner who is probably missing his mum, and the easy life back home because Chinese women are generally the boss in any relationship. The epithet used for Chinese wives ‘Dragon lady’ is not a matter of whimsy; in China it is a reality. Forget having to get yourself a lifestyle guru or a life coach a Chinese wife does all this, and more, and is probably prettier.
Of course being a foreign teacher is a good catch for a Chinese girl dysfunctional or not. Our wages are often double or more than what the average Chinese teacher earns so it means that he can keep her in a manner to which she will quickly become accustomed too. One teacher I know had to hand over his monthly salary to his live in girlfriend, so she could manage the money by allowing him a monthly stipend (in his defence they were trying to run a business too).
However, all areas of ones life will soon be policed with a rigour that would bring a smile to the face of Mao Zedong and his Red Army cronies who infected this country with a military passion for order, and cleanliness that translates in the modern era into how things get done in the home. Take the washing up for example. Apparently it has to be washed three times. Once in hot soapy water, and then swilled off twice in running cold water. If these standards are not applied, then it’s the gulags for you comrade.
I had a response to an application from a school in China. A school in Shanghai was considering me for a September start. This was more than exciting – I felt that I was getting somewhere and despite my age I was still employable, at least by a school in China. Shanghai – who wouldn’t be entranced by the oriental mystery that is Shanghai?
It’s a name that conjures up a million images, mostly stereotyped and hackneyed images of pigtailed coolies pulling rickshaws, while beautiful black haired Chinese girls in qipao’s lounge in the seat smoking, and looking sexy and exotic while the sharp suited Westerner shouts at the locals. All in sepia tones, because for some reason, my daydreams of Shanghai were all set in the 1930’s.
But I was offered another option – Mongolia. My inner adventurer told me straight away to choose Mongolia. For me it was the place to go, I mean who wouldn’t want to choose Mongolia – Inner or Outer? The wide-open steppes and grasslands dotted with yurts and gers, Genghis Khan, men on horse back playing ‘polo’ with a decapitated goat.
JANUARY 21: Afghan horsemen compete in the traditional game of Buzkashi in Kabul, Afghanistan. Buzkashi, which translates to ‘goat grabbing,’ is the national sport of Afghanistan. During this team sport players try to grab a headless goat carcass from the ground and pitch it into a scoring area. (Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
But first I had to start to think about the process of getting my Chinese Visa which meant a visit to the doctor to pay for a medical.
Doctor X’s tips and hints for living in China and teaching ESL
Computer
Bring a decent laptop computer with you. I recommend bringing a Mac simply because you don’t have to worry about viruses. When you are teaching you will be using the computers in the classrooms. You will be using audio and visual material in your classrooms, such as YouTube videos and so on. You will use a USB stick. The computers in the classrooms are usually full of viruses because the students use them for various nefarious activities so as soon as you put the stick back into your Windows computer you get the viruses.
My classroom computer not working -again
Your computer is your main window onto the world. Even if you have a TV in your apartment there is nothing to watch apart from CCTV news in English. So you will be watching movies and TV via the many ways you can, usually using torrents. You will also want to use your computer to contact friends and family so download SKYPE in your home country as the Chinese version of SKYPE is monitored and is often down.
MacBooks are pretty tough. The one I am currently writing on was purchased in 2011 with my redundancy money. I recently upgraded it in China to 8GB of ram and 500GB SSD drive. My computer has travelled.
My trusty 2011 MacBook Pro
Do not think buying hardware will be cheaper in China it is not – the price monopoly surrounds the planet. Only some peripherals might be cheaper.
Torrents
You will want to be entertained during those long hours off and the long cold nights of winter. You might even have a TV in your apartment – but as the song goes there are 57 channels and nothing on. So you will have to learn how to torrent. Yes torrenting is illegal. But you are in China so why not enjoy those blockbuster movies before they are even in the cinema back home?
Watching Paterson the Movie
I use Extra Torrent and The Pirate Bay – you can find all your favourite TV shows and movies on these site every thing from Top Gear – TV shows are usually posted pretty quickly – to the latest Tom Cruise movie if thats your thing, plus music, books – even porn if thats what turns you on.
You also have to download Vuze to handle the torrents. On the actual torrent page you click the Magnet link (It looks like a Magnet or Horseshoe) and the torrent automatically downloads the files into Vuze.
Make sure your Smartphone is unblocked back in your home country so that when you come to China you can buy a Sim card from China Mobile or China Unicom (Unicom is best for iPhone). I made the rookie mistake of thinking I could get my iPhone unblocked in China, I could not.
Your Smartphone is your lifesaver. Make sure you have maps APPS, so you don’t get lost. A translator APP so you can at least communicate on some level. Once you are here you can download the local taxi APP. You will need to learn a few words of Chinese to use it but it’s easy to get the hang of otherwise sometimes its difficult to get a cab without it. Download social media apps like WeChat and QQ which everybody uses in China. Remember you cannot use Twitter or Facebook here in China without a VPN so download the VPN to your phone too.
Smart Phone
Why not buy a Smartphone in China? Buy a Huawei Smartphone here in China they are cheap and compete very well with the iPhone. I dumped my iPhone5 (for various reasons – poor battery life being one) for a Huawei Rio and I was very happy with it. 99% of the functions were in English so I had no problems at all. Be wary though, I upgraded to the Huawei P9 and the phone is now so smart it knows it’s in China and does not allow blocked social media apps to download. I have Facebook and instagram but twitter will not download from the Play store.
VPN:Virtual Personal Network.
To access Social Media, Facebook, the BBCiplayer, YouTube, Google (which are important for teaching) that are blocked by the Chinese government you need to download onto your phone and computer a VPN. The best VPN for China in my opinion is EXPRESSVPN you do have to pay for the service, but it is relatively cheap and works very well. I have used it for the five years I have been in China.
Use this link and you will get 30 days free extra service, as will I.
Just because you are young and a graduate doesn’t mean that you should turn up to teach in shorts, scraggy tee shirt and flip-flops like the rest of the herd. Set yourself apart from the rest of the drunks and dope heads and dress (and act) like a professional teacher. Teachers are held in high regard in China, they have a Teachers Day; your students will give you gifts. You will generate more respect from your colleagues and your students if you dress the part. So for males think about wearing decent shoes, trousers (not jeans – although I do wear jeans –good jeans – in the winter) and a long sleeved shirt (especially if you have tattoos as I do – tattoos are the mark of a low person or criminal in China). Some schools do have a dress code and will even stipulate that teachers wear a tie – check your contract. Personally I wear trousers, shirt, jacket if its chilly, decent shoes. If I am meeting parents then I will wear a suit and tie. Hint – get a suit made here at your local tailor costs about 1200yuan. For females similar formal/casual clothes are more appropriate too. Of course around the campus, where I live, in my free time I wear shorts and tee shirts with my tattoos on show – but that is my free time, not my professional time.
Where to find your job
There are lots of ESL job websites on the website. You could do worse than look at Dave’s ESL café – http://www.eslcafe.com to start with.
TEFL Course
If you have not yet done a TEFL course which is usually a minimum requirement after the degree you can often find an online course cheap on Groupon – www.groupon.co.uk currently there is an accredited TEFL course for just £49 here: TEFLCOURSE
CV/Resume
Make sure you have a CV or resume that you can post that in some way or other suggests that you have some teaching experience, even if it is a stretch of the imagination. If you do not have any teaching experience apart from the weekend class you took on your TEFL course then maybe you should think about how you can get some between now and turning up in China where you will be dropped in at the deep end and be expected to teach on that first day.
I’ve been teaching English in China for five years now so this post is aimed at those of you who might be thinking about coming to China to teach or you might have made the decision to come to teach and are right now agonising about what to put in your suitcases for the 10 months or so you will be away – which I will come to later.
Let’s begin at the beginning and ask the question ‘why do you actually want to come to China to teach English?’ After all it’s a long way away, the culture is pretty alien, if you’ve been looking at the jobs websites you’ll have noticed that the wages are not up to much when balanced against what you could earn at home and then there’s the smog.
Smog over the Lotus stalks
But then again I have been here for five years and probably will stay for another five. I’ve been having a blast, enjoying myself, travelling, meeting wonderful people, sleeping with them and saving enough money en-route to become debt free in the UK.
So what sort of people come out to China to teach English? Based on very little actual research, apart from living and working here five years carrying out much of the participant observation the following is based upon in the various pubs and bars I have frequented I have come to the conclusion that English (ESL) teachers in China can be classified into four distinct groups. Which one do you belong to?
The Gap Year Graduate
The Redundant, the Alienated and the Dysfunctional
The Untouchables
The Entitled
The Gap Year Graduate.
You have to have a degree to get most of the bona fide teaching jobs in China. In most cases it usually doesn’t matter what your degree subject is. In some cases you might not even need a degree at all but you need to be suspicious of these job offers because they might not come with a Z visa and will expect you to travel on a tourist visa and work illegally. Be warned as I write in 2017 the police are cracking down on phoney degree certificates. New rules that came out on April 1st insist on notarised degree certification and Applicant’s police clearance (issued by your home country local police department) and notarised. You can calculate your visa ranking here
Crucially though you have to be a native English speaker, unless you are a tall blond beautiful Ukrainian female – then you will be a shoo in for the job. Once you are in China you will find a glut of this type of ‘teacher’. Graduates that have had little or no experience of teaching other than some group work when doing their TEFL qualification who think that coming to China will look good on their CV when they go back home to find work or to continue their academic career by signing up to an MA programme.
The type of work they tend to find is in low grade schools, kindergartens and some low-grade colleges and universities. In many cases they are simply filling the role of a ‘white face’ native English speaker so the said school or college can market their ‘credentials’ to gullible parents. Remember, education is big business here, parent have to pay for their kid’s education. Interaction with students at these types of schools/training centres is often very basic, often restricted to ‘conversational’ English, working with a set book or working with young kids with audiovisual material provided by the school.
Often classes are monitored by CCTV, especially so in kindergartens and training schools, so that doting parents (and the managers) can watch their kids being taught. Some schools then demand a ‘performance’ from these teachers so that the parents believe they are getting their money’s worth. This ‘performing monkey’ role is often more about keeping sleepy and unmotivated young students awake, having fun, than teaching English.
Kids at a training school I worked at
These types of teachers are very transient. Some might be travelling and stopping off to work illegally, on tourist visas to make some money before moving on to the next place. Some might be here for the adventure, the nightlife, the cheap beer and the party atmosphere, which you can find easily enough amongst the young ex-pat ‘teachers’. Some might even be here to teach as they have the notion that it will be good practice for back home when they get around to that pesky Education MA. Regardless, it’s easy to hop from low paying job to low paying job if you are prepared to prostitute yourself for a few hundred RMB an hour.
Many of these types of teachers, and I have to say the majority of them are from the UK, Australia and North America, may have two or three jobs on the go to make ends meet and to keep the party and the travelling going. Over the course of their tenure in China these types of ‘teacher’ might have many jobs from many different employers, often in different cities, as they move around from place to place after losing jobs, getting fired, or just not turning up at all. Most of this extra work being carried out by graduate gap year ‘teachers’ is probably illegal if the strict letter of the Chinese employment law was applied.
I have heard (and have personal knowledge) of this type of teacher turning up drunk after a hard night not quite finishing in time to get some sleep, or just reeking of alcohol and cigarettes when they turn up to teach blurry eyed and still buzzed. Teachers getting arrested for being drunk, teachers falling asleep in taxis because they are drunk, teachers having no money left to pay the taxi so the taxi driver calls the school or college liaison officer to come and pay the bill. Most schools/colleges will provide a card with an emergency contact number on. Teachers falling off their scooters and motorbikes getting injured because they drink and drive – therefore also risking a three week jail sentence and possible deportation. It is not surprising that teacher turn over in some training schools and colleges is quite rapid.
Gap Year Graduate – US version – the eyes have it.
As far as employment law for foreigners is concerned to work as a teacher, legally, in China, you must have a Z visa in your passport then you have to have a foreign experts certificate and a residency visa which your school/agency will get for you. (As I write these are still in flux with the April 1st changes) Once you have a Z visa you should only work for that single employer. If you have multiple jobs with different employers you are breaking the law. Okay, everyone does it. But as some ex-pat teachers have found out to their cost, should you be found out by the police, who do occasionally visit schools to check the status of the foreign employees, not having the correct visa will see you being deported from China with three days notice of your removal. The employer also faces significant fines.
Does this type of work enhance your CV? The answer is probably a resounding No. Employers in the West are not stupid. They probably are aware that a young graduate spending a year in China is not there to develop skills that will translate easily to the work place back home. I know, personally, young graduates who have spent two or three years in China having, to be honest, a great life. Travel, parties, lifelong friends, Chinese girlfriends, boyfriends from their own part of the world and earning more than enough money to indulge themselves. But back in the real world, back home, in the job market, even after returning home to take an MA, the jobs are just not there. One young woman I knew returned home (to the US) took her Masters, then waited 12 months, one full year, to get a face to face interview for a suitable job.
If you are this type of graduate traveller then you might need to consider how you can develop yourself professionally whilst you are here, to spend your time wisely so that your time in China actually does benefit you in the future over and above meeting new people, finding out about new cultures and travelling. If you actually do wish to develop your ESL teaching skills there are courses available in China where you can qualify for the CELTA (University of Cambridge Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of other Languages) qualification. The CELTA courses can be taken in Beijing and Shanghai, or if you want to travel and learn you can spend a month in Thailand getting the qualification.
Once you have this qualification you can not only move on to better jobs with higher salaries within China but the qualification will also be respected in your home country once it is on your CV which means you could find work in schools and colleges at home teaching ESL. Also in China 12 months after CELTA qualification you can also become an examiner for the IELTS (International English Language Testing System) examinations, which pays extremely well.
You might also consider doing courses at your local university. Some Chinese universities run MA courses that are in taught English or you might spend your time learning Chinese – there are many accredited courses available. It is likely that if you are a gap year graduate then the teaching job you take will only take up a few hours of your time per day leaving you with plenty of time for professional development of this sort, unless of course you are chasing money by taking as many part-time jobs as possible or partying all the time.
The more enterprising of this graduate group might find that they really don’t want to spend their time babysitting students who don’t want to be there. If you look hard enough there are other work opportunities in China. Work in the media is always a possibility; the advertising industry uses western models to promote products. Voiceover work, TV work, film extras are all jobs I have seen advertised on the social media groups I belong to in China. I have seen westerners doing bar/restaurant work, DJ’ing, another ex-pat I know is the singer for a jobbing band for weddings and corporate events, the guitarist on one of the biggest TV shows in China, The Voice of China, a Chinese version of the X Factor, is a British ex-pat who fell into the job by accident. Some ex-pats start up businesses or enter into business with Chinese colleagues. I, myself, have written an IELTS speaking test primer textbook with a Chinese colleague published in Beijing, written for a student newspaper in Shanghai and I do proofreading for my local university.
There is a lot of opportunity here if you look for it and sometimes it just falls in your lap because you are the foreigner in the right place at the right time. The brother of a colleague of mine picked up a modelling contract simply because someone approached him when he was out on the town one night.
Of course, it is probable that the majority of these people are doing this work on Z visas they originally got for starting a teaching job which they are still doing or might have left hoping the school does not bother to contact the authorities to retract the visa – which is usually the case. Or they might be on tourist visas; consequently a lot of ex-pat work is done illegally. You have to weight that risk up yourself but most of it is paid in cash and I would recommend that if you do extra work on the side, you do get paid in cash.
Cash in hand
As far as salaries go most teaching jobs that come with a Z visa for graduates start at around 6000 RMB (nearly £700 now that the pound is so weak) a month. The contract will often include free accommodation, free utilities including WiFi or Internet access, free food in some school canteens (School dinners in China are much the same quality as at home), reimbursement of airline tickets, health insurance, some schools offer Chinese lessons for teachers and trips around the local countryside. You need to check your contract carefully to see that it meets your requirements.
6000 RMB is more than sufficient to have a nice life and to actually save money to travel and so on. Of course, as I have noted, there is always the possibility of picking up extra part time work to boost your income. Generally part-time teaching pays about 150 – 250 RMB (£17-£29 approx) an hour depending on how good your negotiating skills are. One to one lessons range from about 200 – 300 RMB (£23-£35 approx) per hour and most people I know do them in their local Starbucks or somewhere similar. One colleague was regularly chauffeured to his student’s house to do the lesson and was often given lunch or dinner with the family and was often invited on a family day out – which often translates as ‘free time with an English teacher for my kid’. The plus side of this is he got to see and visit different places with someone else footing the bill so a win-win situation for both parties.
I worked at a training school with young kids every Saturday and was paid 800RMB a day which included two or three 90-minute lessons a day (depending on the week and/or the number of kids on any given day). I also had to be at ‘my desk’ for the rest of the time, on show for the parents. The day, for me, started at 8:30am and ended at 5:30pm with a two-hour lunch break.
I left this job when its owner suggested to me that he could Photoshop my Z visa and my passport ‘just in case the police came and visited the school’. Of course I was working illegally so that is always a risk, but a risk I didn’t want to take, especially with fake documents, so I left. But saying that in my five years of living and working in Nanjing I do not know of any teacher or any ex-pat that has been found to be working illegally by the police although I do know it has happened in other cities.
If you are a ‘gap year graduate’ who is thinking of coming to China do come. China is a fantastic place; you will meet great people who will become your best buddies. Everyday is an adventure. Even after being here for five years, every day I leave my apartment I see something new or something that blows my mind. If you find the right job you will find it rewarding and character building. Do not buy into the ‘China is shit’ mentality of people who have never stayed here long enough to really understand the place.
The first time I was in China I bailed out and went home with my tail between my legs. You can read about it in my forthcoming memoir on Kindle. But the reality of it was when I got home there was no work and I missed my friends and I needed to work, I needed to earn money and I knew I could do that in China if I found the right job.
So bite the bullet, do the TEFL course if you haven’t already, cut the apron strings, pack your bags and come to China.
The Adventures of Doctor X in China 