Working in China (&Teaching English) Part 3:

This is part 3 of a long series on this topic, be prepared for acidity and jadedness:

Take all job offers (especially online) with enough salt to dry the dead sea.

Most westerners are hired for a few reasons in China, and here they are:

1. Mascot. You are the resident parade monkey they use to show off some aspects of his/her company. Be it metropolitan, cool, international, recognition, technology, or trustworthiness; there is something they need to put a foreign face on, and you are IT. Some people hated it, some people love it, and it’s up to you.

2. Technology Transfer. You may have worked in a company that has the technology/or just technical know how that they need. The requirements aren’t that technical in reality, you could have just worked in the industry and they just wanted to know how things were done over “there”.

3. Language/Communication Skills. Quite a few Chinese companies take over jobs from western service companies that works with multi-nationals or mid cap companies who aren’t interested or can’t deal with the complex bureaucracy needed in China to process certain things. They are often run by Chinese American(insert western country)s and staffed by high educated Chinese employees. But most of the time, they still have no clue how the “outside world” works, and they have trouble communicating what they can do, what is done and how the deadline works. Teleconferencing is actually a hell of embarrassment for a lot of highly educated/paid Chinese workers. Go figure.

4. Project Management. A lot of Chinese companies/people have trouble with this. This concept isn’t really very well understood in China. Even though China created the 4 great inventions of the world, when one speaks in terms of actual work, Chinese people are task(single goal), and routine orientated. Some companies or managers will run a project without knowing what the term means or how to take advantage of the available sources this sector has. You probably should speak a bit of Chinese.

5. Teachers. Most foreign ESL/English teachers are hired for a few things, mostly bragging rights and face time. It’s a very old cliche’ now for ESL schools to advertise that they have (in big and bright letters) FOREIGN teachers that teaches how many hours in their course. A few companies hire English teachers to upgrade their staff’s English levels, but most of the time, only the upper tier of service industry/or international company’s Chinese division that will do this. If you are coming here to teach, expect the competition to be fierce.

6. Deal with other Foreigners. A lot of Chinese companies don’t understand what western consumers want, which makes sense. These pampered companies haven’t really had to compete for every customer. Every market they ever entered had been a vacuum to start with. Customer service isn’t their strong suit. So what better way to deal with foreign customers than hiring foreigners? Expect to speak Chinese.

Don’t expect your contract to be sacred or to get paid (on time or at all).

Pay is a complicated issue in China. If you are coming here to teach English, and you are teaching in a private school in gods know where, there is a high chance that you might get cheated on your pay. NEVER tell any of your Chinese friends how much you make. The cultural landmines are surrounded by barb wires, lasers and sharks in moats. Leave it alone.

Is public school better? Well…, at least the promised room and board is real.

If you are coming to work in China, go through your contract VERY carefully. Make sure you have at least 1 copy of both English and Chinese version sign by both parties and possibly authenticated by a translator/lawyer you can trust. If it’s an important job, make sure important people know about it. You might want to give your home country’s business committee in China a heads up. Ask them about a good lawyer that you can trust, so you can double check that thing is kosher.

If you are going to work in a smaller city/town, be prepared to be a rock star.

Meaning, you will get stared at no matter WHERE you go. Most people find the attention flattering at first, until they learned that their friendliness actually have very heavy costs. NO PRIVACY. ZERO. NATA. ZIP. ZILCH. Hangzhou is NOT a small, backwards city. A black friend of mine who is from London can not go anywhere without gossip, pointed fingers, strange invitations to work for free, and other people TAKING his pictures. If you weren’t a private person before, you’ll probably be one after living here for a while. And if you have kids? Gods help you. This is, of course, assuming that you don’t look Asian/Chinese.

By the way, if you actually get to do the real job that you are hired to do, you have just won the lottery.

Exactly what it says. Don’t expect to do what you are hired to do, most of the time, the giddiness of having a (if you are the first or second) foreigner in their midst can be too tempting for all parties involved for any work to be done. And you will be surround with people, pounded with English questions, imitated, watched, and feared. Be on your toes, Chinese politics(people politics, not CCP) can be very nasty.

Of course, I am in no way saying all Chinese schools or companies are like this. But as Genghis Khan once said, “If you are cautious, 10 times aren’t enough to be trouble; if you are careless, 1 time is enough to kill you.”

And let me repeat this one more time for some out there:

China isn’t a place to escape a boring or mediocre life. I just don’t want to see another one going home 3-6 months, heartbroken, dream broken, life broken, bank broken, and drags his/her broken body home filled with menace and venom filled with misunderstood ignorance and hatred without realizing what this place can truly do for them.

I worked in Immigration for 4 years. I know how big cultural shock can be. No matter who you are. If you go on to live in a foreign land with a frivolous reason, you’ll probably regret it(hate yourself) sooner or later. Get your two feet on the ground first before boarding that plane in the air.

I wish you luck in your travels.