I guess I am in a better position now to reflect upon these things, I guess strangely what’s best about this is that having the experience gives you the chance to put  things into a perspective that others don’t have; helps you see things in another light.

I spent almost 3 years teaching English in China full or part time and it was one of the most interesting and rewarding things I’ve ever done. At times it was tough, frustrating and difficult, but overall I still beleive it’s a positive thing to do if you ever get the chance.

Saying this,  teaching is an incredibly tiring thing to do. It is not like a desk-job - you have to constantly be on the ball and the amount of speaking/exertion of energy is quite high, which can really drain you.

I would say that it is more tiring than the 7am-7pm day I  have at the moment, even with all the commuting.

This is why teaching contracts seem quite few hours (if unfamiliar to the way things are), when in fact doing 9-5 solid teaching is almost impossible if you try to teach properly (I tried doing 60 hours in various jobs for a couple of weeks) and it will almost-kill you!

I think going to China for a semester or two to teach is something that can really help you to appreciate more about the world in which we live.

If you go in with an open mind then things are easier to accept and adapting to the different way things are done takes less time.

I think one of the most important things I came out of being in China was to learn not to take yourself too seriously. Smile, enjoy things- be positive.

Sometimes It’s very easy to get frustrated by constant intransigence but trying to change things by getting angry ‘the angry laowai syndrome’ is a total waste of your time. Realising that there is a time and a place certain things, trying to ‘teach’ your students in the classroom about the ‘real’ history behind China and the communists will only alienate yourself and could get you in trouble.

Learning to live with ‘It’s just the way it is’ and keeping an open mind I believe are probably the two most important things to embrace whilst teaching in China.

Often if you take things too seriously, you may find that the students won’t and you’re almost certainly find the administration won’t!

Taking everything into account, I am glad I have done it and I think I am very lucky to have had the opportunity to do so.

Here’s a list of some of the best and worst things about teaching in China that I encountered:

Ups:

Not 8-5, stuck in an office. Each day is unique. At times really enjoyable. Huge flexibility, give you a chance to do things you really want to do - learn the language, a musical instrument etc…

Immensely satisfying, being able to help others. Watching your students (those that actually come to class!) progress over the year.

Respect - being a teacher commands a level of respect that died long ago in the UK for being in such a job. You will be called by your title ‘laoshi’ teacher - takes a while to get the students to address you differently.

Meet new people most days, huge eye-opener on how others live.

Pick up new ideas, thoughts, understand other ways of life.

Learn more about oneself - broaden your own feelings, beliefs.

Long Holidays - Couple of months paid winter vacation.  Not having to worry about planning to take time off, enough downtime to actually do things you want to do.

Location - often will be within walking distance of work, little time wasted commuting.

Freedom to teach as you please (certainly at universities) -  you can create your own curriclum and choose how you wish your students to learn.  It is up to you how you decide to do this, gives you enough responsibility to make the classes unique.

Downs:

This list may be a little longer but that’s just because I’ve gone into some detail

Not a challenge. Once beyond the initial shock of it all, start to realise that the job is rather repetitive. Not realising full potential. Despite the relative level of good pay, not a professional career by any means. you are always the ‘waijiao’

Not professional, often taken as a joke. There just to make up the numbers - the system can make things almost impossible to do you job well at times.

Insecure - Not long term - Let’s face (however much fun it may be) for somebody with an ounce of ambition, you can’t be an English teacher in China all of your life. (There are some older guys ((and it is almost all men)) that are trying to do this - but this is because they can’t go back home for whatever reason)

Pay - stuck on the same salary forever, little room for increases. You will never get rich teaching English in China.

No promotion - you are a Foreign teacher and that is it.  You may move sideways into  other educatonal  spin-offs but the scope is  limited.

Stuck - It took me a few months to be able to get back into the job market back in the UK, It was really, really tough.

I thought it would be easier and that employers would be interested in my skills and talents acquired whilst in China, but actually besides curiosity it did not give me an advantage - more of a dis-advantage as my work-experience was often not deemed relevant enough and being a couple of years older meant I had more competition to compete with.

I have no doubt whatsoever that being in China too long will hurt your prospects of making a career ‘back-home’. I dare say if you stay too long, very few professional employers will want to take you on when you come back.

Furthermore often the experience you gain in China is only of limited worth /not really recognised in the west, in the world of work. Unless you have some serious connections, I have found that it cannot really be used as a stepping stone into a job back home.

Looking back I would say that (smug grin ) I think was right in coming back when I did.  There is no doubt whatsoever that staying in Changchun longer would mean that getting into any type of decent profession back in the UK would have been almost impossible.  It is very competitive here, and being 25 was almost too late to enter the job market into something that I wanted to do.   Life is not so interesting here, things are more predictable and boring but perhaps that is a good  thing for a while. (?) 

 I am not that motivated by careers (which is partly why I stayed out there so long) but life is long and sometimes doing something that you don’t like for a while in order to get to a better position in  a couple of years time, makes sense to me.   Changchun is not a good place to get ahead (I will also argue that for a young foreigner like me, China also) after all - why not get trained/experience in the west when in China the prospects (for me at the moment) are considerably less. 

I also feel that in somewhere like London there is a chance to get ahead in life, to develop.  In Changchun (and China to an extent) this does not exist - unless you have serious guanxi or family ties or sleep with the boss etc…   

 I also believe (perhaps naively) that where I am now I can get places through hard-work, determination and going that extra-mile. 

In China I did not feel this at all (It is not really a place where your work goes rewarded). 

 I believe that in work at least it is possible to progress for actually being good at what you do - even if you have no connections.   Of course these help, don’t get me wrong, but there are other ways - In China there are very, very few indeed.  Making relationships, influencing friends is crucial. 

Strangely It is harder in other ways to get started in the UK, life is more expensive especially the important things such as food and petrol! 

 But people neglect to think that SO many other things are very cheap in the UK (relatively speaking) - entertainment, junk food, cars, electronics, cosmetics  and many many other luxury goods.   

I also think that many people here are spoilt and decedent (and the lifestyle to an extent is perpetuated by the whole tax/class system)  beyond belief and really need a reality check - seeing how people who have nothing live their lives.  Indeed  people here have forgotten many of the values that I find quite important  - and witnessed in China - such as being able to repair things, and not just throwing  away things for no reason.   

Life goes on 

I can’t really complain about having a view like this from my desk, certainly makes a difference working in this kind of environment.  Makes you realise just how much better it is to work in the UK, there are so many more opportunities for someone in my position that simply don’t exist in China at the moment.    

The working environment is so much better and balanced in favour of the employee,  you’re not just a work-machine.   People are treated as human beings and employers have rights and obligations they have to observe - which in some part help stop exploitation by business on employees.  And so (where I work anyway) generally,  people are more inclined to work harder and respect what they are actually doing as a job; paying attention to detail.  Something which I noticed (in the private sector more-so) in China was lacking if only because the work-conditions are often so poor, prospects limited or non existent and salary so low. 

In my job, sometimes it can be boring, but i seldom feel as if i am wasting my time - I don’t feel as if I should spend my time playing QQ games because nobody would notice or care about what I’m doing.  Because I am treated well, I will have no problem working hard. 

I think it is rather sad that Western companies in China do not treat their employees as they do in the west.  I know that is part of the attraction of having offices in China (low fixed-costs, hire and fire easily, massive pool of cheap labour) but wouldn’t it make more long-term business sense to treat their employees in a similar fashion to their western colleagues?  

I mean, think of all of the intelligent, hard-working Chinese who when have the opportunity to leave China - simply go - a brain drain of the best and brightest because the work conditions are so much better elsewhere.

Afterall, if you have the choice of working for a multinational firm outside of China on a foreign contract, why would you want to work on a Chinese contract inside china doing exactly the same job for the same company??

For all the bad things about living in the UK, it is a good place to learn, gain work experience and make connections.  As much as I’d like to live elsewhere, at this moment, London is probably the best place to be in order to allow me to move on in a year or two

Still find myself taking pictures of London walking to work, at lunch and coming home even though I Spend most of my time in an office looking out over the Thames.

Kind of feel a bit like a tourist at times, anyway…

 ———————————————-

  Wrote this rant a couple of weeks ago in response to some of the stuff been shown on TV and in cyberspace -

What a total joke the torch relay is.

I was in London as the torch procession went through, and I was appalled at how big a police operation was needed just to let 1 person carry a rather small torch through a stupidly long route of 31 miles around London.

Politics aside, whoever made the go-ahead for this torch-relay through London should be out of a job.

It apparently cost the UK taxpayer 1 million pounds (1400wan) just for the policing operation - money which I pay was spent on this is a total disgrace.

Perhaps the bill could be sent to the organising committee of the Beijing Games - why should my tax go into such an event???

The government here is so afraid of upsetting the Chinese government viz-a-viz the Olympics simply because the 2012 Olympics is here in London. They realise that any action taken by them that is seen to be negative by the Chinese, will probably result in tit-for-tat reprisals in 4 years time. How pathetic. It’s only a sporting event - if anything else caused so much fuss and budget overun they would cancel the event, but because it’s the Olympics every rational thought is removed from the equation.

Personally I don’t care what anybody ‘thinks’- it’s a simple question of wasting taxpayers money on an un-necessary and pointless event.

 I have the feeling that this is the tip of the iceberg and that this is just the beginning of billions of pound of taxpayers money being thrown into the Olympic black-hole. No-body really actually know the full price of hosting such an event, or whether it is finanically a goer - the only certainty is that those that run the Olympic movement -the IOC (an unaccountable bribe-taking group of degenerates) - are lining their own pockets.

I don’t believe why many people that say sport and politics are separate - who are they kidding?

I can only think they must be incredibly naive/bordering moronic. When you have people representing their respective countries in an international event then the two will inevitably overlap.

Personally I don’t actually understand why there is a torch relay anyway? Apparently It’s a tradition started by Hitler and the Nazis in the wartime Olympics- so why is it still continued??

I think the answer is that the people behind the Olympics - the very powerful and corrupt IOC - think that the greater the publicity and build-up to the event, the more money can be made though endorsements and merchandise and the like. It’s all about corporate business being able to associate their name with the globally recognised olympic brand and make more money through exploiting this.

At the torch relay in London there were Beijing Olympic flags being given out and these long blow-up tube things that are used to make loud noises when hit together. On the reverse side of the flags wasn’t the Olympic logo, or even the Chinese flag but a large black image saying - SAMSUNG…

For those particularly nationalistic Chinese that think the Olympics is about China’s coming of age from it’s ‘peaceful rise’ - my opinion is that is only a footnote.

It’s more about western big business having a platform to advertise to a massive -as-of-yet, un-tapped market. To publicise and market it’s brands to the 1.6 billion Chinese that present a massive business opportunity in the next few years. To put this into perspective - there are about 300 million people in the US and about 500 million in the whole EU - the potential in China is massive.

I believe It’s also about those powerful people that run China doing deals and making lots and lots of money on the back of the Olympic brand. The whole nationalistic idea is a smokescreen for the true purpose of the games. Oh yes and there is a sporting event too.

I am not anti-China, It is great that somewhere like China has the chance to host such an event that It has never had the chance to host before.

If people in 4 years criticised the British government about some human rights abuses and there were protests at the London games, I can bet you that British people would not necessarily see it as a slur on their country and national identity as the Chinese have.

Here the government is separate from the identity of the country; in China it is not. To a huge extent, the communist party is China - you say something bas about the Communists then you are a threat to China.

It’s interesting reading some of the stuff you see in the UK Press about China - it almost all has negative connotations. Very few positive stories make the cut. Is this because there is are no good things to report in China? - of course not, but those are usually not so interesting stories for the viewers- plus news shown on TV here is usually negative by nature.   Just watching the BBC the other day the lead story was that ‘China is now the World’s biggest polluter’.

The coverage was ever so melodramatic, as if a milestone has been passed and that the end of the world is near and through implication China is now to blame for the most of it.   Yes the Chinese are big polluters, but the west has been doing it for more than half a century. 

For me this story was re-hashed old news and I don’t see how it could be justified as the top story on the evening news - so its no wonder when you talk to a westerner about China the first words they say are words like pollution, power-stations or human rights.

I think that people generally believe what they are fed on the news or at least subconsciously absorb the information without thinking about it. Just as the people in China are fed a news-diet of censored government propaganda, in the UK the news organisations also have their own agendas. The problem is that if a story has a potential to be sensationalised and people can relate to it through images, then it sells more papers, gets more viewers. And that’s what the bottom line is.

I’ve read lots of Chinese news sites showing articles with Chinese people getting annoyed about what’s been shown on CNN, the way it’s been sensationalised and some of the particularly dull commentary made by it’s journalists. I think Chinese people have to realise that CNN is simply sensationalising the story in order to capture more viewers/ appeal to their viewership (ie. lowest common denominator /not very thinking people ((mostly Americans in this case)) ) - something that American news channels do as a matter of course.

This is nothing new.

Just as the Chinese press is far from impartial so is the UK press - the difference is that when bad things are said about the UK by the Chinese press, people in the UK really don’t care;

Whereas in China people are much more nationalistic and proud and therefore more sensitive to criticism (right or wrong) of the state and see it as an affront to the dignity of Chinese people. In the west we are used to hearing bad things said all the time about our country, In China you are you not.

This is in-part due to people in mainland China only ever reading and viewing what the government wants them to read/see i.e never any bad news about the Communist party - unless it’s scapegoating an individual as a means to show how the party is weeding out those so called bad apples!

There is also a slightly sinister side to this I think; when the political might of the Communist party gets behind the whole ‘China’ issue and propagates it’s view of the situation to the people.  The Chinese are very fast to jump on the bandwagon - and I would have to say If the object of their derision is non-Chinese (i.e foreigners) It is very easy to whip-up those people into nationalistic frenzy.

I witnessed this kind of reactionary behaviour during the Japanese textbook row erupted a couple of years ago. Many Chinese were incensed and threatened boycotts of Japanese goods and all sorts of other punitive actions-  But what actually happened was nothing. When it came to the crunch people were not willing to fore-go their JVCs and Toyotas.

The whole Tibet argument is not something new, it has been around for decades. Everybody in the west knows about China and it’s human-rights recordm- this is also old news.

My opinion is that this is not as clear-cut as many of the protesters like to make out, bad things go on in all countries - just they are better at keeping it secret in the west.  In my opinion  western governments have very little moral high ground, if any at all to lecture the Chinese.

It is only now that the stuff in the Chinese media has started to show less towards foreigners and more direction it at the ‘dalai clique’ (who incidentally don’t even want independence for Tibet, simply the ability to run their own affairs within a region of China like Hong Kong) - even the communists know that it’s western business that makes the Olympics what it is, and for all it’s rhetoric, Beijing wants a smooth Olympics at all costs.

There is a problem that I think the Chinese authorities have with the Olympics - for all the great economic and social achievement over the last 20 years, China is still miles behind when it comes to liberty, the rule of law, freedom of speech and ultimately, human rights. In a sense it has developed socially and economically but not politically - within China this poses no real problem but to some in the West this poses serious issues.

The huge irony in seeing so many pro-china protesters (mostly rich Chinese students) on the streets of London the other day, is that in this country (for now at least!) you are allowed to protest, to show your opinion peacefully - even if the government does not agree with it.  In China you cannot.

In the UK It’s a different matter.  I spend more than 3 hours a day commuting to and from work on an overpriced, slow and very uncomfortable train. Across a very boring dull landscape surrounded by anti-social morons shouting into their phones or subjecting the others to what they’re listening to on their IPODs.  Some people refer to these people as  commuters, but I think primitive androids is a more accurate description.  

 I cannot possibly imagine how people do this for most of their working lives.  I’ve only been doing this for months and I’m tired already…   I can only think it must be that most people doing this do it out of routine, apathy and insular thinking - ’it’s what all my friends do’ etc etc etc . I cannot believe that anybody enjoys commuting into London by train, so why do it for most of your life?  

I’m doing it for the prospects, once I get the opportunity to go elsewhere, I’m gone!

I’ve been trying to work out why when I was in China commuting to work it wasn’t like this for me.  In China I had some equally long commutes (sometimes longer) but the difference is that at least there each day was eventful - I would literally see different things each day.  It was a learning experience.

Sometimes It was uncomfortable, hot, cramped -often I was wishing the train was faster; but I never felt as if I was wasting my time- the feeling I get here when I’m travelling.   I guess the big reason behind this is that I am over familiar with the UK.  Being away for a while has given me  a wider perception on what life is like in the UK,  perhaps It’s realisation of just how rubbish many things actually are in this country.

It is for want of a better word - so incredibly Boring .

Whereas in China I would see things as interesting and different and new, Here everything just blends into a big long smudge.  The below picture pretty much sums it all up.

It’s been an interesting experience, some things have sometimes not gone as planned and It has been tougher than I expected. Now things are starting to get better, though I still miss my life in China.

There are many frustrating things about moving back to your home country that you don’t consider until you’re actually back here. Thins which you don’t consider before leaving. I knew the transition would be quite difficult, I had planned for it to be tough, but still there are many things about life here that is just so infuriating.

Over the past few weeks I’ve written some of the more frustrating things I’ve come across in trying to reintegrate back into UK life.

What I’ve noticed is that you start get used to things after a while, but that necessarily doesn’t mean that you like those alll of those thongs. For me the biggest advantage (or disadvantage perhaps ) of being outside the country for a while, is that I now think about many things about my life in the UK that previously I never even gave a second glance to. It’s certainly made me more critical of things and as a result of this sadly I’m getting more and more cynical.

I think there are many things to worry about living here that I never had in China.

It isn’t all to do with money but the incredibly high cost of living is a major factor- but there are other wider issues that concern me about living in the UK.

I think you basically have to realise that there really are no systems in place for British nationals coming back after living abroad for a while. It’s as if you are being punished for daring to leave the motherland!

Many people are supported in various ways in the UK, actually pretty much everyone except you - because you don’t exist - and even if you did you can’t be trusted until you’ve been resident in the UK - but of course you still pay tax - Children, Old people, not-so-old-people, sick people, disabled people, certain ethnic groups, single parents, married couples, unmarried couples, gay partners, transsexuals, fat people and prisoners, the list goes on…

I wouldn’t be complaining if I paid little tax and could opt out fromt the system, but I can’t.

My views about taxation have changed considerably since living in China. I agree that people should pay tax, what I disagree with is paying such a high rate of tax on everything; inproping up an overblown controlling state apparatus, in effect supporting the system I disagree with.

As someone that has come back to the ‘motherland’ (I’m searching for a noun for this) You do not exist.

You are a non-person.

You may think (as I did) So what? What difference does that make anyway? Well, from my experience, it can make things really hard because if you have not been in the country, basically, you are not on any of the big-brother computer systems that dictate whether or not we can do something.

Because I have been out of the country for 3 years, OBVIOUSLY, I have had no UK addresses since then. This is not a difficult concept to grasp. But to the authorities you surely have something to hide, nobody leaves the UK to live abroad, right? To the government you are lower than a person that has just come out of prison, at least in their eyes they knew where they were and what they were doing!

The thing is, I can actually prove where I have been, I have various rental contracts and contracts of employment that show this, passport stamps, visas - but this is of no use to anyone in the UK.

To the UK government if you go to live in a place like China you might as well have gone to live on the moon.

For me this is exacerbated because I left here straight after university, meaning I have no investments in the UK i.e property; had not paid into the tax system, - I had nothing to link myself with here.

Here are some other issues I’ve encountered from not being in the UK:

Not eligible for many jobs. Can’t pass basic security clearance (and so many jobs unnecessarily require this) - criminal records checks. Can’t pass credit reference checks ( and so many jobs unnecessarily require this too!!!) Ineligible for many government jobs (probably a good thing ).

I just think it’s all gone too far. It’s beyond a joke - westerners may complain about many Chinese not being able to think for themselves, not being able to join-the-dots - but here people have seemingly have lost the ability to use common sense. People are constantly looking over their shoulders, worried about breaking some rule or regulation, frightened about saying something that may offend despite it being the right thing to do… Anyway

Can’t open Bank accounts as - No UK utility bills, not on the electoral roll (even though I have the right to vote, UK nationals can’t vote at UK embassies- must have UK address) no UK tax receipts, no rental agreements, mortgage statements, etc etc etc…..

Basically nothing that I can use to prove where I have been living for the last few years that they will accept. So I am an outcast It’s so annoying as there is no flexibility in the system - you are either in or out.

I feel as if every single corner of your life is tightly controlled by the government, but of course this only affects the law abiding people. It’s normal people who suffer, and so I my eyes you are effectively punished for being law abiding. This is partly why I have come to the conclusion that government and over regulation is the problem, not the solution.

The irony is that the UK is meant to be a capitalist country and China a communist, command economy - but to me it’s almost the opposite. People in the UK think that this is a democratic country, think they have rights, when in reality it is a very shallow democracy and your rights in the UK are being eroded everytime parliamant makes another law. Afterall therei s is no entrenched written constitution in the UK, and all the political leaders have been to the same schools, came from the same backgrounds;- its the same whichever country you live in…

I’m not saying thatthe Chinese government is perfect, far from it. They have some disgusting practices and cause so many people to have hard lives, but my point is that generally speaking for most people living their lives, most of the time the government takes very little interest in your own affairs.

In the contracts there’s all sorts of waffle that really isn’t so important to you, most of it is there as it’s government policy to put these things into work contracts.

Below is taken from the annex or the part of a contract that is written by the host institution (i.e a company/language centre), not the government SAFEA booklet as that’s standard accross China and only used by mainly public universities and colleges.

3.1

This is a real trick that could get you into a lot of difficulty with a dishonest employer. Usually you should ALWAYS have the amount of hours you work PER WEEK - and state that what exactly a week is i.e. - Monday to Friday.

Having hours per month means that you will probably have different class times each week, no real fixed schedule. It will mean lots of travelling between schools and will kill your free time.

The employer will say that 20 hours a week = 80 Hours a month, If so then why not put 20 hours per week into the contract not 80 hours per month?

The worst thing is that if you only get paid if you work all of the hours in the contract (i.e handing in timesheets) , and if the company you work for can’t give you all the hours - for whatever reason - you will not get paid fully.   Also if the company says you must work 60 hours this week to make up all of the hours you are meant to work in a month, you have to do it - essentially it puts lots of strain on your time

It is in the employers interest to have contract that specify monthly hours, not yours. It is a practice used by farming companies and some private schools.

3.2

This is too general, try to get it narrowed down to exactly what you will be teaching. I.e oral English, English writing or whatever it may be.
3.3

Again far to broad. Changchun - although not a big city in China - still has about 7 million people living there.  Also the way the Chinese designate their cities through the various sprawling districts, you could end up working 40km away from the city centreitself as it’s still classed as Changchun.  I once worked an hours coach trip from the centre of Changchun in a place called shuangyang （双阳）which is still considered part of Changchun by the government.

This means that you may have one class in the east of the city in the morning and anoter in the west in the afternoon.  You’ll have no time for lunch because it will take you all the time to get there.  You may have to take a taxi because the buses take too much time and and the end of a days work you may have made very little and be totally exhausted.

Try to get the locations fixed, the names of campuses, buildings if possible.  If you have to work elsewhere - get transport (i.e taxi) paid for - good schools will have no problem doing this.   

3.4   

Again get it as specific as possible unless you don’t mid teaching all ages.

 4.  

This is a trick clause and should be removed from all contracts before signing.   Bsaically what it is telling you is that the company/school probably can’t get you enough classes  and so don’t want to pay you all of your salary.   It puts you in a very diffcult position if the employer has no work for you, as you are still employed by them but are not being paid!   A good employer will never have anything like this in it’s contract, if you see it in an initail contract it’s a big red flag.  Avoid.

4.2

So leading on from the previous point, when you dont work 80 hours a month you will only be paid pro-rata at 62 an hour.  This is very bad indeed.  Furthermore as most classes last 40 or 45 minutes you will only be paid 42 or 47 yuan per class.   If a class is cancelled (as they often are) you will  have to make up the hours in your free time. 

 To put this in perspective, I know Chinese English teachers who make more than this per hour and they work far fewer classes a week.

Good organisations do not do this.  A class, whether it be 30 mins, 40, 45, 50 or 1 hour is classed as a teaching hour.   Again, if you see this in a contract - run.

4.3, 4.4

 Repeats the above condition. Just remember, why would an employer put a clause like this into a contract?  What are his/her motives?   It certainly isn’t in the interest of his employees… 

You get paid  for the months classes, so if you start mid-month, will only get 2 weeks pay.  Basic meaning is that you will be paid in arrears.   Universities don’t pay in arrears, they pay on a fixed date (usually the 15th) and the pay is for the full month.

 Agreeing to this could cause you to lose half a months pay - as you may never see the pay for the arrears worked.   

Your overtime will be paid at 80 yuan an hour - but only if it exceeds 80 hours a month.  So if you have only worked 70 hours in the month, there is nothing stopping your employer making you work 10 hours in one day and you will not see any overtime.

This clause protects the employer from ever paying overtime to his employees, he/she will give the work to those people that have not made up 80 hours a month rather than pay over time.   Incidently, overtime is always paid at a miniumum of 100 Yuan an hour and personally I wouldn’t put this into the contract.  I would deal with any overtime as it comes, on case-by-case basis, and negotiate at the actual time.  I have been paid 200 yuan an hour for some jobs, It depends on the actual situation. 

4.6

 No holiday or vacation pay.  Very bad indeed, everyone should get paid for at least the October and May holidays.  And make up the classes missed.   No winter vacation pay, so will have at least 2 months where there is very little work available and no guaranteed income.  Unless you moonlight. 

4.7

Probably the most straight forward part of the contract, you get 800 Yuan for rent each month.  This is extra to your salary and you get it each month regardless of how many hours you work.  800 really isn’t enough to get a decent apartment in central Changchun, for that you need more like 1500 yuan a month.   

Actually I was told that this 800 would not be paid to me as the company had no classes for me - and so I wouldn’t be teaching for 2 months - As you can see that is basides the point, I get this regardless of how much I work.  This eventually led me to perform a runner from the company as it was my only prudent choice of action at the time. 

5. 

Note the wording ‘fulfill the contract’ this can be misconstrued and twisted by any employer.  Get dates i.e. 31st July 2007 will get paid …. for  Flight ticket - this leaves no ambiguities.  Also only from Beijing, you still have to get to Changchun.  Wihout discount that’s another 2000 Yuan to your ticket price.  To be honest to get to the UK from Changchun return, if you include all transport costs is 7000+.      

The final passage is next to meaningless as it says should not, which in legal documents means nothing whatsoever.

7.4

Again badly worded, can be misconstrued.  Get exact pay dates into the contract.

7.5

This is potentially disasterous for the teacher.  If a school re-schedules, you MUST obey any class shifting - even if you are only given 30 mins notice.  This should never be agreed to, it must be reasonable.

8.3

Standard government stuff, but is far to sweeping and needs to be tidied-up.  Not to enagage in any mass activities is far too excessive - you could argue that by signing this you cannot teach as that in itself is a mass activity!   :wink:  

8.7

Ignore, not important - almost all contracts have something like this in it.  Just don’t tell party A,  but make sure other work does not clash with one this work. 

8.10

Ignore.  Just dont tell them, it’s  none of their business what you choose to do in your free time.  They are trying to cover themselves if you get hurt or injured whilst not working as technically as an employer they are vicariously liable for you.

10.4

Designed to scare you more than anything else.   I highly doubt whether this is based on actual fact, but to be honest it’s not important.  You have to ask the rhetorical question - Why would somebody ‘ sudden disappearance/departure of party B from his or her post’ ?

Clearly they have had problems previously and are trying to scare people into not running from a contract that has been dishonoured by the employer.   In my experience people don’t just run for no reason.  Some are home sick and leave very soon after arriving in China, but most do it because their employer is screwing them/going to screw them.

The concept of written contracts is a relatively new concept to China and as such the options for legal redress and peoples interpretation of them is not as a westerner would expect.

If (legally) working in China you will sign a contract at some stage. If working for a public body you will sign a government standard contract written by the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs (SAFEA) in Chinese and English.

 This is in the form of a small book, inside the first page contains the salary information and how much RMB can legally be changed to foreign currency. This has to be signed and dated and red stamped by the host institution to be valid. This will be registered with the SAFEA and means that if you have serious problems you can use them to arbitrate - not that they will help you!

Legally speaking It’s a particuarly badly translated contract and is badly worded, but as translation standards go in China, It’s better than most.

You will also have an annex or another contract that is written by the Institution you will work for, this contains the most important things to you as an employee. It will be several A4 pages long and also in Chinese and English.

Make sure that everything you want in this section is written in 100% unambiguous language. 

Words like can, should or might do not belong in a legal agreement!  

If need be, list in bullet points on everything you expect your employer to do for you. Make sure everything is precise, from EXACT paydays to when you are entitled holiday pay - and which day you will receive this. The emphasis is on making your employer react in a positive way, i.e have to do something.

Never leave things to be assumed through implication, there has to be a positive burden on the employer to act. 

Do not assume anything, even things that are implied through conduct of one or other of the parties - WILL NOT NECESSARILY MEAN that you should be owed something.  Many Chinese bosses only just understand the idea of offer and acceptance - trying to use western legal concepts will almost certainly fail.

An option is to try recording what your employer says to you, as this may give you quid-pro-quo if your employer denies he/she said something to you at a later date. 

Unfair Contract Terms: 

Make sure you don’t sign something that could cause you to lose pay for something that was out of your control.  The below clip is from a Star Education contract, It’s a classic example of an unfair contract term:  

If you agree to this then - for example - If on the way to work you were in an accident and you were last for class, you would still face a financial penalty. 

As a rule if a term is written for one party to do or not to do something, then there should be something similar relating to the other party.   

I’ve seen some pretty one-sided contracts In China, contracts that protect the employers rights for pretty much anything yet ignoring the same such rights for employees.  In my experience, with the public schools, Universities and colleges in Changchun the contracts have been fair and straight forwardly written.  Infact they are petty much  verbatim copies of the Government recommended contracts issued by the SAFEA.

Private schools and Companies are another matter.  I once saw a contract that was 6 pages long, full of clauses and terms imposing one-sided obligations on the employee, but not emposing such obligations on the employer.   For Chinese employees this is normal, they often have to sign completely one-sided contracts of employment - but for foreign teachers this is should not be the case.  Anyone telling you otherwise is not telling the truth.

 Sometimes in those terrrible contracts  (this is quite common for Chinese employees) the employer will try to keep a 3 month ‘bond’ on the employees salary - i.e Your employer keeps 3 months pay until the contract is completed, whereupon you get it back.  Or, more likely the employer can steal 3 months of your pay and not give it back to you because after you’ve finished your contract you have exhausted any quid pro quo you might have had before the contract finished. 

 Some say this is to protect the employer from teachers running from their employers, but I say If you have worked, you get paid AFTER you have worked.  You are not paid in advance, therefore the employer will lose very little.  Employes seldom pay for flight-ticket up-front.  The employer will at most lose a few hundred yuan for sponsoring the visa.    If i see these type of contract terms, I run a million miles!

Avoidance :

Of course you want to avoid getting into a bad situation in the first place,  probably the best way to do this is to seriously research your potential job. 

When negotiating your contract don’t be rushed into signing the agreement.  Get the contract altered if needbe, come back with your counter-proposals.  What you mustn’t do is  accept the first thing you are offered by the employer, always try to get more than what they initially offer and meet them half-way if you can.  

Get It written down in the contract, in plain English.  Verbal agreements are worthless. 

Afterall, If they mean what they say then there is no-problem getting it in writing, right?   

I have had many situations where the employer has said something, or promised something but not actually wanted to write it into the contract.  The reason for this is that they probably cannot deliver on what they say but still want you to sign the contract and will say anything that makes you put pen to paper! 

In many situations you should be aware that employers like to ’speak big words’ but fail to deliver when It comes to the crunch, getting it into the contract will help you if a situation like this occurs.

This is of course misrepresentation but In China you cannot rely on western legal concepts - forget the rule of law, forget an equitable solution.  You have to protect your own interests first.  Or you will only have yourself to blame further down the line. 

Get it signed by both parties and preferably have a 3rd person present to Co-oberate what was said. 

Get in touch with people that are working for them now, people that have previously worked  for them - get as much information as possible from as many sources as possible.  Yoy may search for them on the internet, check out forums, chatrooms, blogs to enable you to have the full picture, before making the decision to sign a contract.

This is difficult as some people will say bad things about a particular place because of reasons known to them not necessarily because of their employer.  Many foreigners come to China, don’t like what they see, fail to adapt to the situation and end up leaving after a semester with a bad taste in their mouth.  

There are also many people who genuinely have tebbible situations with their employer through no fault of their own, who are lied, cheated, threatened and all sorts of other horror stories.  

You can find many of these on the web - people tend to write more vividly about the bad stories they’ve had than the positive ones.   This may also be because there are - certainly in Changchun anyway -more bad places to work than good. 

The big problem with teaching contracts in China is not just that they can be broken It’s that the contracts are virtually unenforcible if one or other (or both) of the parties chooses to break it.

Chinese people and anybody that has been in China long enough knows this and so this is something that must always be considered when signing an agreement.

You must consider when signing the contract ‘what will my employer get from this?’ ‘What will I get from this?’ - If it’s too one-sided or looks too good to be true, then it most probably is!

back in the UK for reasons stated in this previous post

It’s my Birthday again… and for the first time since 2003 I’m in the UK for it! and of course it’s raining! Time has gone so slowly since I’ve been back in the UK.

The last year has been eventful with lots and lots of changes, some good, some not so good but, I have certainly learned many new things for the better.

Seems like it was years ago I was in China, feels as if so many new things have happened since then. It’s as if time has slowed down over the past couple of months. It’s weird how time passes…