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Topic: Are you Shiftless & Lazy? No Skill sets? Looking for a job? White? China is for you

Syntax started this discussion 12 years ago #34,413

http://www.vice.com/read/lazy-and-white-go-teach-in-china

White People with No Skill Sets Wanted in China

Jan 7 2014

“As a foreigner in Kunming, it seems you only do four things: smoke, drink, teach English, and occasionally learn some Chinese.”
'''
If you’re a white English speaker, you can get a job teaching private English classes in China.'''

Many schools will hire you without any prior experience, teaching credentials, or a working visa.

Sometimes you don’t even need to apply for the job. In Urumqi, in China’s northwest, my writing partner and I were offered our first teaching gig at a roadside noodle stand. We had been in the country less than a week.

“Want to work at my school?” a lady asked us, thrusting two business cards forward with a smile. “You can start tomorrow.”

We weren’t sure whether to laugh or not. Was she serious? Neither of us knew the first thing about teaching children.

“We don’t speak Chinese,” we told her.

“No problem,” she replied quickly. “So what do you say?”

The offer was the first of many we would refuse during the two and a half months we traveled around China—

we received unsolicited offers on the street four more times, and nearly every time we visited a school. In the private tutoring industry, which is growing at almost 15 percent a year, private language academies are looking for pale faces like ours to meet the booming demand for foreign English teachers.

But the industry's rapid growth is creating a new leisure class of young foreigners who are often unqualified for their teaching jobs. In addition to the roughly 180,000 “foreign experts” who enter China on working visas each year to work in education, there are many more who come to work on tourist or university visas. Of the dozens of English teachers we talked to for this story, only two had official work visas, and little more than half had any kind of teaching experience or certification.

The black market teaching jobs offer good wages in a cheap country, often with short working hours and little accountability. Many parents who pay the high prices for lessons don’t speak English themselves, making it difficult to track the progress of their child or gauge the talent of his or her teachers. It seems that many locals don’t fully grasp just how easy it is to get a job with some white skin and basic English skills.

Kunming, the capital of the southern province of Yunnan, is just one city where the 4.5 billion dollar a year English teaching industry is supporting a thriving expat scene. The city’s Green Lake neighborhood is dotted with foreign-owned coffee shops like Paul’s Café, where exchange students at the adjacent Yunnan Normal University meet to practice their calligraphy or have a beer after class. Within the confines of the Café’s patio, Kunming’s local dialects suddenly disappear into a swirl of various English accents. Some discuss studies, some their next travel plans around Asia, others the tough questions from Thursday quiz night at the local pub. It is a diverse community, with people hailing from everywhere from Ukraine to Uruguay. But what nearly everyone has in common is a part-time gig teaching English.

(Lots more 2 Read)

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Anonymous B joined in and replied with this 12 years ago, 2 minutes later[^] [v] #475,025

Syntax (OP) replied with this 12 years ago, 5 minutes later, 7 minutes after the original post[^] [v] #475,026

squeegee joined in and replied with this 12 years ago, 1 hour later, 1 hour after the original post[^] [v] #475,042

Syntax (OP) replied with this 12 years ago, 35 minutes later, 2 hours after the original post[^] [v] #475,045

dw ltd joined in and replied with this 12 years ago, 8 minutes later, 2 hours after the original post[^] [v] #475,047

Anonymous E joined in and replied with this 12 years ago, 1 hour later, 4 hours after the original post[^] [v] #475,052

Anonymous F joined in and replied with this 12 years ago, 2 hours later, 6 hours after the original post[^] [v] #475,058

Anonymous G joined in and replied with this 12 years ago, 4 minutes later, 6 hours after the original post[^] [v] #475,060

dw ltd replied with this 12 years ago, 9 minutes later, 6 hours after the original post[^] [v] #475,062

Syntax (OP) replied with this 12 years ago, 1 hour later, 8 hours after the original post[^] [v] #475,078

@475,058 (F)
Best you go the LEGAL Route with a TESOL Cert program. Many who do not go the LEGAL Route do so because to get a Work Visa in China you have to have a clear criminal record and show proof to China b4 they issue you a work Visa.

Kunming is listed by the local Expats as a 5th tier or less place to work/live

http://www.expatforum.com/expats/china-expat-forum-expats-living-china/

A good resource and of course you can register at gokunming.com and look at people who are currently working on moving there or thinking about it.

Top 10 list for China cities by Expats is

http://www.china.org.cn/top10/2013-11/18/content_30606499_10.htm

Beijing has chocking horrid air which is the reason one former poster here aka Matt Miller had to leave.

Also look at the TESOL sites on net as they often have lots of good insight on how to get in2 where you want to be but also make sure you do your own research via net on problems others have had.

Anonymous F replied with this 12 years ago, 2 hours later, 10 hours after the original post[^] [v] #475,082

Syntax (OP) replied with this 12 years ago, 47 minutes later, 11 hours after the original post[^] [v] #475,093

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