Job Discussion Forums

[The Edge]

[rogerwilco]

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

I got tired of other countries like Japan, Korea and Taiwan. wanted a change and I was promised the moon and the stars after being extremely hesitant to even come in the first place. Thought about HK or even somewhere in Europe but was curious so thought I'd try it and see how it was.

After marrying my Chinese wife, I took her home to Canada but she hated living in small-town Canada and found life boring.

Now we are older with a family so things like proper health care and education and safe food and clean air means so much more to us.

Leaving for good, ticket already bought.

[therock]

[The Edge]

[rogerwilco]

[scholar]

[mike w]

[scholar]

Maybe, but in my experience, people say what they mean. And native speakers usually do not leave off plural endings by accident.

[GeminiTiger]

I think the data results of the poll go a lot to show what I always supposed. With 38 votes in and 10 possible choices 44% of respondants choose "other reason" and no other specific choice has more than a 10% response.

Conclusion: Foreigners come to live in China for hugely varied and personal motivations that factor from person to person and no single reason even slightly dominates.

[Flip-Flopper]

Okay okay. I think this is a sizable enough set of numbers to crunch them a bit. At the end of 2010, a recorded 593,832 (official stats) foreigners were living in China. I know this is a small sample, but judging by the large number of "other" posts it is large enough. I do not know the margin of error so take the results as weak but solid enough to have a rough idea of the numbers.


Not qualified to work in other places (5%, about 30,000 people)

Want to work minimal hours (2%, about 12,000 people)

Vices are cheap (2%, about 12,000 people)

Hard time finding work at home (10%, about 60,000 people)

Run away from problems back home (5%, about 30,000 people)

Want to learn Chinese and embrace Chinese culture (5%, about 30,000 people)

Got bored of other places (10%, about 60,000 people)

Tricked into going there (5%, about 30,000 people)

Want to learn Chinese and embrace Chinese culture (5%, about 30,000 people)

Start life over again (7%, about 45,000 people)

Other (44%, about 240,000 people)

I regret putting "other" as a choice because look. It looks that the greatest choice was "other" but I don't see anyone putting their reason on the forums because they all fit in some catagory. Any of you 17 people who voted for "other" want to say what the other reason was?

What worries me are the thousands of people who have been tricked into working here. Sure not large percentagly but all the more reason for me to be careful and not end up in that catagory later on.

[therock]

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

I will try to stay balanced on my views of this poll. First, I wonder how many people were honest (talking about margin of error at all that). Initially I came because I was tired of the little unnameable peninsula country to the north-east of China and had already done other countries that can be named like Taiwan and Japan.

My second time coming back here was your "other" option, but I could only vote once otherwise there would be yet another "other". The poll was lacking things like "Stay with Family" or "Study and then decided to stay"...hence the large amount of "others".

It appears though that the majority of people did not come here for the money. LOL And I do echo Rock's sentiments re: a lot of people do say they want to work minimal hours. Surprised that didn't come up more, but that would just show what I believe to be true.

Anyways, interesting enough results.

[Javelin of Radiance]

[Kiwi303]