Job Discussion Forums

[tigerlily20202]

has anyone else (hypothetically, of course) left ...because they wanted an experience to be a little more happening?

[Sinobear]

I would say, "Go for it!" Not much point in staying where you are and harboring resentment that can only build up. I have always felt that Beijing was my second home. Just over four years there and I never had a negative experience (my Chinese friends in Beijing think I am crazy for my love of the city...perhaps I am).
It was always my advice to my new teachers to either start in a small city and then move to a major one, or enjoy your time in a major city then go home if you find it's lost its charm.

Good luck, and I hope you find a solution that makes you happy.

[TEAM_PAPUA]

Word of warning regarding leaving your current job. You must get a special stamp of release from your local PSB in order to transfer your residence permit & work visa to another city. If you don't do this you will have problems later.

Best to quit on good terms from your current school as they will have to process the documents for you. It is very easy in China to bail from a job you don't like if you are leaving the country (unlike Indonesia!!) but very difficult to switch cities & employers.


T_P

[millie]

And foreign teachers berate Chinese employers because of their fickle undependability


I mean really, you want people to say it’s OK yet the school has not lied or misled you in any direct manner

I agree with Team_P
Why don’t you discuss this with your school and try to come to an agreement?
Help them get another teacher and smooth the change-over for the school and students.
PLEASE be decent about it
M

[Roger]

So, tigerlili, we have never heard from you although you may have been lurking here for ages...
You came to China courtesy of a Chinese employer and sponsor who put a lot of faith in you and your word.
Why did you want to come to China in the first place?

What would happen if your employer went bankrupt and was unable to meet your salary expectations and airfare reimbursement?

I guess you wose a typical stink!

In my view, that employer of yours also deserves some sympathy. And our respect. IT's not his fault if you don't fit into rural China, is it?

You should have chosen well before accepting that job offer.

Are you sure this sophisticated life to be had in a big city like SHanghai or Peking is all you want?
You would have found exactly that, and possibly much more, back home, wouldn't you???

If you aren't in China for China's sake, then you made a wrong decision!

I think your intention isn't in the least justifiable.
You should serve your employer notice, accept the penalty and/or help them recruit a replacement!

And, whether your new employer would go through all the legal hoops with someone that absconded from her previous post is another matter.

[ContemporaryDog]

But I can sympathise in the instance of curfews.

In my first term my school had both compulsory office Hours (8.30 til five every day) and a curfew on our house (the house wasn't locked but the front gate was after 10.30 pm).

The office hours thing I don't like, but I can understand. But locking people into their own house is just outright wrong!

Surely they must be clued up enough to know that foreigners won't like this? Who wants to be locked into their own house?

they told us it was because of our own safety, but I can tell you right now that wuhan is far safer than my own area (Hackney, London) is at night.

Anyway, six of the seven teachers left because of the rules, one doing a midnight run, two breaking their contract. The others were going to sign a year but only signed six months when they turned up and heard about the rules.

So luckily the school dropped all the daft rules for the second term...

[Old Dog]

See it out, tiger. If life's a bit quiet, spend a bit of time researching your next position in the big smoke. That'll make time pass more quickly and isn't there some saying about the pleasure being as much in the anticipation as in the arrival.
Life in smaller places in China can be a bit dull - even with broadband internet in our flats, DVD's at 7 yuan a pop, etc. etc. But imagine what it is like for our Chinese friends. It's not really very interesting at all. And who has ever heard a student say at the end of the Spring Festival break that they've had a good time. They are pleased to be back to the excitement of school - they'll have had enough of those cold, underfurnished peasant houses with no computer and only free-to-air TV and both parents out working in the factory all day, 7 days a week.

To survive in China, you just have to find ways of making life interesting in small ways. Just go out and watch Chinese life in a small place sometimes. That's an entertainment in itself very often.

As for curfews and Chinese concerns with ft's security. Cop this:

Our outer gate is closed at 10 p.m. The inner gate is locked at 9.30 p.m. The door to the building housing our flats is locked anywhere between 8.30 and 9.30 - but we have keys to bypass this, at least. Then the security alarm is switched on about 9.30 (impossible to bypass), at which time we are only able to move between the two floors on which our flats are located (the chinese imagine that two solo foreigners will surely contract a liaison of some kind. I kid you not. The teachers had all sorts of euphemisms to suggest to the older students that the lady teacher upon her arrival would be very comforting for me). Movement beyond the two floors on which our flats are contained brings two carloads of PSB men to the place within about 10 minutes. So, if we forget to bring our bikes in (we've had 5 stolen within this secure compound in the last 12 months), too bad. The ft lady forgot once or twice and took her rubbish out about 11 p.m. - which brought the police pronto.

This is not to everyone's taste. I can't see many young ones being content with this at all. But that learning experience will have to come to the school when I'm pensioned off and the school embarks upon the joys of employing younger teachers.

So maybe things are not all that bad where you are. Just find ways of anticipating the joys of a future appointment.

[latefordinner]

Please please please convince your hypothetical friend to tough it out. There are times when it's best to cut bait and run from a job, but I don't think this is one of them. Read back a few pages on Dave's; you can't throw a brick without hitting someone who's been threatened or ripped off big time or worse. Compared to some of the horror stories you'll find here, your friend's complaints are very small potatoes.

Cutting and running irresponsibly does more than just inconvenience a few students; it hurts the whole community that you leave. It greatly diminishes their trust, making it harder for the next FT who comes and works there. Hey, that could be one of us...

[tigerlily20202]

I did make it sound like there was a breakaway in progress....
I guess what was meant to be said was in the instance of a year-long contract, if person in question is fed up after a semester, what are their options if they DO want to stay in China? Do they have a choice? I've read tons of stories of people leaving the country and not coming back, and people breaking contracts.
I don't think there's any intention of leaving mid-semester -- but there is that $200-$1000 penalty fee if you do break contract the "honest" way. If one did help the university find a replacement...is the fee negotiable? Rules are sometimes spelled out, but following them is another matter all together, and figuring out which rules can be negotiated and which can't.... For instance -- most contracts stipulate no outside work, but a very large percentage of people seem to do that anyway. I guess the question is, is there a way to break a year-long contract mid-year? The curfew came as a surprise: no one knew about it until we landed (we all paid our own airfare here). The housing itself is ok, but the doors do lock after a certain hour, from the inside and from the outside. We're not talking about somebody (hypothetically....of course ) who goes out every night, but I guess the answer I was looking for was if anyone could tell me a little bit more about what the experience is like living in a larger city vs. a smaller one.
It's China. We all know a little something, to greater or lesser extents, about the culture before we arrive...but there's really no preparing a person for it until you get here and you realize just how insane some things/people are. I didn't have any expectations before I came, because i really didn't know what ot expect. I knew things would be hard...but I'm just not happy, and I don't know if I'm getting what I want from my time in this particular place. So I'm just trying to figure out if a bigger city might be a solution. I've already been here a few months; but I'm trying to figure out if spending several more months here will change anything, or if I could be getting more out of my time here being somewhere else.
Of course I see how much harder life is for people who are working so many hours, who don't have much mobility. But ultimately, there isn't much I can physically do to improve or change their situations. So (in typical western fashion I suppose) I'm focusing on my own...I saw so many things and places that interested me in BJ, I guess I'm wondering if people could tell me about their experiences in bigger places vs. smaller places, and which they got more out of. Or if anyone else's been in a similar predicament and what they did

[anthyp]

The city you are describing there sounds suspiciously like mine, tigerlily. Could it be, I've found a fellow Pingxiangren?

Just kidding, I know all three of them here. Well, I am sorry to hear you are not enjoying your time here in China. I remember reading some of your posts before you arrived.

And, while I sympathize, I can't say I think very much of what you are saying here. Why did you title this thread, "advice?" You seem to be looking for somebody lazy enough to justify what you really want to do -- break your contract because you find the place you are boring and inconvenient.

[ContemporaryDog]

Christ on a stick, reading about some of these other places, my school sounds great by comparison.

We 'had' a curfew in our first term, but it was literally a matter that the gatekeeper was asleep. We used to climb over the gate when we went out.

I'm sorry, but there's simply no way I would put up with that. I do suffer from claustrophobia, and getting locked into my house like that would seriously do my head in!

If I turned up at a school and found that they had rules like that, I would simply walk straight out.

I'd like to see some of the Chinese headmasters who come up with rules like this locked in their own houses.

[ContemporaryDog]

I do think that if you do want to break your contract, just tell them.

Two of the three who broke did so by actually telling the school (when the first term was over) actually went back to the US anyway (they had 3 kids with them and probably weren't really suited to it anyway, especially not wuhan), but the fact that it was above board would have probably stood them in good steda had they gone somewhere else. They actually negotiated it so that there was no fee to pay, the school simply wouldn't pay for their plane ticket - a clean and simple way of doing it, IMO.

But yes, when I arrived originally and heard about the curfew, I was furious. But at least we could still wander around the school grounds at night, stretch our legs etc. And the gate was climbable in an emergency/going out etc.

The office hours I sort of knew about before I arrived (the school info said that we had to remain 'on the premises' during school hours - although I have to admit I thought that that meant I could be in my room, as long as I was in the school grounds).

Being in a place where I couldn't even leave one of two floors without the police coming would seriously freak me out. Especially if I was single. But even now I'm married, it would still be pretty hellish for me.

Our local street really comes to life in the late evening. Often things are nothing special in the day, but in the night all the tables come out, people are all sitting around drinking, eating, etc, and its quite atmospheric. I'd hate to be locked in and not be able to enjoy that.

When I heard about the curfews originally I just had this feeling of 'why the hell have I just travelled thousands of miles around the world, only to be stuck in an office in the day, and then in my room at night, with nothing to do but watch DVDs and surf the net'.

Christ, if the Chinese really do want to revamp the tefl market and get better/.more qualified teachers coming to their schools, they really ahve to sort stuff like this out.

People with good teaching qualifications are no way going to come to China if they hear about rules like this. And it sounds like its all too common.