Job Discussion Forums

[dsh13]

Has anyone had any experience teaching in Dali or Kunming? These were two destinations I really wanted to visit when I was in China but never had the opportunity. I'm aware that Dali is more of a tourist destination, but if anyone has worked in either of these places i'd love to hear how your experience was.

[thefuzz]

Been there a few times, but never worked in either place. I would guess that Kunming would have more job opportunities and given the close proximity to Dali and Lijiang you can spend your weekends there. You might want to check out this website:

http://www.gokunming.com/

It is a localized site with jobs and a forum specific for Kunming.

[xjgirl]

whos gonna travel an hour through traffic to get to the west bus station, 5 hours on the highway to xiaguan and another 20 minutes by taxi to your hotel in dali just to spend the weekend.

get real guys

kunming blows

u might aswell work in shanghai and at least make the money to fly wherever u want for the weekend

[choudoufu]

why not? how many weekends would you want to spend in dali?
once a semester? kunming unis often offer 10-12 hours per week,
3-day weekends.

your other option is the east bus station. 5-10 minutes by taxi
from the unis near beichen or the expo. there you can catch buses
to wenchan and surrounds.

and don't forget the downtown unis are moving to the newly-built
college town at chenggong, 20km south. connected by a 4-lane
highway, soon will be getting light rail.

light rail/subway coming soon.....

chenggong will have easier access to the airport, and the planned
soopertrain station (high-speed from shanghai).

wages are low. 3500 at a uni, if ya gots a masters....

[xjgirl]

so ur advice is come back in 6 years when kunming has matured into a guangzhou?

now it's an utter mess

[Miajiayou]

[MisterButtkins]

Yunnan province is very mountainous, so while it doesn't look that big on a map it takes a long time to get anywhere. You could work at a uni and go on plenty of trips on your holidays, if you managed to scrounge up the money, but I agree with the previous poster that it's not actually practical to be going off for weekend trips to many places in the province. When I visited the province for a week, I was originally thinking of hitting Lijiang, Dali, Kunming, and Xishuangbanna but due to the travel times I realized if I wanted to see all that I'd be spending all my nights on buses, and sleeper buses are not very good for sleeping, especially not on the bumpy ass mud road to Xishuangbanna. I'm not one of these tourists who just likes to see the most famous thing in each city and then get back on the bus/train/plane as fast as possible, so I ended up only going to Kunming and Xishuangbanna (wanted to see a rain forest). I think you would need to live in the province or take about 2 weeks to see everything.

[Baozi man]

Dali, which was once a charming place, has been destroyed by automobiles. The traffic jams and horn honking in such a place are truly disgusting.

The old city, if the local government had any brains, would be an auto free zone. The difficulty would be for the locals who live in the city. Another option would be to eliminate horn honking. Sadly, the Chinese seem to enjoy noise.

If you are looking for peace and quiet, avoid Dali and Lijiang. Better yet, avoid China. Try Laos, not far from Xishuangbanna, about 4 hours by bus.

Get a flight to Jinghong/ Xishaungbanna, which is not a bad place itself. From there you can easily visit Laos and Thailand. Laos is a marvelous place with charming people. It's clean and quiet. Thailand is, well, beyond description. Usually after a few weeks of holiday, I want to get back to China. Not in Thailand. It's the only place where I wanted to stay longer.

Phuket, in the summer, offers steep lodging discounts, great weather, and a host of charming ladies who will simply chat with you or do every horrible and nasty thing you can imagine. I opted for the conversation, thanks to the microbiology course I took in college.

I heard a lot of people in China say Thailand is a bad place in the summer. They are wrong. The heat in Bangkok was a dry heat which actually felt quite good. In both the north and south, the weather was very pleasant. The ocean is marvelous.

As for working in Dali, dream on. The university in Dali is inundated with applicants from all over. Unless you are fantastically qualified and willing to work for dirt, it will be difficult to get a job

[PandaPandemonium]

Baozi man, what about the salaries in Thailand? I've been told that they are much smaller compared to the Chinese ones.

[Baozi man]

Check the Thailand forums.