Job Discussion Forums

[yaco]

How common are morality clauses in contracts ?

I am currently employed as an English teacher in Jiangsu province and have what can be interpreted a s a morality clause in my contract.

I was offered 3 positions, 2 in Jiangsu province and 1 in Heilongjiang Province which all had the same clause.

The actual workings of the clause do not unduly concern myself but I am curious as to how widespread these clauses are within China.

[MartinK]

...

[gerard]

Not sure if this is what you have in mind but..."respect social and cultural standards and behave in a manner compatible with the status of a foreign expert..."
I would say it means dont do things that might be legal but look bad and are wrong---like hitting on students or falling down drunk in public. Just guessing though and I don't think it's anything to worry much about.

[randyj]

In the appendix of my contract, dating from two years ago, the operative sentence reads as follows,"You will be expected to respect the social and moral norms of China." This appendix also contains words prohibiting proselytization.

[senor boogie woogie]

Hola!

In my wife's hometown of Dongyang, my contract stated that I keep my religious beliefs to myself. I do not have a religion, so no problem.

When I was dating my wife, I lived on the campus of the school, a little two room apartment. In the place was a computer with internet access. The internet was and is a main source of entertainment and information for me in China, and I go crazy without it.

One day the computer broke down and I told one of the English teachers about it. She told me that she would call somebody about it. Well, that night I slept at my future wife's house. No one on campus knew I had a girlfriend in town (I am the only foreigner). So, they tried to call my place for hours looking for me. Dongyang is not a party town, if you can imagine the combination of Mayberry and polluted Communist China, you get the picture. The streets roll up about 10 PM.

The next day I came back and was told that I had to see the boss. We went to the office and then I had to admit that I have a girlfriend in the city, she's a professional woman (they were concerned someone was trying to scam me) and she is very nice. The teacher who was the interpreter asked if I slept in the other room. When I said "No," she went "Oh, my God!", and the boss gave me a sly look. What was my personal business is now the business of the school. (RULE 1, There is nothing private in China!)

To make a long story longer, it turns out that the boss was my wife's Chinese teacher and she is friends with his wife (I had lunch with boss' wife today). They went to our wedding four monthes later.

Another deal, if you are married, especially to a Chinese, have your marriage license on you when you travel. It lessens the hassles.

SENOR

[Edward]

When I first came to work in China [2001], I worked at a school in the country. I had a dormitory room, private of course.

But could I ever have someone STAY with me of the opposite sex, even though my dorm was with all the OTHER foreign teacher's dorms, far away from the REST of the school?

Answer: A big fat ZERO...

I put this to a test to be sure. I knew that other CHINESE English teachers had "guests" of the opposite sex stay in THEIR dormitories for more than a few nights, so with this knowledge I invited my then girlfriend to the school for the weekend. I had already put in my notice to cancel my contract weeks earlier and only had two weeks to finish out at the school. I told the staff what I was doing [the invitation] and so on; nobody batted an eye. Exactly what I expected. I was setting THEM up, they were setting ME up. I knew something would happen but I wasn't sure WHEN and HOW.

After she arrived, again...at the guard house, she showed her I.D. then ....nothing! Came right in, no problemo. She had brought a bunch of stuff for dinner to cook, and three of the other teachers knew her, so they were VERY eager for her to arrive! After she got settled and began to start our Friday dinner/get together, I got "the phone call".


"Edward? Yes, this is Mr. XXX. I wanted to be sure to ask you, your girlfriend, you aren't MARRIED are you? No? Oh, well then, you will have to get a ROOM for her at the HOTEL next to the school before 9PM, ok?"

Well of course I began laughing my ass off and told him off quite efficiently, stating how they had more than one opportunity to tell me all this the week before, when I had told them WELL in ADVANCE exactly what was going to happen.

Then they kept saying things like how it would be embarrassing for her, and how know "good Chinese girl" would stay with me overnight. YOu know, the insinuations.

So we kept this bickering up for awhile, then I told them fine. She goes, I leave the school two weeks EARLY.

That was part of my plan anyway, I had a feeling they would try something so I fully expected to "bug out" on that coming Sunday anyway.

Of course the girlfriend was furious with them. I gave them all a lot to chew on. We both left for the weekend. I returned on Sunday to pack my things, left a nice long SECOND letter behind on why I was leaving early and breaking the contract, then I left...but ya know what? The school "offered" me a private car to go into the city with my stuff. They made sure I was happy and so on, and sorry for the misunderstandings, etc.

They really wanted to save face for themselves and show how generous they were to the end. The truth is, in my letter I stated I had more than one reliable witness who heard the director make accusations as to the 'credibility" of my girlfriends character/aka must be a *beep* to stay with a foreigner kind of B.S. The director was basically sweating in his boots! Not only would his own SECRETARY back me up on the accusations he made, but so did another girl in a second office. Seems he didn't have too many friends around. The next thing I heard was...he got a "new job" working at another MORE ISOLATED school farther away...

Don't let the A' holes here in China bully you around, OK? The laws are changing, new precidents are being written daily, and everyone is gaining more and more individual and "moral" rights as we speak, INCLUDING foreigners, resident or not!


hope that helps

Edward

[JamesD]

Of course as a westerner I see why we don't make a big deal about this. But why is it that we expect the Chinese to follow our moral code?
You're not in Kansas, Dorothy. It's their country and their rules. "I want some fun tonight so I don't care about your society's accepted rules of behavior." I'd be embarrassed rather than proud that I had intentionally done something like this.
I guess ugly (Americans) westerners are everywhere.

[Roger]

Things really have changed tremendously over those years I have spent here!
While a "morality clause" is not always inserted in contracts the PSB have a set of regulations they can apply at will anytime.
I posted this more than once on this forum: Cohabiting, premarital or extramarital hanky-panky is, seen from an orthodox socialist-Chinese viewpoint, illicit and deemed 'prostitution'. I hasten to add that these legal provisions do not originate in Chinese thinking but rather in adopted Western practice that has come to China via missionaries. Remember China was one big brothel before the 1949 changeover. Thousands of Chinese hookers went to reeducation camps, to reemerge "purified" and 'virtuous'.
Things have changed dramatically over the last ten years!
In 1994, my Hong Kong girlfriend would sometimes visit me at a Guangzhou college. Expats lived in spacious and comparatively nice villas, each with their own flat, or in my case, a large flat with two bathrooms and two bedrooms but shared kitchen and shared sitting-room.
I was alone in my two-bedroom unit, yet the most pwerful of the four principals there made it plain to my HK girlfriend that she must stay in the college's guesthouse, which was a run-of-the-mill affair with broken pipes, black-and-white TV sets and a musty smell everywhere. Luckily, this rule was enforced in theory only as nobody checked out my flat when she was in. Still, nobody crossed the path of that principal without fear, and if she had suspected anything unorthodox going on anywhere she would make life unbearable!

I later travelled to Wuhan, and went to chat with a receptionist at a 3-star or 4-star hotel there. While standing next to the counter, a fat Chinese man came up, registered his name and address and took the keys for a room. The man was a Wuhan resident, so I was curious as to why he should check in at a hotel in his hometown. The receptionist said, with a wry smile on his face, "wait and see!" It took hardly 5 minutes before two young girls arrived to ask where "Mr Liu so-and-so." was staying. He receptionist told them his room no., and they left, laughing goodhumouredly.
So I asked the receptionist whether this was legal. He said, no, it was not legal but in Wuhan the police didn't mind if "people enjoy themselves". The wife of that man no doubt minded - but she could not possibly know where he was cavorting with young girls.

Whenever I overnighted at hotels in China up to around 2000, I would have to ask a floor service staff to open the door to my room. And to this day, I can see signs in some hotels that require visitors to guests to register with the reception and to "leave by 23 hours".

Although hookers are now very visible in many cities, it is a profession that operates in the twilight of illegality and tolerance. Some police obviously live off working girls known to them - this is a suspicion I have formed when living in Shenzhen where high-rises near the Shangri-La hotel were known to be brothels. When a big wheel from Peking was in town, one house in particular was consipucous by its unbusy-ness. No girl left, no male passersby were accosted.

And then, LONELY PLANET in its early editions carried a tidbit of traveller's information. A married Aussie or American couple, he of European stock, she of Japanese ancestry, were roused from their bed in the middle of the night by the PSB who had been tipped off by hotel staff that a "foreign man" was sleeping with a "Chinese" woman.
This is a phenomenon I suspect you must still be prepared for even today, at least in parts of China. Note that the police get your hotel registration slip by shortly after midnight!
ANd they had raided my home in Shenzhen in the middle of the 1990's several times!

[Edward]

Interesting insight Roger!

I usually don't add to or reply to posts often; I consider forums to be more "graffiti" on the wall of an upscale toilet than actual discussion! But I do get some good feedback and occasionally real useful information at some forums, this being no exception.

I am not sure who the "not in Kansas anymore" reply was to, me or the original post. But I do think said person doesn't truly understand or appreciate just how much China has changed. Considering how many people I come in contact on a monthly basis, I get a really good idea of what the truth is, and what people "say" is the truth.

For one, many of the cohabitation laws are void and defunct now, having been replaced my newer rules and regulations. My girlfriend recently got a copy of the newly updated laws regarding marriage, civil rights and etc.
One of the most outstanding changes is that people, regardless of resident status or not [meaning Chinese nationals, foreigners] can cohabitate together [*NOTE--mind you this is in Guangdong province, but other localities with large cities have the same laws, albeit Guandong tends to get the jump on the rest of the country in this regard]. Yes, people can and do live together, not because we FEW foreigners have come and polluted a perfect society with our ill-begotten ways, but because women had few rights in the past and the laws are catching up to that.

I have had a number of Chinese law students and I always inquire as to what some of the new precedents are that they are excited about. They usually fall into one of two categories; civil law and international/business law.

Also, I almost always take a poll in every class at some point as to how many people live together with a boyfriend/girlfriend and/or who approves of this.

Sorry I never wrote down the numbers, but I can say the percentage of people living together is marginal but is growing each year in leaps and bounds. Also the approval of this practice is rather high. Most students and adults [these are always Univ. and adult students I teach--rarely high school just for FYI] give it a big thumbs up, seeing as how it is important to get to know someone first. The ones who usually don't agree are the students, mostly female, who are from small provincial cities and new to "the big city" idealism.

"Ugly Americans"? Sounds like a sound byte more than anything! We didn't invent living together, and we certainly didn't invent divorce. That is another thing growing in huge numbers here in Asia. The women are tired of oppression by uncaring, overbearing, demanding, and many times, abusive husbands. They have been getting their [the women that is] degrees for more than a decade now, they are speaking up, they are saying "no more" and they are showing the old beaurocracy what they are made of! Hey, it works for me--and it works for some here as well. If a person is not the type to "cohabitate" before marriage, or no sex before marriage, so be it! But there are more than enough Chinese women [and men] who are WELL educated and welcome these changes with open arms, and pocketbooks!

Cheers,

Michael Edward,
The decadent American

[arioch36]

The "morality clause" is a standard part of the sample Henan provincial contract that most schools copy. How much does it really mean? I think as someone said, they might use it to play games with you, maybe someone in the school wants to play a round of let's embarrass the foreigner (There are plenty of them who don't like foreigners, you know? Even though they smile, and I have never had any problems)
On my part, every Sunday night I had a bible study in my apartment, beneath the apartment of the President and director, singing Chinese Christian songs, etc. They had no problem with it, becaue we were respectful. Another guy had his girlfriend from OZ stay over for two weeks, called her his ex-wife. But a 3rd teacher was "hasseled" when he did the same, because he didn't show respect to the school.
Have yet to hear of any foreigner punished in Henan for immoral stuff, since I have been here, though perhaps some should have been. One "christian" had to leave over the gate the year before I came. He was pasing out tracts on the campus, a no-no even in America. He also convinced a Christian Chinese teacher to skip a day of school. She thought it was something very important. He just wanted someone to go shopping with. She was in the Communist Party, lots of embarressment. The guy (not so high on my list) climbed over the wall and was never heard of again.
True story

[yaco]

Thanks for the interesting responses to my enquiry. Attached is a copy of the clause.

' For the sake of safety, Part B cannot accommodate any visitors. If any of Part B's relatives come to visit and nedd reside, Part B should inform Part A of this in time, so that Part A can offer the necessary convenience. Otherwise, Part b should be responsible for any possible result'.

I must inform readers that my apartment is on campus, so discretion is required !!!!!!!

[Kurochan]

who had all sorts of women (some of them students) in and out of his dorm all the time. Some female teachers told him to be more discreet, but he just got mad. He thought he had the dean of the school in his pocket because they were ping-pong buddies, and told the dean about some of his conquests. His contract was not renewed.

The information about people in Guangdong was a good FYI. I stayed in a hotel with a friend in Dongguan and Humen (yuk!), and I thought the lady at the counter would give us a hard time. My friend is overseas Chinese, but I wasn't sure whether his having a foreign passport would make a difference or not. Anyway, it was no trouble. They didn't even ask for any ID from me, which is unusual. As we went up to our room in Humen, there was this middle-aged, fat businessman type with two bored-looking teenage girls (all were Chinese). They were all shown to one room. The desk clerk tried to put us in the room next door, and I was like, "Uh, how about another one, further down the hall..."

[MyTurnNow]

Lots of good stuff here already. A common face-saving maneuver- but be careful! I've seen it myself with fellow teachers- the PSB boys DO take notice when your partying, cohabiting, etc. become too high profile. They of course won't tell YOU this, but many of your neighbors very likely already view you with more than a bit of suspicion. Dont give them too much to work with. Be discreet and be considerate of things like noise- even if the neighbors aren't.

Sign the contract, smile at your Chinese boss, look him straight in the eye, and assure him your behavior will be every bit as moral as his is.

MT

[arioch36]

My Turn,

Sign the contract, smile at your Chinese boss, look him straight in the eye, and assure him your behavior will be every bit as moral as his is

Excellent

[MyTurnNow]

Thank you. I see you've been in China a while too.