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opentin
Joined: 17 Jun 2004
Posts: 22
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 Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2004 5:49 am Post subject: Wuhu, Anhui Province |
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Hi there,
I'm new to the forum, also new to teaching...I'm heading over to China in September to teach English with Aston English in a town called Wuhu in Anhui Province. Just wondering if anyone knows anything about this school, town or province. Any information would be gratefully received.
Cheers,
opentin |
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Tao Burp
Joined: 30 Apr 2003
Posts: 118
Location: CHINA
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| Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2004 10:07 am Post subject: |
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Wuhu, Anhui Province is a small city, heavily industrialized and heavily polluted. There's not much to do there and after your first 60 days of riding the pink cloud of "I'm really in China," it will start to wear real thin. It's a good deal away from Shanghai and Beijing. I am assuming this is a private language school that you will be working for, and that in itself makes me a little leary of the situation and combine that with the Anhui Province, I wouldn't recommend it as your first encounter of working in China.
I am not trying to rain on your parade, but newbies often bite into a big chunk before they realize there's a lot of bone in it. That bone will have you gnashing at the teeth to get out of there. Look for a better place is my suggestion. |
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Norman Bethune
Joined: 19 Apr 2004
Posts: 731
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| Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2004 12:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Tao Burp wrote: |
Wuhu, Anhui Province is a small city, heavily industrialized and heavily polluted. There's not much to do there and after your first 60 days of riding the pink cloud of "I'm really in China," it will start to wear real thin. It's a good deal away from Shanghai and Beijing. I am assuming this is a private language school that you will be working for, and that in itself makes me a little leary of the situation and combine that with the Anhui Province, I wouldn't recommend it as your first encounter of working in China.
I am not trying to rain on your parade, but newbies often bite into a big chunk before they realize there's a lot of bone in it. That bone will have you gnashing at the teeth to get out of there. Look for a better place is my suggestion. |
Tao is the voice of wisdom. Heed the advice.
Anhui is, from personal experience, one of the most corrupt provinces in China. As a foreign teacher in Anhui you are bound to be used and abused first by your employer, then your students, and finally after you have had enough and try to flee, your employer and the local bureaucrats will make you life unbearable by invoking all sorts of bogus legalities.
Anhui is also one of the most isolationist of provinces. Be ready for racist slurs hurled at you on an hourly basis by the local hicks. Yes, lao Wai is a racist term. It's like the "n" word...I don't care what anyone else says. You will be stared at, laughed at, goaded, and made to feel you are inhuman. Nowhere else in China have I experienced the kind of abuse I underwent as in Wuhu and other parts of Anhui.
As a side note, the foreign teachers I most often encountered while working in Anhui were either terribly young and naive (20, 21, year olds), dirty old men perving on the local girls, or anti-social misfits who couldn't cope with life in America or Britain because of their abnormal personalities. (My apologies to those good teachers I encountered who did not fit one of those molds).
Go to a big city for your first job in China. That's my advice. |
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struelle
Joined: 16 May 2003
Posts: 2372
Location: Shanghai
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| Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2004 2:20 pm Post subject: Re: Wuhu, Anhui Province |
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Tao's advice is good here. There's not much to 'woo hoo' about in Wuhu, unless you are attracted to smaller cities or towns and deliberately seek them out. For those with China experience and who can speak the language this is recommended, but if you're a newbie, this is not recommended.
That being said, I predict the next big wave of teacher demand will come from cities just like this. A quick look at my China atlas shows over a dozen of these lesser-known places in South Zhejiang Province alone. Closer to Shanghai, you've got a handful as well. Off the top of my head: Huzhou, Jiaxing, Wuxi, Changzhou, Changshu, Taicang.
Although demand is high for teachers in these smaller cities, the problem is that it's tough to find good matches given both lower salaries and newbies who don't know what they're getting into!
Steve |
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