Job Discussion Forums

[Leon Purvis]

Some of my campus' facilities are being moved to the outskirts of the city where there is NOTHING of interest. There are no restaurants and there is nowhere to shop except for a tiny student commissary on campus. Basically, the campus is surrounded by pig farms and a whole lot of flat, undeveloped land FOR MILES AND MILES.

The apartments in which the FTs live is occupied by the remaining Fts and there are a few Chinese living there as well. There is room for more occupants, yet the school is making noises about moving us out to the campus on the outskirts of town.

There was no mention of a move to the new campus when I signed the contract. My agreement to the contract is predicated upon the belief that I would be working and living on the campus where I presently work.

Do I have a leg to stand on in arguing that I should be allowed to live where I am now and in proposing a compromise of taking a bus to teach at the other campus on the outskirts of town?

[Malsol]

You have two leggs to stand on but the Chinese have a way of cutting you off at the knees.

Ask, do not demand.

Inquire but do not argue reliance.

[HunanForeignGuy]

[struelle]

It's definitely an expanding trend, that is large HS and university campuses moving to the suburbs where the land is cheap. Not only that, but such suburban isolation affords the school to have more control over the students, especially if it's a boarding school.

Where I teach now in "Dalian", for example, it's actually in a suburb that is 55km away called Jin shi tan. It can be reached by qing gui, which is convenient, but it stops running at 6:30pm which isn't the greatest. When I taught in "Shanghai" before, I was also in a suburb called Malu that took the same amount of time to reach - about an hour and a half.

As a result of this suburban isolation, I became and still am a near expert at figuring out the transport connections to and from the school. As I see it, they can run their schools in the sticks but I'll still live my social life in the city centre.

For your situation, I'd definitely recommend asking to stay where you are and arraning bus transport. Failing that, the school should at least provide you with transport to the city centre on evenings and weekends, via a 'shopping bus' or some other method. If they won't do that, then you may have to get very familiar with the local buses like I did.

Steve

[Leon Purvis]

Thanks for the advice, all.

[no_exit]

Find out if the Chinese teachers will have to move also. They will most likely have a lot more flexibility with their living arrangements since uprooting them to the suburbs would mean uprooting entire families -- not always feasible. If the Chinese teachers have the option to stay (and likely many of them have, over the years, purchased apartments through the school, although some of them may be given the option of being given an apartment in their name at the new campus as well -- this happened here when a big uni moved to the burbs), then they will have transportation arranged for them, no doubt.

If you keep at them about it, you can probably convince them that moving would be inconvenient for you as well. Don't just demand. Make up reasons. Tell them you take Chinese lessons, study erhu, do Tai Chi in the park early morning, whatever, to get them to feel like they should accomodate you. Then ask them about the Chinese teachers, and bussing, and would that be an option? They will be a lot more accomodating if you make it sound like you really want them to do this favor for you, instead of being all "my contract never said!!!" Because in the end, unless you want to rent an apartment yourself and foot the bill for riding in and out of the city, if they say sorry, gotta move, there isn't much you can do.