Job Discussion Forums

[tw]

The school seems to be serious (and maybe even desperate) in hiring me. Wondering if those of you who have lived in Harbin or still living there might be able to tell me something about FT's experiences there.

[lostinasia]

Your reputation around here and being so quick so snap at other users and make personal attacks and calling them trolls makes me wonder why ANY school would be so interested and desperate in hiring you - maybe schools need to pay more attention to the forums

[HunanForeignGuy]

TW,

Please send me a PM. I can provide you with a great deal of information about this school.

In a nutshell, however, take the job if they offer it to you. It is one of the truly better universities in Harbin.

The university was originally founded in the 1900's by the Russians as a Naval Institute when they ran Harbin . During the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, it became the Imperial Japanese Manchurian Naval Institute. After 1949 it was shut down for several years and reopened in 1953 under the aegis of the Red Army as a Military Institute which it remained for years. It morphosed itself into a good university and during the dark years of the Cultural Revolution, someone did some fast thinking and it was sent lock, stock and barrel to a part of the country where pandemonium did not reign to the degree that it reigned in Harbin (damage to Harbin during those years was severe, to put it mildly). It continues to maintain extremely close ties to the industrial-military establishment.

The students today, the vast majority of which are male, study in fields such as nuclear engineering and fusion, naval shipbuilding, etc., etc. and all of the related forms of defense engineering. It is NOT a university where one should go if one loves to spout antiParty and antiChinese ideas -- that would get one removed quicker from one's job quicker than anything one might have seen. The students tend to be more serious than in other universities and nearly all of them go on to either guaranteed jobs upon graduation or overseas study.

The university is one of the very few in China that actually welcomes and curries foreign applicants to attend. They are given crash courses in Chinese and then matriculate into select programs. The university is actually given high marks by many prestigious Western schools in comparative fields, such as MIT, IIT, etc., etc.

Next, if they are offering you a job, take it. They must have seen something in your resume that they like. They are one of the more selective schools in Harbin for foreign teachers, and believe me, I can speak to that personally.

Next, the living accomodations are usually quite nice. You most likely would be given one of their two-bedroom flats, clean, nicely furnished, not end-of-life.

I hope that you are athletic. They encourage their FTs to do all kinds of sport events with their students -- volleyball, etc., etc. Do you play hockey?

In any case, there are many schools in Harbin to consider but this one should be at the top of anyone's list.

One warning, however -- they don't put up with a lot of FT crap, to speak honestly, so if someone is really high maintenance, that someone will have a very short half-life at the school.

One second warning, also, is that remember you will need to keep your studens satisfied. You will need to student-center your classes and keep them involved. The school takes the pulse of the foreign teachers, so to speak, on a monthly basis, via the class monitors and also the best student in the class.

This is a big door that is opening for you. Personally I think that you can make it work but from what I have come to know of you, you will need to be a lot more giving with the students and a lot more student focused.

It's a school that will ask you back year-after-year if you do well, with nice raises from one year to the next.

Any more questions, just ask.

Oh, and it's located in a convenient part of Harbin.

HFG

[tw]

lostinasian, please read my PM to you.

HunanForeignGuy, great information. Thanks so much! Another poster has sent me a PM providing other helpful information too. Both of you have helped making this an easy decision.

[HunanForeignGuy]

[naturegirl321]

tw, someone took this job away from you? That's horrible. HOpe that people don't continue to do this.

[dave_merk]

TW,

Whatever became of this offer?

Move to Harbin. Let's hang out.