Job Discussion Forums

[ChairmanMeow]

Which of these cities would you choose? and why?

[thefuzz]

Not sure which one to choose, but I would stay away from Taiyuan. I didn't spend much time there, but it's a very dirty city. Its main industry consist of mining coal and as you can imagine during the winter months everything is covered in coal dust...even many Chinese people always advise everyone to stay away, unless you have a solid reason to be there. One of my former students used to work there at a middle school (he was a Chinese teacher) and he hated every minute of it.

[jibbs]

I don't know the other cities, but I am in Taiyuan now, and can agree with the above poster. Not a very pleasant place really. I like my job but that's about it. Everything else kind of sucks.

On the other hand, have met a few guys who have been here for years and seem content, satisfied with their jobs, have girlfriends, enough Mandarin to function OK, and social lives, so who knows? Maybe if you like a low-key life?

I'd prefer a bigger city with more going on. There's pretty much no nightlife or anything international here. It's extremely Chinese; foreigners are very scarce. And it's crowded, disorganized and noisy, at least in the two neighborhoods where I live and work. The people aren't so bad. Almost no one speaks a word of English, and they are about as familiar with foreigners as the surface of the moon. If you have Chinese skills it will certainly help a lot.

Naturally, before I ever set foot here, the guy who persuaded me to take the job said, "It's beautiful, you'll love it." It's one of the ugliest cities I have ever seen, and I certainly do not love it.

[chinatwin88]

The closer to Beijing you can get the better, and as to the NE, only if you like it cold and I mean cold. October in the NE is already just a hint of the cold front that will occupy you spare time with layers of clothing, cold waits on the bus or taxi, and long visits in other's houses, inside wearing your long johns due to the fact that so much clothing has to be worn outside, it is not comfortable inside.

[The Ever-changing Cleric]

[platinum peyote]

Taiyuan attracts quality, honest and decent foreigners from what I heard, if you go there you can be assured that you will meet the cream of the crop so to speak when it comes to good and nice foreign 'mates for life' as they say, so don't sweat it.

[ChairmanMeow]

Hmm, that sounds a bit sarcastic... Has anyone heard of Xiangfan? There is literally nothing on the internet, nor this forum about that city.

poster who lives in Taiyuan, is there heating in the apartments in Taiyuan? And how bad have you found the pollution?

[nobleignoramus]

In reply to the previous query about Xiangfan, Hunan, I cannot speak of hany experience in visiting it myself but had a colleague who had spent 2 or 3 years there.
She said it was a humdrum town like so many other cities in China, not yet on the cusp of modernisation as the rest of the country, yet not interesting as an "old" place, either. Rather poor and dirty, those were the main impressions she imparted.

[senorfay]

I'd choose Changchun, although I've never been to the other two cities.

Changchun is a medium sized place. There are a few bars and nightclubs. When I was there two years ago, the flag on a taxi dropped at 5 quai.

Apparently there are a few art schools there, so there's a bit of an arts community if you're into that kind of thing (at least my friend who visited a gf there pretty regularly told me).

They got a lot of Korean restaurants. I don't know about Carrefours, Wal-Marts, or a Metro. There seemed to be a lot of open space compared to Harbin for example.

It's okay, but I wouldn't want to live there because it's too small for me.

I've also heard horror stories about the EF there, so you'd probably want a Uni job or something.

[cmknight]

Changchun's ok, it has a Walmart, Carrefour and a fairly good Light Rail Transit system, but stay the hell away from Changchun University. The uni guards are thugs. There's another FT here with me, a British fellow. On Oct 10th, we had stepped out for dinner and a couple (2) beers. We came back and the guards weren't going to let us in. We told them we lived and worked there, and tried to walk past them. Three of them jumped on me and proceeded to kick the crap out of me, knocking me down and punching and kicking my head and neck. Their excuse later was that the university was closed due to H1N1 (which was a total load of BS because the gates were open and people were going in and out). I phoned my "handler" and had him talk to the supervisor. The supervisor initially refused to talk to him. While they were talking, the guards, when I tried to pick up my bag with my textbooks and lessons in it, jumped on me again.

They have since apologized, but all of the apologies were scripted, and exactly the same, and the uni has agreed to give us the breach penalty. We "discuss" the amount next week. The guards have been "relocated to other campuses" and "criticized", but they get to keep their jobs (unfortunately).

The only good part of this whole thing is that we'll probably be the first FT's to ever collect on the breach penalty!

[Moon Over Parma]

In my experience, Changchun was a pretty dodgy place for teaching. The universities generally pay pretty low. There are more than a few located in a section of town called Jingyetan, and of those schools, a couple of them are very isolated and are far from the city itself. The light rail goes out there, but like the buses: it did not run beyond 9pm much of the year. Hailing a taxi out that way can be hit or miss during the day, but at night it's neigh impossible. Catching a taxi from the city to the Jingye area is easy to do, but the 20-30rmb from the hip little Tongzhijie/ Zhouyou Dalu area (about) two miles worth of eateries, shops, etc. will quickly eat away at the meager salaries some of these schools offer. A private, foreign language college out there is probably the most isolated, saddest place on earth. I never met a teacher who worked there that was happy. I cannot remember its name, but it's the only foreign language college out there.

EF have a strong presence in Changchun. The places with nasty reputations were WECI, and two companies called Tianshuo and Yija. Tianshuo can be Googled and all of the stories are true. Yija does not have a particular nasty reputation that I am aware of, but like Tianshuo there are several different Yija business partners doing recruiting from different offices and they hired a lot of non native speakers who will endure a lot of shit and work for peanuts. Both companies were basically EFL traffickers and hired warm bodies to plant into various kindergartens, primary, middle and high schools. Since Yija and Tianshuo are competitors there were some nasty things going on where the two companies hustled to keep schools in their good graces at the expense of one another. None of the employees I met from either company were particularly enthused about their work.

A cram school called Perfect English was run by an older, American man. His employees seemed generally happy, but he only hired native speakers; mostly folks with a North American accent. I did not work for them, so beyond meeting some teachers I have no relationship with them and I am not necessarily recommending them. Truthfully, I came away from Changchun with the feeling that teaching there was rather unpleasant. I actually cleared a nice salary, so I often trekked around other parts of Dongbei on the weekends. Expatriate students seemed to be a happy lot there, though. The teachers were not. Those over thirty tended to stay home and were not the most sociable people. Those younger than thirty seemed to be into getting high and hitting the Mayflower night club out of boredom. Like clockwork, once midnight rolled around they'd congregate to the foreign part of the club, shoehorning themselves into the place like the ghouls out of Night of the Living Dead.

Before I left, some teachers started to converge at a place called The Corner Cafe, run by a very sweet Irish woman. It had delicious, fairly priced western food. The Chinese ladies who worked there were also very sweet and the service was good. It was very small, but I liked it. There used to be a great Indian restaurant on Longli Lu, and a great Mexican restaurant called Sol Latino, but I hear both have closed.

The nightlife is just dire there. There is a nice bar called Three Monkeys that is rarely visited. It's sad, because it has the best music in town and is only an 8rmb taxi from the Zuyou Dalu/Renmindajie area. It is the only pure, "western" bar in the entire city. The Mayflower pub in the Shangri-La hotel comes a distant second, but it's basically a small room littered with Philippino singers who also turn tricks. It appears to be popular with the German contingent in town. There is a cheesy Chinese disco next door that is actually a lot of fun if you enter it with the right mindset. If you like camp, then it is campy fun. Pricey, though.

The La Loco was a decent, foreign run nightclub that is no longer in operation. That leaves the other Mayflower night club as your only option. Both Mayflowers are rumored to be owned by a criminal organization that also has its hands in the cram school business. The Chinese area was the spacious part of the night club that had ambiance. The foreigner friendly portion was literally a shoebox filled with dodgy African drug dealers who will claim they are from Louisiana, Russian hookers on student visas turning tricks, lots of young foreign students, some rich German auto workers, and other Euro trash. Good luck trying to walk around in that part of the club because it' was filled to the gills with people happy to waste their money on overpriced piss water while listening to the worst selection of western music I've ever had the displeasure of hearing in any night club. On the plus side: admission was free.

Changchun had nice, blue skies most of the time and its public transit was both cheap and reliable, but shut down very early. There is an airport, bus and train station, an overworked, overloaded, two car light rail system, and a trolley that serves the North western part of town. The taxi flag fall was still 5RMB last year. Also, red foot "massage" parlors are as ubiquitous in Changchun as the Chu'ar restaurants. Even if you don't go looking for such places, they are omnipresent and it's hard not to notice them. In winter the city turns into a kind of ghost town when compared to its summers. There were frequent water outages in the fall as they prepared the municipal water pipes for the arctic winters.

Frankly speaking, Dalian, Shenyang, and Harbin are vastly more diverse, interesting and affordable cities with more jobs, less exploitation and more to offer. With Dalian being an exception: the other cities also offer greater money making opportunities, western amenities, and safety.

EDIT: I want to clarify my comment about Dalian. Salaries offered by the college/ university sector there are often lower than the national average, but the western amenities and safety standards there are far above Changchun, and like Harbin and Shenyang they are worth investigating.

[randyj]

I have visited Xiangfan a few times. It is a smaller version of Wuhan, which is about four hours away by train. Anyone who finds Wuhan a little crude and unpolished would not like Xiangfan.

[chinatwin88]

The mayflower is still open, man what a surprize, I once saw a guy get hit with a beer bottle that required a sh_t load of stitches.

The other story about Changchun University teaches the FT one thing. When
returning home pick up a big stick to help in negotiating the path through the gate.

Jingyetan if i remember right has a large park which is nice n the summer time if you don't think about it being built on a dump site.

EF in Changchun deserves the bad rep it has worked so hard to receive and the other American old man own school advertises pure north american which could be construed as being a code word for white only. The old guy is a one way manager and sees things from his own perspective and will go out of his way to take revenge. Careful with either school.

The private foreign language school must be Hua Chao (is this it MOON?) or something like that. Never work for them.

The best club in Changchun is Club Zero, under its Chinese name, which is all Chinese and no foreigner. There are a couple of Jap touchy feely bars there where good girlfriends can be culled.

[Moon Over Parma]

That's it! Huaqiao Waiyuan. It looks like a prison without excessive razor wire and guard towers. It literally has nothing around it. No shops. No vendors. Just a bus stop and a light rail line across the street. It is a good 30-40 minutes from town.

The Mayflower in the Shangri-la Hotel cleared out the talented, American musicians that used to jam there and loaded it up with a Philippino dude and some Pinoy prostitutes. At least the ladies could sing.

I can't really comment about the Perfect English race thing. Admittedly, the teachers I met were white twenty-somethings from the states, but conversations regarding their experiences never broached the subject of race. Since Changchun's EFL circuit has become dominated by Philippinos and Russians I didn't read into the, "pure North American accent" sales pitch so nefariously. I have nothing against Philippino EFL instructors. It was just really interesting to see many beautiful Pinoy ladies that were not singing at night clubs. During my time there one nearly stole my heart.

I am glad I got out when I did. A lot of good people moved on and the place was changing into something quite different. Even the local oriented social networking site Local Joy was sold to a consortium in Shenzhen and is no longer being properly maintained. The Changchun wave seems to have subsided.

[chinatwin88]

As to the mills up there like Perfect English, they appear to have changed to a more standard Chinese operation as opposed to a foreign owned school. I don�t think the North East is such a great place to go now a day.
The cold alone is a killer, and the lack of western supplies can get to one after a while.

Huaqiao Waiyuan use to be by Jil. Uni. and had the "Hot for Teacher" FAO that was so flexible she could, ah you don�t wanna hear bout that. It use to be a real wild west up there with Russians dealers getting wasted and stealing cabs to have downtown races but alas those days were gone some time ago.

The farmers up near the new campus of Hua Qiao once ask my girl if it felt like waking up next to a alien in the morning, so anyone who ventures to the great north east, good luck.