Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Yu_Bum_suk]

Has anyone else come across this offer?

Fed up with a noisy, expensive, and sophisticated big city life? Interested in a relatively quiet, cheap and simple life in a rural, mountainous or remote area? Here are a few great places for you to consider: Tongling of Anhui Province (near the Yellow Mountain); Lanzhou and Qingyang of Gansu Province (near Dun Huang); and Baotou of Inner Mongolia. In these cities in China, our client � ACCEEC has teaching positions available in the fall at high schools with a monthly salary of RMB8,000-9,000 plus other benefits. Interested? Please take a closer look at the Job Description in the Attachment. If you decide to seriously consider the offer, please email us the whole set of your application materials as early as possible. We�ll get back to you very soon. Thank you for your attention!


Does that seem like way to much for that kind of job? With the cost of living the savings would be about the same as a Korean job of around 2-2.2 / month. Perhaps if I do decide to move on and try a different country I should look west, not east or south.

[rationality]

[Robot_Teacher]

I bet rural Gangwondo is a Sunday walk in the park compared the jobs OP is talking about. How friendly is rural China to foreigners? That's the 1,500,000 won question about considering taking one those jobs. I bet China is a version of Korea on steriods and a whole lot more. I bet it's downright hard.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

[ChinaBoy]

Not once in there did I read the number of hours worked.

Trust me, it ain't like GEPIK. They will work you to the bone. If you're making that much at a rural school, you can be sure you'll have to earn every last fen of it.

That said, don't be afraid of moving. You can definitely do just as well as you do here. But the Chinese employers probably have more complaints than the hagwans of Korea do.

[D.D.]

[Illysook]

I got that in my inbox, but since I'm currently living in rural Korea, working my tail off, I deleted it immediately.

[rollo]

Not a bad gig from certain standpoints. i lived in a small town in China for a year. nearest city of any size was about two hours by bus . the isolation and boredom are killers. I started writing , hiking took tons of photos. the people are sweet, charming. If you have the right temperment and can learn to live without many of the things we take for granted it can be wonderful. But about a year is all I could take. It takes a person who can live inside themselves, if that makes any sense. I have two friends who are fiction writers and they both teach highschool in rural china, they love it Ther is nothing to spend money on but food and that is cheap so savings are good.

[Robot_Teacher]

I find it hard to believe that they're sweet as Rollo puts it. I would expect China to be even more uncivilized, dirtier, and rude making Korea look easy going, but very boring. Of course, sweet is vague as it could mean simply accepting you by tolerating you or it could mean actually being, "friendly." I would doubt China on being sweet as in being friendly though the highly educated professionals can be a joy to work with as I found out in college classes taught by Chinese professors who are well cultured enough to actually be, "friendly." In Korea, one highly educated co-teacher from Seoul who lived in America for a year is very sweet, but everyone else locally don't know their head from a hole in the ground due to lacking knowledge, education, culture, and experience. Only problem. The super friendly and professional K teacher thinks she is so superior compared to me to the point she just teaches the English class her way and I do nothing as that's how she wants it while everyone else are looking up to me to teach their classes as they don't know what to do nor how to speak English much less actually be a co-teacher.

I'd say too the reports on both Korea and China is a mixed bag. Some of us need, "sweet," people as the integral part of job and location satisfaction and others just need nothing more than being allowed entry to teach and travel.

I would say everywhere you go, especially rural areas, you have people who want to be friendly, but don't know how to be due to lacking knowledge on culture and English as well as experience of interacting with foreigners. You might have seen 1 billion Asians, understand how to be friendly and respectful to them, and used to them to the point you don't even think much about them being different in appearance, but they've only seen 1 non-Asian in real life. YOU.

[tenchu77491]

I have done research in Dun Huang before during my stay in university.... it's certainly not a place you want to live and teach.

[chickenpie]

I have a friend who has been in China for the last three months for just above the money mentioned. He had worked in Korea before. He is 100x happier with everything apart from what is available in shops.

He said, "People treat you like a person here."

[ChinaBoy]

[cdninkorea]

A friend of mine worked at a rural university in China in 1994 and hated it. No hot water, uninsulated bathroom (showring in cold water in a cold bathroom in winter must've been awful), no Western literature in shops (and pre-Internet to boot), no young women aside from students, which were off-limits (celibate for a year), and no privacy (Monday morning in class: "Oh, teacher! My best friend's second cousin saw you in the supermarket this weekend!")

[Yu_Bum_suk]

[dporter]

I did 16 months at a university in Shanghai. Currently that university is paying 5000-6000 RMB/month plus about 2,500 RMB living allowance (or choice to live in uni provided apt.) The teaching load is about 7-90 minute classes plus keeping a few office hours. Maybe 20 hours per week.

My experience while living and traveling in China was mostly positive. I was often subjected to the foreigner tax when buying items and the random 'hellos' on the street. But nearly everyone I met was wonderful.

While traveling in the Yellow Mountains my friend and I crossed paths with a lady and her daughter. We had nearly no Chinese skills but the lady made gestures for us to follow them. After a short walk we arrived at a small farming house. It appeared that she and her husband were the caretakers of the huge area of land.

They provided us a lunch of bread and fresh fruit. We tried to make small talk but they mostly spoke the local dialect and we only knew a few words of Mandarin. Nevertheless, it was an A+ experience.

Here is a pic of the two:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveinchina/50709459/

I can't comment on Korea, but I think an earlier poster had it right. If you are a solitary person who doesn't mind not being able to communicate a life in rural China might be a great experience.