Interview: Working in China
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After spending 2 years working in China, our guest, Jake, reflects on his experience and gives some advise for those looking to head over to China. He goes over the good, the bad and what kinds of cultural differences you might encounter.
The Game of the Week: Jake talks about a video activity he did with his university students making demonstrative videos and how you can too. With minimal media capabilities (a cell phone, webcam, digital camera or video camera,) you can make your students stars!
September 18th, 2006 at 3:51 am
Hi,
It was very interesting to hear about Jake’s China work experience. I have always thought about it but always thought that the pay was a lot lower than Korea. I guess that it was very little before and it depends on where you are in the country but how does it compare to Korea now?
Good show guys,
Livinginkorea
September 19th, 2006 at 10:20 pm
Well, as with all things it’s hard to be exact when comparing pay rates from China and Korea. As I said, I arrived there in 1999 and was started on 2000 RMB/month (about 240,000won/month) but from chats with other teachers there now I hear the usual rates are about 7000RMB a month (840,000won/month) to 8000RMB/month (960,000won/month). This sounds about only 40% of what salaries usually are in Korea, however whilst I was in China I was working at a University and had private accommodation (a little bigger than Korea; say 18pyeong) with no utilities. No gas, no water, no telephone (except international), no cleaning fees and no electricity bills. On the down side, my accommodation was on campus, and I had a curfew of 1am….this may well have changed, but by making friends with the old guys who acted as “guards” for the building it was rarely ever a problem to be out later. Many Chinese cities shut down a little earlier than in Korea too, so there was less allure to be out too late. Obviously Shanghai and HongKong etc are a bit different in this respect. I was living in a small city (only 3.5 million) called Dalian. I highly recommend it too…clean, green and beautiful beaches. But back to costs. The price of general living (food, restaurants, clothes, transport and so on) was about 60-70% of Korean prices, so you can in fact save up a decent part of your salary. Moreover Chinese Universities also had longer holidays than Korea, and we recieved “holiday bonus pay (extra 10% I recall). I think I had about 4 months in total each year of holidays with 2 long holidays and several shorter 1 week breaks.
The salary you make there still won’t translate into hard currency very well. That’s a fact. But what you can do with it while you are there is live very well indeed, and if you travel within China (it’s a hugely diverse and rich travel ground…I try and visit every year and still feel after 7 visits and 2 years living there that I have barely scratched the surface of what is there to see and do), then you will have no problems with money. So if you are looking to pay off a student loan in Australia, Britain, Canada or USA…it might not be a great idea financially. But as an experience and adventure for people who are less concerned with sending money overseas etc it’s totally worthwhile. Shop around, be smart and honest about why you are teaching (travel job, career, pay off loans, the hell of it, cross cultural aspirations etc) and keep an eye on the internet vis-a-vis salaries. It is a huge huge market with ever increasing pay rates and demand. Like in Korea the higher the qualifications you have the more salary you can negotiate. Good luck, and I hope this was helpful to you.
December 21st, 2006 at 5:32 pm
I really enjoyed the show. Thanks. Paints a much more positive picture of teaching in China than I had previously had picked up from some other places. Great advice about shrugging off misunderstandings that come from cultural differences..