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Showing posts from February, 2019

Another setback?.....

Got a voice message this morning from…my prospective employer.  "Busy at the moment, can't make the meeting".  How do I feel?  Well a bit disheartened to be honest...I have so many good Chinese friends on WeChat, but when it comes to business, my experiences so far lead me to believe that business in China is a whole different thing . :o/  Dog eat dog.  People don't seem to have a value, they are not important.

A temporary setback?

Well I sat at my desk and waited.  Nothing happened, so I waited.  Finally I gave in andd returned to the house to make my dinner.  Sherwood's Chicken Tikka - yuk! Popped a message over to my prospective employer.  He was still 'engaged'.  Started to wonder whether all employers don't really care.  Arranged a meeting for tomorrow.  We shall see!

The light at the end of the tunnel continued...

So I am sitting at my desk waiting for the final discussions regarding my back up job.  I have met the interviewer before, and talked briefly about the job.  The details of the job are from a friend who used to be a job agent. Soon I will see what offers are made.

What I learned...

Firstly I have learned that you have to read Chinese job offers carefully.  The wages you are offered are not necessarily the ones you will get.  The contracts generally consist of several parts: Hours per week teaching Hours per week office hours Base wage Bonus Accomadation Flight re-reimbursement ..and not everything is what it seems. Not every job offer consists of all parts.  Some offers are pre-tax, some are post-tax, some include an accommodation allowance in the base salary but refer to it elsewhere, making it the base salary look very competitive.  Some give free accommodation, shared or single.  There are lots of variables and you have to ask lots of questions.

The light at the end of the end of the tunnel...

In the course of my Chinese study, I had helped a lot of Chinese people to better their English.  I told them what had happened and one thing led to another and I got several interviews.  I finally picked one from the many choices and moved forward.

No job, spring semester already about to begin....

Finally on 26th February, I got my answer.  There was no job for me in China.  Age and time was against me.  The strangely named 'Foreign Expert Scheme' would only accept Foreign Experts until the age of 60.  I was getting close.  I needed to find something and hopefully find it quickly.

Things start to go wrong.

So it should have been simple, famous last words!  All I had to do was get my documents verified by a local notary, the Foreign and Commonwealth office and the Chinese Embassy.  Simples!  On , no! The college I went to no longer existed, and my teacher training college no longer existed, but I carried on regardless and by the end of December, all of my documents were 'Chinese legal'.  I imagined I was on the home straight.  I wasn't.  To cut a long story short, I was eventually told, at the end of February, that my contract would not be honoured due to 'insurance difficulties' connected with  my age.

The beginnings

Well it all seemed good.  I had broken into the Chinese Job market and had a number of offers.  I had researched thoroughly and picked my first choice from the first four or five offers I had been made.  I wanted out of the big cities and off the beaten track.  I wanted an official company rather than a random 'job agent', and finally made my choice. 

The First Steps

How it all started. Well it all started when I left teaching and started to work in a supermarket.  I got a little bored and decided to do something with my time. Wherever I had lived there had always been a Chinese 'chippy' , but very rarely had I met or even seen Chinese, and even when I saw them I noticed that they were always in big groups and always talking in Chinese.  "What if I started to learn Chinese?  So I did.  Ten minutes a day on an excellent app called 'Hello Chinese'.  Then I put my profile up on italki and from there made many friends all over China.  The idea was to speak Chinese and listen to English, but the plan did not work out like that!  I was fascinated with what I heard and have listened to many tales from china.  I needed to visit.  After many conversations with my family, I decided to enrol on a TEFL course, passed it and started to look for jobs.  The world was my lobster.