Knobcottage in China

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.

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.

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. 

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.