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TEFL contracts in China
From Wikigogy
This page is about TEFL contracts in mainland China specifically. Contracts in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan may differ in some ways.
Contents |
Rules of thumb
Guanxi
The first thing to know is that the value of any contract in China depends heavily on the quality of your interpersonal bonding to your supervisors and general relationship to colleagues. Chinese society is about trading favors -- favors are the true currency, the real money. Help folks out here and, when you're in a pinch, they will go to the wall for you. It's that simple. If 15% of folks won't return the favor, the other 85% will. A good number of foreign teachers get stuck worrying about how much money somebody is making off their backs and ignore this invisible but very real and critical dimension of Chinese society. Obviously, they end up disgruntled. Others expect to be treated like heads of state on an official state visit: they don't do too well here either. If you do nothing else properly, be sure to earn yourself a reputation for being "kindhearted" here -- a term we use all too rarely in English.
Fuzzy
The English wording of contracts will be fuzzy in places because they are drafted by second language speakers of English and not because of bad faith. That said, most schools will be open to negotiating extra clauses.
Honesty
While you may make more money in the private sector, that sector has a higher share of employers who exercise honesty with utmost moderation and you would have to go to the courts to secure redress. Going to court is tedious and treacherous anywhere.
When you divide your salary by the number of hours you have to put in, you will instantly see that you are earning less in the private sector, against which employers you have no redress except the courts in the event of any dispute.
Visa
Unless your employer is a public university, do not enter China on an "L" tourist visa; be sure you fly out from home on a "Z" visa. If you make this mistake you will probably be fired when your "L" visa expires and, if caught working on a tourist visa, you risk a fine and immigration ban lasting several years.
Note that the vast majority of private schools lack a license to import non-native employees. Any private school that tells you to enter on a tourist visa - which they swear they can convert - is probably lying and will simply let you go when the visa expires after explaining your Z visa application has been denied.
Laws and customs of China
Public university contracts have a clause about respecting the "laws and customs" of China that may trigger alarm in the casual reader. In plain English, that means:
- China is legally incorporated as a republic, just like France or the USA: republics separate church and state, so do not confuse lectern and pulpit and you'll be fine here.
- Do not seduce your students: do not get your meat where you get your bread & butter.
- Avoid direct confrontation with everybody -- if you feel like exploding in somebody's face, find an excuse to walk out of the situation courteously and find a middleman to plead your case.
- Don't mess with the politics -- if you have this deep need to stand up for the human rights of the Great Unwashed, there are plenty of oppressed minorities in your own country that desperately need your immediate attention. Note too that the 2010 Pew Global Attitudes Survey found that 87% of Chinese think their country is "going in the right direction" against 30% for the USA; China's closest competitor is Brazil at 50% and the USA just beats Egypt at 28% (see http://pewglobal.org/database/?indicator=3&response=Satisfied).
- Feel free to extol the virtues of your country of origin but if you disparage China, don't expect anyone to like you. Same applies to aliens anywhere.
- As a rule, you can get away with one big mistake; if you bloop up twice the same big way, please expect smiling silence when you ask about renewal of your contract.
- More generally, do nothing you wouldn't want your mom and spouse to learn of: Chinese society is based on strong social networking and news travels fast. Contrary to media lore, the Chinese love gossip more than secrets. Had Dante been raised here, he would have added one more department to his Inferno: a job with Chinese counterintelligence.
- It is not beneath you to pick up a minimum of local language skills.
Listen, learn and adjust
Being a good teacher means being a good learner: listen for feedback and work it into your game plan.
When you give feedback in the classroom about one student, phrase it as general advice to everyone, and underscore by distributing eye contact among all your students.
Have regular lunches/dinners with class monitors. They can be precious allies in all manner of ways. Ask for, and listen carefully to, their feedback, which will almost invariably re-express negative feedback in positive suggestions.
Be careful to structure any extracurricular activities so that they will not cause financial burden to students from low-income families. Either they will have to scrimp for days and weeks to participate, or you will be leaving them by the wayside, thereby adding to their academic handicaps.
Primary employer
Selecting a public university as your primary employer has benefits: in case of a dispute, document your case and go to the foreign experts bureau of your local provincial education ministry. If you have a case, those folks will come down hard on your school. Using the university as your platform, you can then take on extra hours at CNY 100-150/hour with various private schools. Your contract will prohibit such moonlighting; in practice, the public university will not care so long as it causes zero interference with the teaching schedule it has assigned you. Your university will even like it because it gives them a handle on you and most private schools realize that any interference with your university schedule will kill the golden egg-laying goose that you are.
Life experience counts
Life experience counts as much as academic qualifications. Your employers have direct experience of the Cultural Revolution that sent student geniuses and classroom duds to work the land. There is also great respect for age because of the life experience it incarnates. The important thing is your potential to communicate and any detectable, earnest desire to share you can manifest.
Terms and conditions
Typically, a public university will require 16 to 20 hours per week of teaching. Classroom hours will be 45 or 50 minutes long. Contracts may be for one or two semesters, lasting 18 weeks each. Contracts may cover more than one year in theory but in practice, both parties prefer to keep each other on short leashes.
Some universities offer 10-month "academic year" contracts that leave you unpaid two months a year; others will pay you over the holiday if you roll over the contract for the next year. This is non-negligible: the university academic year has about 17 weeks off per annum.
The baseline is a monthly salary, free flat and utilities, a "travel allowance" of CNY 2,200/year and one international return ticket per year from the university to your country of origin/residence for a one-year contract and half as much for a half-year contract.
Actual salary runs anything from CNY 3,000 to CNY 8,000 per month, depending on age, degrees, province and actual university. For a first job, CNY 4,000 is nice to aim for (USD 1.00=CNY 6.83). The big salaries are in first- and second-tier cities with all the hype and stress of Paris, London and Rome; the lower salaries are in poorer, far more authentic provinces where you will be teaching students from low-income rural families that need your talents way more than the offspring of the nation's wealthiest. Your call.
However, if you bring up terms & conditions early in the negotiations, you will turn off your employer: Chinese like to invest in interpersonal relationships and if you set yourself up as looking greedy, only the greedy will hire you. You will regret that.
Conclusion
Secure a public university as your primary employer. Arrive in China on a "Z" visa. Trust your social skills more than your reading of the employment contract and network intensely on campus -- the Chinese are very forgiving of mistakes so long as you show you are trying sincerely. If you need to save souls, rescue the oppressed from themselves and/or seduce students, forget about China.
A personal note
Chinese students have been the most rewarding teaching experience and I, Arthur Borges, have been teaching for 30+ years across Sweden, Finland, France and Hong Kong. This is a low-stress job in a low-crime country. The salary may look low, but CNY 4,000 is 12 times what the average farmer earns and four or five times what a first-time job-seeking college graduate earns inland or almost twice what they make in Shanghai, Beijing or Shenzhen; moreover it is all disposable income thanks to the free housing & utilities and taxfree status up to CNY 5,000/moth.
Not every day is an easy one in lots of little peevy ways, but you learn something new here every day. With curiosity and a sense of humour, you will make lifelong friends in China and learn to make sense of life in fascinating new ways. This is definitely one place to be in our era.
