Hi all, I'm currently a teacher in Korea, but I'm looking into moving to China. So far, I’ve heard and seen mixed reviews, but I would love to hear from others teaching in China now, or from those who did the same transition I'm looking to make. Any help is greatly appreciated! ☺️
China is a great place in many ways, and if your school is decent it's an awesome place to teach.
Try to go for a city that matches your needs though. If you want nightlife you'll be miserable in a tier 3 city, for example.
Shame that there aren’t a great deal of decent schools though. Maybe ten throughout the whole country
Depends what you are looking for. I was in a small tier 3 school for years. Pay sucked, but the kids and staff were amazing. It was a great place for my kid to grow up.
Did the reverse order of that……..China advantages: Generally much better savings opportunities (especially if you avoid the expensive options in tier 1 cities). Fresh fruits and vegetables at great prices in markets is nice. Huge range of places to explore and you can get incredible value on transportation and accommodation…….Korea advantages: the country is set up to be WAY more comfortable and accommodating to foreigners. Moving to China from Korea will be frustrating in so many ways. The internet restrictions are infuriating. Finding a reliable VPN and constantly turning it on and off depending on which apps you want to use gets very tiresome. A city like Suzhou will have as many foreign dining options in the whole city as one tiny neighborhood of Seoul. The arts scene is infinitely better in Seoul. These are just a few off the top of my head.
My main goal is to save more so I think China would be good for me. Do you have any recommendations on where to start when it comes to recruiting I want to learn more about the process and the documents I would need.
I’d probably recommend starting with the big companies like Search and Schrole. There are only a few really good schools and they’re quite competitive. You have to tick a lot of boxes to be competitive at places like SAS, WAB, and ISB. Then there are very solid non-profit schools like Concordia, AISG, Nanjing IS, and more. Then you’ve got your for-profit schools that will pay you well but burn you out. Everything listed above can pay very well, but there will be a huge range of quality. Where you should be targeting depends heavily on your CV and experience.
I thought the higher salaries made the disposable income still superior in Shenzen and other T1s? Which city(s) has the most savings potential?
The problem is that it’s almost impossible to find a reputable school outside of Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, or Guangzhou that will pay you more than $60k a year. So you’d be looking at a decent school with some flaws in a rather boring city like Hangzhou International School, or taking your chances on a potential disaster school in a lower tier city like Zhengzhou or Wuhan. Some here will throw out the name of one or two exceptions, but in a country of 1.3b, there are surprisingly few good ones outside of the major cities
Agree overall but there are a lot of bad schools in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou as well. Or jobs in these cities that are quite far from decent areas to live.
You can find good paying jobs in cities that are ok to live in like Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuxi, Suzhou, Tianjin, Nanjing. No need to go as far as the hell of Zhengzhou or Wuhan.
Oh I think I misread your original comment to say, if you avoid t1 cities but you said avoid expensive options in t1 cities
Even inside there’s perhaps five good schools. ISB WAB SAS Concordia. AISG. That’s about it in the tier ones.
Your Suzhou to Seoul example isn't really a good comparison. Go outside Seoul and tell me how much good foreign food you are finding. Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing all have a lot of foreign food options. Seoul is basically it for Korea.
For straight up food, Shanghai > Seoul for the number of options but it is a bigger city, so that should be counted.
Fair enough, but over half of Korea’s population lives in greater Seoul, so I was taking a guess that OP is coming from there. Strongly disagree that Shanghai’s food scene is better than Seoul
I've lived in both places. Shanghai wins hands down for food. It's not even close.
For international food, it’s Seoul and it’s not even close. Seoul has a significantly higher foreign population, and from my experience Koreans have much higher standards for (and interest in) international cuisine. Shanghai’s international food scene was decimated by COVID. I was there. If you’re talking about local food, that’s a different story.
I'm talking about both. Have you been to Shanghai since COVID? I'm guessing not - it is definitely on the up.
In what universe does Seoul have a higher population of foreigners than Shanghai? I’m really curious as Shanghai itself had more top international schools with 1000s of students in them. Sure they don’t have the same diversity as before covid, but still there are tons of schools with legit foreigners. That’s a pretty good sign as there are tons of foreign people without kids.
I know this sub wouldn’t think about it but just the international students alone in China > those in Korea. I get they aren’t eating at over priced foreign restaurants but they do add to the number when you talk about foreigners.
Fun fact: there are a lot of Koreans in cities like Shanghai so you also can find some decent Korean restaurants too.
Nope, I live in Incheon and I go home at 4:30 and don't leave my house all night 🤣.
Incheon has great food man. Not sure if you live in Songdo but the food there is better than most of China.
I do not, but I’m close guess I'll be skinny in china.
This sets you up pretty well then and describes much of my 7 years in China...
I live in Shenzhen, but not in one of the main foreign areas. Our school chat group blew up last week when someone posted that the Indian place 40 minutes away is on the delivery apps. We have an option that isn’t Chinese food (which I love, but eat a lot), KFC, McDonalds, or mediocre pizza. Yay! If this is something that really matters, be really picky about where you live. A few colleagues travel an hour every morning so they can live in a more western area
What? Foreign food in China is a fucking disaster. Shanghai Beijing etc have less foreign options than ten years ago. I couldn’t find a decent sandwich for years in Beijing. Even Hanoi had far far better foreign food options than any mainland Chinese city.
What type of sandwich were you looking for? I think a lot of the best places I’ve learned about in Beijing are through word of mouth.
You can get pastrami at a few places now for example, and their bread game is pretty decent if you know where to look too.
The other person is going to point to one example like Tock’s in Shanghai and say “see! China has tons of good sandwich options.” Covid made much worse an already bad foreign food scene. And most of what’s left feels very “corporate.” Blue Frog, Wagas, Goose Island Brewery, etc.
I taught in Korea then moved to Beijing. They were vastly different experiences but loved both. Happy to message if you have questions 👍🏻
I would love that, thank you!
Some teachers love china. Some hate it. I hated it. If you are at a decent school already i would not give that up for china.
I love my school here in South Korea, but my main goal these days is to save, and it's very difficult due to the high cost of living.
You can make good money in china. The cost of living somewhere like shanghai is extremely expensive. But the higher salaries make that worthwhile. If your current school is hiring then send me a DM and I can apply to work there.
Moving from teaching in South Korea to China has been a really good change for me, especially financially. The cost of living in China is much lower than in South Korea, which means I can save a lot more money.Both countries have amazing cultures, and when it comes to teaching, the basic methods are pretty similar, so I haven't had to completely change how I do things. China is a much bigger country, offering tons more places to explore, and both nations have really good public transportation systems. Of course, each country has its own pros and cons, making my experience in both pretty well-rounded.
I recommend the switch 100%. I am making over 2X the salary I made in Korea, and cost of living is substantially lower, so the money goes way further. I couldn’t ever save in Korea, and I can finally do that in China. Plus, depending on the kinds of schools you apply to, or where you came from in Korea (hagwon vs bilingual vs international) the vacation time is usually longer in China). There’s a lot more to China besides Shanghai and Beijing. I’m in a city I had never heard about before I interviewed at my current school, and to my surprise I absolutely love it. I also find China better for long term growth as a teacher. People tend to stay here for years and settle down. I didn’t find that with Korea. I still find myself daydreaming about Seoul from time to time, it was truly a special place, very unique, but the perks of China outweigh that for me. Never looking back.
In Korea u get 3 to 4 million a month and cost of living is high. In China you get 9 -10 million and the cost of living is ultra low.
Dang thank you I actually don't even make 3 million here 🥲. But I'm excited to see where this china research journey leads me .
Money can be great and the students are awesome in my experience. Travelling around China is very fun, I love the high speed trains
I am leaving China after a few years here, mainly because of the language barrier and the internet and vpn issues being extremely annoying. If I had been able to learn mandarin to a decent level or the internet worked better I would probably stay. It was a great place to start my teaching career and I don’t regret it at all
How many schools have you worked at in China? My experience with the students is that you have a few very high fliers, many middling to mediocre students and then quite a lot of struggling students who are checked out or given up trying. This is across three different schools that I've worked at over the last few years...
Only one but it’s a very mid school in an undesirable city so most reputable international schools would be on this level or better. I do have a lot of mediocre students or those that struggle with English. Is fine by me tho because they are sweet kids with minimal behaviour issues
I’m fine teaching kids who are not super academic, I just don’t like teaching a bunch of assholes
I'm at a school that this sub often paints as a more desirable school and there are definitely some a-hole kiddos there with a lot of behaviour issues. I've heard that's not uncommon at other of these "reputable" international schools because the market in China is dropping so schools are taking families that can pay rather than considering behaviour or learning challenges ..
there wasnt language schools you could study at after classes or on the weekends?
I took some lessons but not enough to get conversational
Culturally China is way more open minded. Never had a "waegooksalam" moment in all my time in China. I am usually asked where I am from and what I do. Never had a kid point and call me out like in Korea. Overall, I feel Chinese just don't care as much about foreigners being in their country as Korea does. (I get the USFK might have something to do with negative feelings in Korea.)
In terms of school culture, can be similar in that you have parents that lose their minds regarding their kid's education, but we have more schools where the culture is more chill than in Korea.
China is just BIGGER. Think about the metro area of Shanghai probably has the entire population of South Korea and it gives you a perspective.
IMO there are also more schools in China than the rest of the region combined.
I agree with you 100% on all points except for the first few sentences. I get waiguoren'd and laowai'd often in the T2 city I live in, far, far, more than I did in Korea. I still agree with the second part of your first paragraph.