The FL doctor is trying to become gainfully employed.  Scarily enough, my time as a PhD candidate is rapidly drawing to a close (with expectations of defending the dissertation sometime in Jan. or Feb.), and I’ve been on the job hunt since last summer.  As such, I’ve recently started to move from the “fill out and send applications” phase to the “job interview” stage.  I’ve done a couple of phone interviews, but this last week I had my first live campus interview, and it was a biggie…  It was in Japan.  Yes, they flew me out to Japan…  Note to self: international travel is always best done on someone else’s dime…

I’m not going to talk about the school or the interview yet, to protect the whole application and candidacy process, and to give my wife and myself sufficient “space” to discuss our options as they arise, however, while I was in Japan I took some notes as to some of the differences that had developed during my nearly 10 years of absence from the country.  The following are observations from a 3-day whirlwind tour, in no particular order:

·         Japanese fashion now apparently dictates heavy eyeshadow, making the majority of the under 40 Tokyo girls look somewhat raccoon-ish…  This is still hands-down better than the “guranguro” look of 10 years ago, wherein they would tan themselves a deep bronze, bleach their hair to a ghastly blond/white, and use white eye makeup.  There was no better word to describe that trend than “stupid.”

·         Ten years ago, phones were all about smallness, daintiness, and cuteness…  Now, they are considerably larger, but considering that is to accommodate as large a screen as possible for all sorts of digital applications such as email, websurfing, and even watching TV, that is both understandable, and quite exciting.

·         I apparently could afford to have an I-Phone in Japan!  The price quoted by a sales rep for a basic phone/data plan was slightly better than the min. price in the US.  A single company, like in the U.S., has a monopoly on I-phone service plans.  What does this tell us about Apple?

·         Tokyo still freaks me out.  In the interceding 10 years, I’ve lived in “real” cities, but the megapolis mindset is still foreign to me in a way that the rest of Japan is not.  Walks down main thoroughfares in Shinjuku (新宿) are, to me, visually more similar to scenes of salmon swimming upstream than to those of people walking down streets.  One literally fights the current of a tidal wave of humanity, no matter what direction one is trying to go in.  Also, the “freak factor” is high, although my time there being mid-week, the number of night-time revelers in the area was nowhere near its weekend peak.  Still, one sees people dressed as if for Halloween randomly interspersed with businessmen and students coming home from cram schools.  Mind you, these people are not street performers – rather, just out for a fun (if unusual) time.

·         The current exchange rate is rather eye-popping, especially from the perspective of having been there a few years ago.  On the subject of exchanging money, never do so in airports.  The rates suck.  It’s much more efficient to withdraw money from ATMs, thereby getting the actual exchange rate of the moment.  I was forcefully reminded of this when I lost around $30 changing a mere $100 to yen and back.  It was a necessary move given my travel plans, but it still hurt…

·         Sushi is ALWAYS better in Japan (as one would expect)…

·         I previously believed that you simply could not get a bad bowl of ramen in Japan.  I was tragically proven wrong at a lunch counter near Shinjuku….

I stumbled across this tonight, and just had to post…

I’ve been offered a marketing position with a foreign company in shanghai, but was shocked to hear that the salary is only 10,000RMB before tax, plus a 1000RMB monthly accommodation allowance.

To me this seems ridiculous, and something not worth even considering, as it’s less than I earn working part-time, just 10hours per week, here in London.

note: The entry is over 3 years old, so the numbers are likely to have shifted, but they’re still illustrative of a point.

I’ve oft come across these incredulous reactions to foreign salaries.  Simply put, if you’re moving to a developing nation, your salary is likely to take a nose-dive.  While there are certain exceptions to the rule (international schools, certain foreign companies and NGOs, and most people who are transferred within their company to a foreign post), typically if you’re recruited from abroad or hired locally, you’ll be dealing with a local(ish) salary.  Oftentimes, the salary is still much better than that of local hires, but compared to salaries in the developed world, they seem outragiously small.  University instructors in some parts of China, for instance, will earn $500 or less per month.  In Thailand, the starting EFL salary is usually in the neighborhood of $800/month.  How can one justify giving up a salary that’s probably 4-8x bigger to move abroad?

The key is to think in terms of 1) quality of life; and 2) the cost of living on the local economy.  The first issue is intensely personal, as the quality and enjoyability of any foreign location depends mostly upon the individual, and may not be something that one can be too sure of before packing one’s bags and going.  However, the cost of living is a factor that is quite researchable.  Friends working in China have often told me that, while their salaries are a mere $750/month, it can feel like a king’s ransom because the cost of living where they are is so low.  As my friend put it, his quality of life there on $750/month was considerably higher than it was in the US making circa $36K/yr. as a high school teacher.  Mind you, this will be goal dependent too.  If you have high savings goals, such work in China would probably not work out, as even if you saved, say, half your paycheck, that still wouldn’t be all that much…  If quality of living is your highest goal, however, often moving to a low cost area will win out.  It’s fairly incredible living in areas where you can eat out for less than $1.

The appeal of this sort of low-cost and low-pay overseas work is largely dependent upon salary potential, and thus age becomes a factor for most.  For instance, when I first worked in Taiwan (many moons ago!), I was only making around $20K/year, which may seem low, but the low taxes (6%!) and low cost of living meant that for years I was both taking home more and saving more of my salary than would have been possible teaching in the U.S.  I calculated at one point, based upon the median teaching salary in the U.S., that it wasn’t until my 3rd year in Taiwan (and 6th year of teaching) that my savings from lower tax rate and absence of insurance premiums made my potential take-home salary in the U.S. actually higher than my take-home in Taiwan…  And even then, with the lower cost of living it was no contest.  At that point in time, I was putting my wife through university, living quite well, and still saving about 1/3 of my paycheck — something that would have been quite impossible for a comparable teacher in the U.S.  Of course, now, given my advanced degrees and many more years of teaching experience, work in Taiwan, sadly, would be a financial loss.  As one ages, and salary potential rises, such positions start to lose their luster….

Thus, if you find yourself, like the writer of the message linked above, wondering whether or not to even consider a job in another country  where the salary seems like peanuts, you need to:

1) Ask yourself what your financial goals are at this stage in life — maintenance or growth?

2) Investigate the local cost of living.  $800/month may not seem like much when you’re in California, but if you’re in a small town in Thailand where renting a two storey town house might put you back as little as $125, and a good meal can cost as little as a quarter, it may actually afford a nice quality of life.

Ultimately, the value of both salary and location are determined by whether or not you are enjoying yourself.  If the place (and job?) truly make you happy, you’ll be content no matter how low the salary; but if you don’t like the area, people, culture, etc., a 6-digit salary is not going to change that…

Prior to living in Mexico I did not have much exposure to Mexicans in my young adult life. In fact, in the town of Pocahontas it is very rare that we see any foreigner at all. In my high school, we typically welcomed one foreign exchange student a year, and they were usually from Europe, where they had already taken English in school and could speak it passably.

When I was dropped off at the home of my host family, I realized that my biggest problem was not speaking but rather listening to a native Spanish speaker. It was all I could do to make sense of what my host dad was saying, which I tried to counter by doing most of the talking. I knew I spoke Spanish very slowly but I tried to convince my listeners that my speech was naturally methodical as a product of my personality and not that I needed more time to think of what to say, even though that was the truth.

A handy list via Vue Weekly.  Good advice all, but I’d hasten to add one thing: get your visa application in early and double triple quadruple-check everything.  I’ve seen ever so many students get tripped up by the sadistically ridiculousness of visa laws.

It’s actually quite surprising to me that it’s taken me this long to get to the subject of teaching in Japan, given that it is hands-down one of the most delightful places that I’ve ever had the opportunity to live and teach in. While I am practically obligated by the laws of family and marriage to give top honors to Taiwan, comparing Taiwan and Japan is like comparing apples and oranges… or apples with tractors is more like it….

Not everyone will agree with me. Japan, unlike most other countries I’ve lived in or traveled through, does not even allow for a ho-hum response. People either passionately like Japan, or they passionately despise it. There’s no middle ground (unless you’re Japanese — whereupon your opinions will obviously be considerably more nuanced). It’s differences with everywhere else on Earth — characterized by social rules and obligations which run counter to the very core of Western thinking — will either be seen as mysterious and inviting or unknowable and threatening. Obviously, I fall into the former category, but I met plenty of Westerners in Japan who were in the latter category.

Japan strikes one as having the same exotic appeal as China, but can be a lot easier to deal with on the level of hygiene. Contrary to popular misconceptions, Japan is not an island of unbroken Tokyo-like metropolitan urban-sprawl. Indeed, a good deal of the country is pristine nature. I worked in a northern town of only 8000 people, with its own ski resort and sprawling rice fields down in the valley. Japan offers a nice mix of the rural and the urban, allowing one to choose the environment which bests suits the individual. The nation is technologically advanced, so one does not leave behind much in the way of creature comforts when one goes there. Actually, some aspects of my standard of living were significantly elevated there — for instance, my toilet seat was heated…. No joke! Japan was the only country I’ve lived in outside of the US where I and most other foreigners whom I knew owned cars as a primary means of transport. Actually, I owned the sweetest car I’ve ever had — a luxury sedan with racing mods — due to some inadvertent mafia ties… but that’s a story for another time… Needless to say, the cars are much more common amongst those living in rural quarters, whereas a lot of the urban-dwelling foreign visitors choose to make due with public transport.

Anyway, on to the particulars of the job. Japan was actually one of the original large-scale recruiters of foreign English instructors, and pretty much sparked that trend in East Asia. Sadly, with the demise of some prominent English teaching chain schools and fairly stagnant EFL teaching salaries, there is not as much demand as there once was, nor is this the “path to riches” that it once was (I’ve been treated to many a story claiming that a good EFL teachers could easily make $50-80K/year back in the heady 80’s, but this seems to have come to a screeching halt by the mid 90’s). Still jobs are readily available, and the money will certainly be enough to live (and save) on.

The standard spots to look, like www.eslcafe.com and www.tefl.com still apply. Standard teaching salaries are usually 250,000yen a month (around US$2500), and one should certainly demand at least that. Salaries usually don’t vary all that much, usually sticking to the 250K-280K range, but what you should be looking closely at is the teaching hours involved (significant ranges here from 12 to 35 hours/week — obviously working fewer hours is a tremendous perk) and whether or not housing assistance is offered. If not, this is likely to be your biggest expense. I’ve seen everything from free, company housing to assisted housing (e.g., my own contract stipulated that my school would pay half of my housing costs — a $300/month value at the time) to nothing. Any sort of pre-arranged housing will be tremendously valuable as this may get you out of paying “key” money — a standard (and pricey!) rental deposit. One should inquire how housing will be arranged before hand. Unless you have highly advanced Japanese language skills, you should, at the bare minimum, hold out for some substantial help from your employer in searching for and negotiating housing.

The minimum qualification for most positions (for visa reasons) is a 4-year university degree (in anything). I’ve heard of some people from the UK getting the run-around due to their 3-year universities, but most locales in Japan seem to be well aware and accommodating of this difference. N. American accents are widely preferred here. No offense to Brits — you guys get the edge in many other countries — but Japan tends to be quite “America-centric,” English-language-wise. Several of my UK colleagues were quite disgruntled to be asked, in all seriousness, to speak more “American.”

There are two particular resources for teaching in Japan that I want to call special attention to. The first is the website www.ohayosensei.com. They publish a bi-monthly newsletter with jobs postings from all quarters of Japan (including some much-coveted non-teaching jobs — there are significant of people who like the country they are in, want to stay, but despise teaching, and are thus highly interested in finding some other way of making a living there). It’s easily one of the best job resources available for Japan.

The second resource is the JET programme. This is billed as the largest human exchange program in the world (they bring over 6000 foreigners to Japan every year), and is truly one of the greatest. This is how I went to Japan, so I may be a little biased here… The hiring season is only 1x per year, so you have to time it correctly, but it’s one of the safest/easiest ways to transition into life in Japan. The salary is a bit higher than the norm, at 300,000yen/month. It is one of the best ways to get outside of the cities, as a large percentage of placement is in rural districts. There are a couple of drawbacks to the program, though. Just about everything is highly flexible (re. “subject to change”) according to individual placement. Some school districts are very helpful and accommodating, and others… not so much.. Often, districts suffer from obvious problems of unrealistic expectations — especially when dealing with their first exchange participant — so they may not realize just how much help a non-Japanese-speaking foreigner will actually need in setting up a life in a new country. Other districts, however, have great track records as far as this goes. Work hours and accommodation also vary accordingly. Some people barely work, and others can barely find enough time to breathe. Some people are required to show up to work even when there are no classes (such as during the summer vacation), and others have no such expectations placed upon them (which basically triples vacation leave). Some people get substantial housing assistance, and others get nothing (although, at least when I was there, the schools are required to find something for you — it’s just an issue of affording it). It’s really the luck of the draw in where you get placed.

For a program like JET, the minimum requirement is a bachelor degree, however previous experience abroad (especially in Japan), Japanese language skills (however minimal), relevant degrees (i.e., English or foreign language related), and teaching credentials and/or experience will all be very kindly regarded.

As compared to MY personal fave, “a vacation from learning.” (HAR!)

Interest in vacations with an academic streak is gaining in popularity. According to a 2006 survey by the Travel Industry Association, 56 percent of travelers said they were interested in taking an educational trip, and nearly 22 percent said their interest was much higher than it was five years previously.

Kaplan defines such excursions as “a vacation in which a credentialed expert provides lectures and/or instruction.” That translates to daily classes or hands-on workshops in the subject of your choice (e.g., foreign language, classical music, art, cooking) held in a select destination (Paris, Shanghai, Santa Fe, etc.). Many programs also pair course work with field trips to food markets, museums, ruins, restaurants and other attractions that provide further illumination.

Foreign language study is perhaps one of the more obvious meeting points between travel and study, but there are many more.  Some countries have learned how to harness their traditions and culture for luring in tourist dollars.  For instance, Thailand has made a killing literally teaching Thai culture in the form of such pursuits as cooking, meditation, martial arts, and massage (no, the legal type!) classes, which one can find across the country on the well-traveled tour routes.  Other countries in SE Asia seem to be following suit.  The rise of eco-tourism has created a cottage industry in ecological/biological-study tours.  Europe has always been a destination of choice for art-lovers, but now some museums and private schools are capitalizing on by offering classes.  Check out your options before you hop a plane, as prices and deals vary.  Also, make sure you get a profile of their main market.  Some of these programs are very much pitched for retiring but still able-bodied baby-boomers, and others cater more to the young backpackers set.  Knowing before you go can make all the difference in how much you actually enjoy the experience.

“It was a really neat experience to see how things work differently in another culture. It was completely different in that their structure of school runs more along the lines of college. School is not the same length every day,” Albert said.
Albert said he is excited to start his fifth year as a teacher at Upper Dublin so he can teach German and share his experiences that he said cannot be found in a textbook.

K-12 teachers and administrators have the ready opportunity to try teaching abroad through the  Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program.  While some of the programs available are admittedly set up more for foreign language instructors (e.g., France and Mexico exchanges require fluency in French and Spanish, respectively), many of the programs require no foreign language experience, and recruit from a range of subjects, such as art, music, history, and science.  The program is rather competitive, so put some effort into your application.

Now, the immediate question which will spring to some people’s minds is, “What’s the benefit for, say, a biology teacher to go teach abroad?”  You’d be surprised…  No matter what your subject expertise, it is always both refreshing and extremely enlightening to be plucked from your familiar surroundings and placed into a new environment.  The advantages of teaching abroad are many.  Teachers of all subjects often report a revitalized interest in their subject matter, or a new-found interest in some sub-area that they encountered during their time abroad.  The changes in school systems, class sizes, classroom deportment, lecture styles, and the like all give teachers fresh ideas to draw upon when they return to the U.S.  Any teachers who are interested in the possibility of participating in a foreign exchange program, I’d highly encourage you to click the links above!

So you wanna learn a language?  Just go to a country where it’s spoken…  That’s the ticket!

Sounds reasonable, right?  Most of the time it would be sound advise, but one needs to take some care in selecting that destination, because not all countries are “created equal” — so to speak — when it comes to language learning opportunities.

Case study: Saudi Arabia, which one would suspect would be a great place to learn Arabic.

Stine Haeatta came to work in the Kingdom eight months ago. She thought it would be easy to learn Arabic in any Arab country, but she was wrong.

“I’m interested in learning Modern Standard Arabic but I don’t know where to take lessons,” she said.

According to Al-Faisal International Academy (AIFAC) General Director Ahmed Al-Taweel, there are no special schools available in the Kingdom that teach Arabic because demand for the classes is restricted to well-paid foreign workers.

Besides the lack of established programs, colleagues who have worked in the Gulf say that countries like UAE and Saudi are terrible for Arabic learning because of the very social structure of the countries.  Most natives (i.e., the people who speak Arabic) spend most of their time in familial settings, and it’s difficult to actually create opportunities to interact.  Most of the natural interactions with natives that occur in most other countries — e.g., conversations with store clerks and other service industry professions — won’t happen here as most service industry jobs are manned by people from other countries.  By and large, most who have worked in that region say that there is zero incentive to learn Arabic there, and in fact, that if one wanted to learn any language in the Gulf, it would be most useful to learn Urdu, Tagalog, or Indonesian (and thus be able to practice with the majority of store clerks and the like).  Fortunately, there are plenty of other options for Arabic learning, but it is telling that many of the journalists and other ex-pat workers who do speak Arabic learned in either Egypt or one of the countries in the Levant.

Other countries have similarly poor reputations for (certain) language learning.  While some people obviously do manage to learn Dutch, many students I’ve talked to who have studied in the Netherlands have said that it’s extremely hard to learn there, simply because the English proficiency level of the general public is so high, unless you come over with very high Dutch skills, it can be difficult to get anyone to maintain interaction in Dutch for any length of time.  Many have been severely disappointed in the rate of their learning, and it takes a lot of will-power not to succumb to the temptation to merely be lazy and to converse in English with those around you (which, by and large, many or most of the Dutch are perfectly willing and able to do).  Malaysia has a disappointing reputation for entirely separate reasons.  Apparently instruction in Bahasa Malay is both hard to come by and extremely expensive.  I don’t know what the official government response is, but in Malaysian circles, most admit that it is at least in part a move to prevent any Christian (or other) missions work amongst muslim Malays.  The stupid part of the policy is the fact that any budget-minded missionaries can still go right next door to Indonesia or Singapore and learn without such restrictions, so if that is indeed part of the thinking in the artificial restriction of Malay language learning, they are simply cutting themselves off from some easy revenue.

Research carefully before you take off to the wild unknowns for language study.  Before getting on a plane, you want to make sure that your chosen destination will truly facilitate your language plans.

I saw the following list on ESL Daily of the top ten things to pack when going abroad to teach English, and I just had to add my own items to the list… Based on my time abroad, the “necessities” are:

1) Deodorant soap: In all my travels, I have only once come across any known brand of deodorant soap outside of N. America (that one time, for the record, was in an import shop in Bangkok — and it was horribly overpriced).  You can find hand soap, face soap, shower gels, etc., but apparently if you want something to stop general body funk, you’re out o’ luck.  Now when I go abroad, I literally pack cases of Irish Spring.  This site’s own Tekkie Boy also shipped me cases more than once during my travels.

2) Deodorant: Yes, I know this is linked on the afore-linked article, but I needed to point out, for the record, that if you’re not choosy, this is an item that you can purchase in most city locales.  However, antiperspirant-deodorant doesn’t seem to be sold anywhere outside of the US and Canada.  Thus, if you just wanna smell decent under your arms, you’re good anywhere, but if you want to actually stop (or limit) the sweat, you’d better pack it.  Also note that in most places outside of N. America, any deodorant you’re likely to find is the spray-on variety, so if you prefer a stick or gel, pack.  This, once again, is where I owe Tekkie Boy a debt of gratitude for occasional Right Guard shipments…

3) Dictionaries: both local language and English… Trust me…

4) Dr. Pepper: curiously hard to find outside the U.S., and if you’re an absolute junkie, like yours truly, it’s well worth it to bring a supply.

5)  Extra clothes: This will depend on you and where you go…  However, if you are on the larger side of the population, certain locations (East Asia, I’m looking at you!) will be nightmarishly difficult to buy clothes in.  I spent about a year and a half in comically too-small-in-the-wrong-places pants due to running afoul this recommendation in Taiwan.  If you are average or small-sized, you can largely ignore this, but be sure to check online about clothing costs in your destination before you go.  Some places have the best deals on Earth, and in some places it will always be cheaper and easier to have items shipped from home.  Note: many petite women absolutely adore shopping in Korea/Japan because they find that the peak fashion items fit they perfectly.

6) Books (or an e-reader): As listed on the ESL Daily list…  You’ll go nuts without something to read in any location where you are not already fairly proficient in the local language.  My observation: after about a year in Japan, I panicked to notice that my English was actually deteriorating to the point of having trouble recalling any word more than two syllables long.  Prolonged usage of “teacher English” (slow and simple) was the culprit.  The way to combat this, and to give you mind some intellectual stimulation from repeating the same introductory conversations 100x each day is to read read read read read!

Packing needs definitely vary by person and destination.  Also, don’t overlook traveling companion impact on the packing list.  I traveled across four continents for a period of 6 years with only two suitcases, a (smallish) backpack, and two small boxes (mostly books) which I would ship ahead to places when I moved.  To this date, I still haven’t quite figured out how this happened, but when I got married, the next time I moved abroad I suddenly had acquired 400kg of shipped freight!  Sigh!  Pack light while you can….

Today I move into “dangerous territory,” by commenting on teaching English in a country where I’ve never taught before. Still, I did it before when I commented on teaching in Korea, and I arguably know a lot more on China than I do on Korea, so here goes…

China’s very name conjures up mystery. To most north Americans, China is figuratively and literally the other side of the world. It’s a place that was almost synonymous with the unreachable ends of the earth when I was growing up, but China’s economic and cultural emergence, combined with a relative decline in airline costs, has actually made China quite accessible. To the aspiring English teacher, China can be an immensely enjoyable location for teaching. Most surprisingly, recently, China has even become an increasingly profitable place to teach….

It used to be that about the only place you could ever expect to land a teaching job in China was at universities. The salary reeked — it was capped at 6000yuan ($750)/month at the time — and most people got much, much less (I knew those who taught for as low as 2000yuan/month). One was, in effect a government employee, and the salary rates were fixed by the (usually regional) government. Outside employment was frowned upon, but many teachers would teach private lessons on the side. The salary, while low by outside standards, still afforded a reasonable living for most, but aside from missionaries, most people teaching there approached it with “the year off” attitude, realizing that an extended stay in China would only hamper their ambitions to ever make “real money.” Some of the early travelers have stories in the Marco Polo realm of adventure. A former professor of mine taught in the western hinterlands in the 80’s, where she took to bathing only 1x week because it involved bringing water in from a well and heating it over a stove. The bath would ultimately take 4-6 hours to complete. Fortunately, everyone else in her village bathed about as much… Many a foreign teacher has told wild tales of being followed and even detained by government agents in the 80’s and 90’s.

Well, much has changed! Just in the last 10 years, there has been a literal explosion in the amount of jobs available to foreign English teachers. If you look at job boards like this, 80%+ of the jobs on offer are in private language schools, most of which pay a lot more than the 5000RMB/month which still seems to be the base price for foreign university lecturers these days. Two major seismic shifts have occurred which have put Chinese salaries on par with those elsewhere in Asia: 1) the privatization of the English-teaching game has made salaries of 8000-12,000RMB/month commonplace in some big cities. Just a few years ago, to see 8000RMB/month listed in an ad was eye-popping. Now it’s pretty much the minimum in places like Beijing and Shanghai (where, admittedly, price of living is a lot higher). Some private schools will even list 14-16,000RMB, but generally, if you read the fine print, that’s predicated on working some heavy hours. Quite a few people, whose goals are less mercenary, and are more inclined merely to go to “see China,” are much more content with the lower-paying, but also time-demanding, university jobs; 2) the recent devaluation of the dollar has had a major effect of raising the value of the Yuan. Previously, for years, the rate was pegged at roughly 8.2yuan/dollar, but now it’s 6.84 or so…

One of the high perks of working in China is that just about every position comes with accommodation included, so that salary that you get, goes further than one would think. Some positions will also include generous vacation time and a contract completion or flight bonus. There’s much more to quality of a job than mere salary, of course!

China, thus, is getting competitive with Taiwan, and even with Korea, in terms of teaching salary and jobs available, but, of course, as a huge country, it offers much more in terms of geographic/regional diversity. I would highly recommend doing some serious study of the country before blindly accepting any job. As the options are just short of endless, it’s good to start with an idea of WHERE (i.e., what region) you want to be, and then to narrow down your employment options from there.

What qualifications do you need? This is where China is great for the new teacher… Typically a BA/BS will be ample qualification for a native speaker– even at most universities. A few universities have started demanding relevant master degrees (such as Shantou University), but these are still relatively rare (and typically due to a relationship with one or more universities abroad). Some private schools have started asking for TEFL certificates, but usually this is simply a preferred qualification rather than a prerequisite.

“But I don’t speak Chinese…” True, this would be daunting, but most who have lived/worked there report that (good) schools and universities actually take very good care of their foreign teachers, and many students — especially at the universities — seem to live for the opportunity to help new teachers to find their way around. Surprisingly to me, most teachers I’ve met who have worked in China actually learned very little Chinese, but nonetheless reported very positive experiences all around. China’s obsessive drive at English learning is legendary in TEFL circles, and even yours truly, on a conference trip to China, was deluged with offers from students and random people to guide me around the city where I was staying. People were quite friendly, and eager both to practice their English and to make a positive impression on visitors (and, I’m afraid, often a little disappointed to realize that I could speak fluent Chinese).

All in all, China’s a hot location for EFL teachers at the moment. Check out this review. Anyway, if you’re interested in seeing China, now seems to be an opportune time to try it out…