Reality check PLZ

November 30, 2006 1:58 PM

Teaching English in Shenzhen, China

I'm trying to help a non-Mefite friend find out as much as possible about teaching English in China. I found this job listing for him and it looks pretty good. However he's just graduated from college (creative writing major) and has no experience with ESL teaching or life in China.

He has taken a year of Mandarin and a couple of China-related classes in college, and he's always wanted to see Asia, so he's understandably excited about this job. He'd be working for this company in Shenzhen. Do any of you Mefites have experience with this ACES organization, and if so would you recommend it? What sort of pitfalls should he watch for in signing up for this? For example, I've seen various reports on being hired to work 20 hours a week and actually having to work upwards of 40 hours a week.

He also would like to take his computer with him (a Mac mini, two external drives, and an LCD monitor). Would this pose a problem? What can he expect from Chinese Internet service?

Any other advice on working in Shenzhen, daily life in China, visas, etc. would be wonderful as well.

posted by azuresunday to work & money (17 comments total)

If he plans to travel, or even just to visit Hong Kong or Macau more than once or twice, it may be worth getting a multiple entry visa.
posted by subtle-t at 2:17 PM on November 30, 2006

Well, Hong Kong is about an hour away from Shenzhen by train, so he will hopefully be going there more than once or twice. I know this because I was in Shenzhen last week - on a day trip from Hong Kong.

I can't comment on ACES or teaching English but I can say that Shenzhen struck me as a very industrialized city, along with the attendant pollution and smog. It went from being a small village of 30k people into a city of 6 million people in...25 years! So, everything is new. Its not "old China" by any stretch. Also, someone with me was lugging around his iBook - I dont think your friend bringing over his computer is any problem.

Minor Googling on ACES seems to show generally ok experiences such as this one but hopefully someone here on Mefi has direct experience.
posted by vacapinta at 2:26 PM on November 30, 2006

As my father was an ex-pat in HK, I went to HK and shenzhen quite frequently.

I wouldn't want to work in Shenzhen, let alone live there. Even moreso if your friend has no idea what life is like in mainland China. Shenzhen is full of people looking to make a quick buck, counterfeits, and scammers. If your friend can, make sure they live away from the train station (they might want to figure out the best place to live) and the place they live has decent security. (Hopefully its a dormitory run by the company)
posted by mphuie at 4:32 PM on November 30, 2006

I can put you or your friend in touch with someone who just got back from teaching English in Shenzhen for two years.

Feel free to email me at the address in my user profile...
posted by killdevil at 4:46 PM on November 30, 2006

I should mention that she was in a very similar situation when she went over. Just out of school, no ESL background, no Mandarin, never been to Asia, etc.
posted by killdevil at 4:49 PM on November 30, 2006

I lived in Shenzhen for four years. It's not as bad as what mphule says. I quite liked it, and Guangdong in general is pretty sweet. If you want to email me, find my profile and get the email.
posted by taschenrechner at 5:14 PM on November 30, 2006

Meh, it's fine. It is true that some companies will work you more than the indicated 20 hours, but once you have your resident visa, who's going to stop you from quitting? It's not like there is any mechanism to take them back once they are issued. ACES seems to be no worse or no better than any company and chances are your friend will get several job offers to go elsewhere after arriving, so he can pick and choose after checking things out.

Shenzen is a fairly modern Chinese city. That can be good (decent housing, convenient transportation, running hot.cold water 24/7...) and that can be bad (crowds, pollution, noise, smells...). It is an excellent place to strike out from on get-aways. Guangdong is formerly known in the west as Canton, yes, you guesses it, home of Cantonese. This means that the man on the street probably speaks Mandarin as a second or third language, but all the school will teach it, all the signs will be the same, etc.

Hong Kong is a hop skip and jump away, and that is great. HK is basically a modern, cool cosmopolitan (and very western) city. Additionally you can get cheap (as in under $50) flights from HK to the whole of Asia. So jetting off to the beaches of Thailand or Bali or the Philippines is easy to arrange.

Internet service is ok, not great, not horrible. There is the Great Firewall, but that doesn't seem to have slowed down too many determined foreigners. Mac services may be harder to comeby, this is a PC country, though HK may offer anything he needs.
posted by Pollomacho at 5:45 PM on November 30, 2006

I'll stay out of this one as much as possible because it's directly related to my job posting [that was also my expat interview], but:

vacapinta: the air is much, much better here than anywhere else I've been in China, at least compared to the other places I've spent time in. I chose Shenzhen over Shanghai almost solely because I was told there was mountain climbing and blue skies here. I'd say it's on par with LA, which is bad for America but good for China.

Also, our program is based in the Nanshan / Shekou area, hardly an industrialized part of town. I'm sure you saw the big silly landlocked cruise liner when you were here. Yeah, that's our stomping ground. That and Bai Shi Zhou [remember the ridiculous Eiffel Tower replica?].

Pollomacho: This is probably the only city in the south where Mandarin holds weight as the "common language." It's an immigrant city. Everyone has their own local dialect so almost everyone uses Mandarin on a daily basis to communicate with others. The accents can be a bit thick sometimes though.

I've met exactly two people who are from Shenzhen. Maybe 20% of the people I know are from Guangdong. I'd say Cantonese takes a back seat to Sichuanhau, at least in my neighborhood. There's a surprisingly large number of immigrants from the north [especially the far north], like my roommate, who are all native Mandarin speakers.

mphuie: ... snobby Hong Konglians always looking down on us Mainlanders :-)
posted by trinarian at 9:27 PM on November 30, 2006

sloppy editing... sorry
posted by trinarian at 9:27 PM on November 30, 2006

Vacapinta's link is to an interview with mefi's own trinarian, whose excellent blog details his experiences with ACES in Shenzhen.

I'd also love to hear from anyone who taught ESL overseas just out of school. About the only thing holding me back from trying this myself is wondering how well a few weeks of training can acclimatize someone with little teaching experience.

Best wishes to your friend -- he sounds well prepared enough to have a great time!
posted by ellanea at 9:30 PM on November 30, 2006

Beaten to the punch! While you're around, Trinarian -- what's ACES training like? (Great pics on the blog, BTW!)
posted by ellanea at 9:31 PM on November 30, 2006

ellanea: I think is a weaker spot in our program. We have kind of a "get de-jet lagged/get oriented" type week [or more] where we show you around and let you observe classes and talk to the other teachers before throwing you into the fire. For most people this is fine. They get a feel of what the classroom is going to be like and what techniques they could see themselves wanting to work with.

I know Stavros disagrees [he's made a big issue that TEFL teachers should all be certified by independent groups or get out of Asia], but this isn't the most demanding work. In fact, the headmasters of my latest school asked me to make my lessons less serious/difficult a few months ago. They'd rather me play a game of 20 Questions and gung-fu fight the kids between classes than pretend to be a real teacher like one of them.

Having been a high school teacher in America without ANY training beyond a stack of papers outlying expectations and supportive coworkers, I'm of the belief that being a good teacher is more about personality anyway. I might be biased.

Thanks for the kind words about my blog.
posted by trinarian at 10:31 PM on November 30, 2006

From a real, live Shenzhen-ren. A lot of Hong Kong people have a ridiculous fear of Shenzhen. To hear them tell it, you'd be lucky to be there 20 minutes without being beaten up and robbed.

Granted, Shenzhen is not everyone's cup of tea. I wouldn't put it in the top 200 places to live in the world. That said, you can make a good living here, and travel around to all the other cool places in the region on your vacations. To say that SZ is 'full of' scammers, counterfeiters and people trying to make a quick buck offends the hell out of me. It's just not true. SZ has all of those things, and probably in a higher concentration than in an average city. But it's not dangerous, especially when compared to most any western city of comparable size. HK'ers are just wimps, I guess.

Anyway, if I were in your friend's position, I would come to SZ if I wanted to come to China but needed to make sure I made good money. It's not too difficult to pull in $1,000-$1,500USD a month here, with little experience. You can also make that much in a more 'traditional' type city, like say.. Chengdu, Xi'an, Nanjing, Hangzhou. But it would be harder to find, especially with no experience. If he has to worry about student loans, or other debts, that might be necessary.

If I didn't *need* to make that kind of money, and I was fine scraping by on $4-600 a month (very easy to find almost anywhere in China and very easy to live on), I would highly recommend a different city, to experience a less westernized, more traditional lifestyle.

The best things about SZ: location, job market, lots of educated people, less provincialism than most Chinese cities, never gets too cold, pollution level is better than most any other city of comprable size (better than HK), wide variety of great Chinese and non-Chinese restaurants. Oh, and hot women.

The worst things about SZ: non-standard Mandarin (weird accent), large parts are anonymous, boring industrial wastelands, stinking hot and humid weather, lack of history and tradition, commerce-centered culture. Oh, and crazy women.
posted by bluejayk at 11:06 PM on November 30, 2006

got an email, bluejayk? It's not in your profile. We now have three confirmed MeFites in the Pearl River delta. We should have a meetup.
posted by trinarian at 11:27 PM on November 30, 2006

I know Stavros disagrees [he's made a big issue that TEFL teachers should all be certified by independent groups or get out of Asia]

That's not a fair characterization of what I've said in the past. I have said that there are good and bad teachers among both the certified and the uncertified, but that someone who actually considers themselves to be a teacher rather than a parachutist and has undergone the time and expense to get certs is *probably* more professional. I've said further that here in Korea, certified, experienced teachers are a tiny subset of the entire cohort. Because they are so rare, I've probably met more good teachers here who were uncertified than were. I've also met people with Master's degrees out the proverbial who couldn't teach their way out of a paper bag.

When it comes to teaching EFL to children -- young ones in particular -- I think a love of and empathy towards kids, some skills in managing groups of them, and happy energy are as important as anything else. But I don't and rarely have taught children, so.

In fact, the headmasters of my latest school asked me to make my lessons less serious/difficult a few months ago.

I can't say much about China, but in Korea, the private schools (hagwons, variously romanized) are run most frequently by people who haven't got a fucking clue about education, and are concerned first, foremost and usually exclusively with maximizing the number of students, and therefore their revenues. If that means that the kids aren't actually learning anything (but that their parents believe that they are, and keep paying), that's just fine.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:05 AM on December 1, 2006

Personally, I would either go to a more glam city like shanghai, or HK, or somewhere a little more different, like Harbin. Location is key. It will probably have a larger affect on his experience than his (initial) employer.

Also, the teaching market in china is fairly liquid. If you show up and you don't like your gig, quit, find a new job.

Internet is 'fine' in any major city in the east. But websites with servers in Europe or NA are slower.
posted by nazca at 7:07 AM on December 1, 2006

hey, trinarian, my profile is updated with me e-mail, drop me a line if you're in SZ anytime soon.
posted by bluejayk at 12:29 AM on December 2, 2006