First of all, best of luck in looking for a teaching job. Look on the jobs website here on EChina and the best thing you can do is apply for all that you are interested in. Unfortunately many schools are prejudiced about appearance, but you never know. There might be such a shortage, especially for teaching children, that you will get something.

Also, should add, a lot of places think if you are a woman, you are only good for teaching children!

Good luck with your search.

try up North in Mudanjaing . They are not so picky and have a lot of Korean decent people there. You might find your heritage works for you there. good luck to you

Thanks for the advice, however I am moving to Guangzhou because my boyfriend is living there and I will be living with him.  Any other advice is very welcome!  

just keep asking questions about any work place you are interested in !! There is no such thing as a stupid question when it comes to working in China, more for your own peace of mind than anything else.

Look at colleges instead of training centers, if possible. In Guangzhou, I got accused of being Asian... and I don't think I look Asian at all...

You won't have difficulty finding a teaching job....lots of non-native teachers who are teaching here who can't even speak english. There is also some people who've never stepped a foot on a college campus. I'm pretty sure you are more qualified than they are..

Look at the daily job adverts here, and keep sending your CV to the Schools in Guangzhou. Chinese like white Caucasian, blue eyes, and so on, which they consider Native English speaker/teacher.  

As soon as you'll find School willing to hire you, you might need to return to USA , and get Z visa, which is the only right visa for working in China. If you're lucky, you might also pick it up in Hong Kong.

Schools listed in the web link are Public Schools authorized to hire foreigners in China:

http://www.anesl.com/schools/info.asp?province=Guangdong&keyword=Univers...

You can change 'keyword' (or 'Province') to the level of School you desire.

Good luck!

As a Chinese Canadian with a Z visa i was told there would be prejudice against me at a English training center because i did not look like a foreigner. 

Chinsum, were you able to find teaching work?

Do you also have a degree, which is required for working in China?

Yes, I do.  And I just finished the TEFL.

Forget about the normal English teaching. Contact companies like English First, New Dynamic and others, and ask about corporate training. It's more interesting than English teaching, you work with professionals in their workplace (mostly foreign owned corporations) and you only need to impress foreign owned human resources departments instead of Chinese parents.

Unfortunately, your boyfriend is right. This is also true in Japan, South Korean and SE Asia. You'll find Russians, Spanish or Polish with no qualifications, non-existent pedagogic skills and poor level of English getting hired thanks to the fact that they look Caucasian, while qualified and experienced English native speakers who look Asian will have difficulties being hired.

If your network is too small, you'll be lucky if you find a part-time teaching job with a salary much lower than what would have been offered to Whites or Blacks (who already get paid less) for the same job and tasks.
Like Traveler said, try to broaden your search. Don't just focus on teaching at schools. I am part Asian and not a native English speaker and my ex'-girlfriend introduced me to people working in foreign companies in Beijing to train them in English.

Don't try to find any reasoning or logic in this issue. There is none. This is China. Welcome! 

I will definitely expand my search.  Do you happen to know of any recruitment agencies that could help me?  Legitimate ones?  I understand that my salary may not be very high due to my appearance.  I just really want to be able to work, even if it is part-time. 

Any help is appreciated!  Thank you!

Universities or world-wide organisations will look more favourably upon you. They have a little more 'tolerance' and more lee-way when it comes to hiring. EF, Wall Street, Disney all have upper-management overseas that may not look too kindly on their schools turning good candidates down in one country, which may make for bad press in other countries. Also, they tend to be a bit more 'cosmopolitan', and thus know that what makes a good English teacher has little to do with ancestry.

However, those schools often suck! (disclaimer: I do know a few ppl who work for such schools, and they're somewhere between content and happy...)

Oh, btw, as for unis, likely you'll be paid crap at the beginning... if you get the right quals, and the right experience, and then the right faculty (usually the International school, with the students of rich parents who do bugger all, but think they might go overseas), and you can get some ok pay rates (ie, the foreign language dept will pay about 5000, but the international dept will pay over 10K)

Thank you!  I greatly appreciate everyone's insight and advice!