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Q: What's wrong with these schools?
School: "Please come now. If you can't come now, we will not be able to hire you. We desperately need a teacher now!"
me: Okay, just give me the Z visa and I'll be on my way. I can't come without a legit visa in my hands since I want to obey the law.
*next day*
1 of 3 messages arrive:
1. school: I am sorry to tell you, but this position has been filled.
2. school: We know you are very good teacher, but you are not the teacher we need.
3. school: Sorry, but your character is not good [????]. You waste our time, we need to find teacher now.
Three months pass, and they're still desperately searching for a teacher every week. Some of them have increased the salary by a few thousand. I reply to the ad, and they already forgot about me: "Please come now, we need a teacher desperately!" Of course, being the upstanding foreign individual that I am, I continue to refuse employment without a Z visa.
They're also SAFEA authorized. What is wrong with these schools? Do they just want an illegally-employed schmuck so they won't need to enforce the contract? It seems like they're constantly shooting themselves in the foot by not being patient enough.
Or maybe I'm being too picky.
Obviously nobody should bother to work for them with this level of bad management, but I've seen it happen more than a dozen times with more than a dozen different schools. I have to wonder what the hell is going on over there. In fact, I'm afraid to go there, get fired without pay, and be stuck there.
What gives?
11 years 6 weeks ago in Teaching & Learning - China
No, trust me it's not you that's being picky it's actually them. The last response about your character is not good. Yeah, they really need to stop pulling that one off, because it's actually the other way around on that one too. It's usually their character that's not good and they want to make people feel like low life's. Don't listen to what they have to say.
Just ignore their comments about your character is no good and all those lies. First off they don't know who you are or what you've ever done. And second how can they judge you?
Hulk:
I've gotten the "your character is not good" line several times, but it's relatively rare.
One time I told a school to contact me tomorrow, as I'm extremely tired and need to sleep. She spent the next 20 minutes verbally assaulting me while I was asleep, calling me a liar, and accusing me of "still surfing the internet."
She was using google translate to talk to me, and it was just so horrible I could barely understand her.
When I woke up and saw her message, all I could think was "WOW." I replied, "I told you I was going to sleep and that we can talk tomorrow. I keep my computer online overnight," and she sends me some crazy-ass google translate message about ruining her life/meeting/urgent interview with the director of her school system.
She went on and on about my poor character, poor work habits, and how she's glad she won't hire such a poor quality teacher. I contacted her in the evening hoping that I'd get a reply when I was awake. She was just too damn impatient.
So I just trolled her until she rage-deleted me. Told her her school must be so bad that she can only attract pedos/serial killers/etc, and thanked her for showing her true colors before I wasted time going to her school.
Traveler:
Surprisingly good answer for you Silver. I've broken my normal routine, and given you a thumbs up this time. Don't expect it too often, though 
Keep it that way and I hope you won't give up the attitude you have so far. It looks indeed that they are looking for an illegal teacher. Just don't go! It looks you have a strong moral determination and if there is something rare about it it's that there are not but few people risking this much for the love of being correct. It is also true that you may just get despised for this moral "stubbornness" and for sure you are, but don't give up, no matter the increase of the bid to their previous offers. Well that is a temptation, but let me put it this way: you don't want to sell your dignity for a dish of lentils. On the other side you may not want either to show how moral you are and how far you are able to go for the sake of keeping aside the right from wrong. That would make you be hated even more. I guess I understand what, for the sender, the issue about "your character is not good" it means. And i already told you why. In China people are just raised in a moral-immorality (just made up the word). Let's say you don't look to them flexible and that to many it's just not good. Maybe I am wrong, but that's my point of view. I hope you just keep it this way.
Hulk:
I'd have no qualms working illegally if they actually upheld the contract and I wouldn't get in trouble. Thing is, if they don't, then I have no recourse. It's just to protect my wife since she'd be alone here without me. And honestly, it's to protect the scumbag employers from the hulk as well. I don't take kindly to injustice.
Remember it is the schools that teach the indoctrination process: "Do not forget the humiliation China suffered under a century of occupation by smaller, weaker nations. And never remember the greater humiliation of being freed from Japanese occupation by those same smaller nations who dared to protect a much stronger China."
The Chinese schools are the front line of teaching hate to the Chinese people. So it is only natural that they will have a hatred of the western people they are instilling the hate about. This is reflected in their discriminatory practices, where they choose their teachers the same way they would choose a pet dog - on appearances, age and gender.
It is also reflected in the responses they give when the dog isn't obedient. Responses like you have received.
One way to ensure the dog is obedient is to hire illegally. This way, they can use fear to beat the dog into submission. We have all seen the way they treat animals here, and many Chinese think of foreigners in a similar vein to animals. Except they use psychological torture instead of physical.
Most of the good schools (and there are quite a lot that are good) have already hired good teachers under reasonable conditions. However, the schools that don't have a teacher are the ones that are obsessed with having a pet dog, not with having a proper teacher.
I believe you studied medicine? If so, give yourself an edge, and offer to teach Science and Maths English as well, seeing as you can display tertiary study in these areas. These are subjects that are becoming more popular amongst the Chinese schools, as they are areas where China believes they surpass the west. Not sure if it will help, but it can't hurt. You could also do searches on the job ads for these subjects.
Hulk:
I got a few good offers, including a school willing to pay for HALF of my air ticket home to apply for a Z visa, but... can't leave my wife here. I wish there was a place which didn't require that.
Hey, at least that was before you went through all the paperwork. The first job I thought I was going to have was a school in Nanjing. Everything was going well, albeit slowly. I had finally sent all the paperwork they required and waited a month for the paperwork they would need to send me to get my visa. However, at that point, they emailed me and the two other girls who had applied that they couldn't give me the Z visa, that the school couldn't hire me because they were cracking down on those who didn't have the requirements. In my case, that would have been 2 years of teaching experience.
Ok yeah, that sounds reasonable, although at the time I was really pissed off. What annoys me is that they said to wait another week so she could find me another job and contract. Surprise surprise, that contract wasn't as good, and didn't offer a Z visa. I wasn't falling for that. I had already moved on. It's a good thing, too. The job I ended up with wasn't bad. I'm glad I ended up in a city with clean air instead of Nanjing.
I'm curious from those in the field:
Ballpark estimate, what percentage of schools in China are trying to screw over their foreign teachers in some major way?
Traveler:
I think it depends on the type of teaching you are employed for, whether you are qualified, and whether you are working legally or not. Schools seem to want to create vulnerabilities, and then attack those same weaknesses.
At one school, I was teaching maths and science, and writing and directing a play for a national competition. I had no problems with the school (until the competition was over, and they no longer needed me). They still tried to cheat me, but didn't push the point if challenged on it (until after the competition).
Qualified teachers working on valid visas copped a little, but generally the school backed off if the teachers stood up to them. Unqualified teachers working on fake qualifications were paid much less, often not paid the full amount in the contract, and threatened with being reported as illegal if they complained.
It works the same in Australia. Illegal immigrants are forced to work in sweat shops, get paid low wages, live in appalling conditions, or be deported back to their home countries.
The difference is that, in Australia, the people exploiting the illegal immigrants are usually jailed or otherwise punished. In China, they are often seen as almost heroic for repaying the century of humiliation the Chinese are so fanatical about.
