Anyone here ever lived in mainland China or Hong Kong?

[palavra]

Just wondering ifanyone has lived in either of these places. My husband and I are applying for jobs in international schools and would love to hear a little from someone who has btdt.

 

[mtemm]

I haven't, but one of my best friends and her husband both taught at the american school in kowloon several years ago. if you have any specific questions, I will be happy to ask her.

 

[java]

I have not but a friend did. She had lived in Singapore and loved it so when a Shanghai opportunity popped up she went for it. She lasted 3 months. She hated it. From what she has told me it was the lack of her speaking Chinese that did her in. While in Singapore she found plenty of people that spoke English-In Shanghai- nobody. She went in ill prepared.
So while exciting she didn't enjoy it.

 

[akcire]

For my husband's work we lived in Beijing and Shanghai.

Beijing is a nice place to visit, but an oppressive place to live. There are a lot of ex-pat's, but most everyone is miserable. In the provence they register 20,000 new drivers a day. We had a company car, but never used it. It could seriously take 3 hours to drive 5 miles. We always took public transport or walked.

The Chinese spit, so watch out if you ride the subway. When the doors open, everyone spits out--we were warned of this upon arrival.

Also, since I have blonde hair, it was not uncommon for people to just randomly touch my hair, personal space is a foreign concept. My husband's co-worker is very tall 6 ft 8 and random people would line up to have their photo taken with him if we went out in public.

Shanghai was wonderful. The city is very cosmopolitan. We loved the people we met.

Husband and I spoke no chinese when we landed, and after our stay I would guess between us we knew 250 words/phrases.

I employed a person to shop for me in both cities. It was actually cheaper to pay a native chinese to grocery shop and pay for the groceries, than try to purchase those things with a "european face". Also in both cities, the quality of the food they were able to buy was much better. One of my husband's co-workers married a local and made this suggestion after she saw us getting ripped off by the local food merchants.

In both cities housing is very expensive. We did not pay for our housing, but in Beijing our 800 square foot condo was $650,000 (everyone who took this job, also got this condo and the same company car (it was 6 years old with 1500 miles--since no one ever drove)). In Shanghai we rented an apartment that was company paid. It was nearly $3000 USD, and was a little smaller than our place in Beijing (probably 750 square feet).

As a general rule, the chinese people were wonderful. My biggest complaint is how long it takes to do anything, and the huge division in wealth. If my husband was asked to return to China we would, however it is not something we would actively seek.

In both cities as an English speaker I was able to find work easily by utilizing the ex-pat community.

 

[Katy Belle]

Nope. But we just returned from living in Doha, Qatar for 5 1/2 years and it was awesome! My 3 boys attended The American School of Doha and it was fantastic, as were the teachers! The teachers there were very happy, as a general rule. So... don't rule out the Middle East in your job search!