Don’t Come to China

China has long been touted as one of the best countries to move to to teach English. It has low requirements for teaching and you make a lot of money while learning and doing.

However, now is a singularly bad time to move to China, especially if you are going to teach English. Granted, doing other jobs isn’t all that much better right now.

China is racist, homophobic, and is turning xenophobic. It has the lowest number of foreigners of any other country. There are less than a million non-Chinese in the country of 1.4 billion. In comparison, the USA has 47 million.

Racism

I’ve said it before, but China is a racist country. They also aren’t trying to do better or be less racist. They are currently openly, happily embracing their racism.

It’s really disappointing to see them do worse while most other countries and their people are trying to overcome the mistakes of their past. China is actively embracing its closed-mindedness.

If you aren’t a white foreigner, you are treated about the same as a dog. I’ve heard of so many people of Asian and African descent fired from their jobs, especially teaching English, because they didn’t look the way the locals expected them to.

I had a coworker last semester who was ethnicity Asian but was born and raised in America, I think. When he first started, I was told “He’s a great teacher. You should watch him and learn from him.” His classes were fun and the kids loved him and we’re well behaved.

At the end of the semester, it was completely the opposite. “He’s not a good teacher. We don’t want him back next semester.” I don’t know if the kids learned anything or not; I assume they did. However, I know an Aussie whose classes with the same level are disasters and he’s not getting fired.

Another of my coworkers is South African. When she first got here, she had a visit from the police to check that all her paperwork was in order. It was, but they kept asking “Where is the African?” and didn’t believe it was her because she is white.

If you are white, you are only tolerated and prized for your ability to speak English, at most. But you still get the feeling that you’re only here because you’re useful and they’d be more than happy to kick you out, if they could.

Now, I’m not saying that every Chinese person you meet here is going to be horrible or say something directly to your face, but, for many people, it is their reality while living in China.

Second Class Citizens

Every wonderful activity or event, hell even the reopening of the border with Hong Kong, anything that happens in China that I might want to do, I have to read and check closely to see if foreigners are allowed to do it.

Nothing is for foreigners unless it specifically mentions that foreigners can do it too. That border reopening doesn’t apply to me. I can’t go.

I’ve read a bit about the Olympics and how to get tickets. While they haven’t decided anything yet, they haven’t mentioned foreigners at all. But, if they do have an audience, I doubt I’d even be allowed to go to Beijing. The restrictions would be impossible for me to navigate, if there was even a way for a foreigner to go.

I couldn’t go up to anyone giving out Covid shots and get one, like the locals. I had to use a specific app and was only allowed to go to one hospital in each district to get a shot. And that was months after the locals started getting shots.

When getting Halloween tickets for the haunted houses I went to (Happy Valley and Splendid China), there were major concerns that we couldn’t get tickets on our own as foreigners at Happy Valley. At Splendid China, we had to go to the very bored lady in the ticket booth as we couldn’t use the QR code like everyone else.

Even when I was on vacation in Inner Mongolia, a lot of the tickets I was allowed to get had to be retrieved from the special little window around the side of the building. Almost always, there was an extra form to fill out as well.

There’s always a special requirement or hoop to jump through for the foreigner, sometimes things are easier, but often they are just complicated and confusing.

Job Insecurity

No matter what your profession, working in China is not a great option right now.

The recent spate of education reforms made teaching English more challenging and more likely to end abruptly. I pray every day that I don’t show up to a locked door at my training center one day.

Many other foreigners I know work some sort of management job because China used to value a foreign education and ideas. Now, they are becoming less desired as Chinese universities get better.

As Chinese universities climb up world rankings, Western degrees are not as prized by employers as they once were, according to overseas graduates.

The South China Morning Post

Some places are even going so far as to prefer the Chinese education system and wonder if foreign graduates couldn’t pass the tests to get into good Chinese schools.

Don’t Come

They are even raising taxes (to 45% in some instances!) and cutting most of the foreigner tax breaks. Foreigners used to get their housing allowance untaxed and school fees were cheaper.

Even Xi Jinping, the president of China, can’t dress up this pig. He recently (ok, it was back in September, but just now hitting my news feed) said that they will exhaust all available methods to attract foreign skilled workers.

It all adds up to one big closed sign on the border door.