Employment & Professional Development

Hi, I have a question, but I am not quite sure who to ask. It is partially a university employment question and partially a visa question.

I have been trying to find a job teaching in China but have not been getting many responses. I would send off the requested documents, and never hear anything back. I got a couple of form letters in reply about the position being filled.

I assumed it was a combination of age and relative lack of experience. I am 60. I have an MA in history, but no teaching experience except when I was a grad student, which really was not all that long ago. Since grad school I have worked as a litigation researcher for a Canadian Aboriginal lawyer but that is not a very steady line of work, and I decided I wanted to see China. I do not have any TEFL training.

So basically the only response I got was from Start Consulting, chinateachonline.com, and they eventually found me a job at Sanda University in Shanghai, and I really wanted to go to Shanghai.

So I had the interview and got hired, the wages they agreed to are 7,500 yuan, and everything seemed OK.

That is until the university told me that I should come to China on a tourist visa and they will arrange a work visa after I get here.

When I asked Start Consulting about this I was told this is normal for Shanghai and she claimed that they have done it there before, multiple times, that there is nothing for me to worry about, etc.

Nevertheless, this all makes me at least a little nervous, and I would like more info and a second opinion. They have all made it sound very routine and like I have nothing to worry about.

Also, while I was doing a web search on Sanda University I found a very recent question on an ESL forum where someone was asking for info on Sanda without specifying why they wanted it. That immediately made me wonder if maybe they had hired 2 people for the same position and planned on choosing between us later. I did respond to that posting but there has been no more yet.

So I very much would like an opinion of what I have related here and what exactly I would be risking if I went ahead and did what they have suggested.

Thank you.

Your apprehension is understandable.

I assume you are to commence teaching next fall. If that's true, the university has more than enough time to process your letter of invitation and work certificate.

Perhaps they are hedging their bets or, just as likely, don't want to process the paperwork for the Z-visa until they see that you have first passed the physical exam. Of course, they could simply ask you to go for the physical exam where you live now.

Shanda is the first private university to open in Shanghai and their website claims that they currently have 22 foreign teachers under their employ. If that's true, it shouldn't be too difficult for them to give you the names and e-mail addresses of at least two other foreign teachers.

You should contact these teachers and specifically ask how they were brought to China (whether on an L- or Z-visa) as well other questions related to the management of their foreign teachers.

It's possible that this is standard operating procedure for them and that they won't have any difficulty converting that tourist into a work visa. It is always possible they are asking you to travel halfway around the world for nothing more than an extended job interview. Without entering China on a Z-visa, you are completely at their mercy with no guarantee of a job.

Communicate with the other teachers and—although you'll have to read between the lines—you should be able to determine whether this is a leap of faith you should be taking.

They are obviously licensed to hire foreign experts so I really don't know why they are choosing to do it this way, except that it is logistically easier for them upfront.

The other thing you could do is ask the FAO if they could process your Z-visa if you are willing to go for the physical exam in your home country and see how they respond to that.

While you don't have any teaching experience or a TEFL certificate, and despite your age, your master's degree is attractive to them and so they may go ahead and process your Z-visa paperwork once they realize this is important to you.

Be careful and let us know what happens.

Thanks for your quick response.

Start consulting has offered to put put me in touch with other teachers they have steered toward Sanda, so I will start there and then get back to the woman who conducted the phone interview and ask for the emails of some current teachers.

I will keep you posted, thanks.

Just my two cents worth: I know a lot of teachers in Shanghai who swear black and blue that in Shanghai it's standard practice to arrive on a tourist visa and thought I was being demanding by insisting that I was only comfortable with a Z-visa.

However I did get an offer a few months back from a university in Shanghai for a job and, while I did not take it up, I did follow through with questions to the school and they were perfectly happy to process a Z-visa for me if I needed to go back home to do so.

Certainly, there are more exceptions in China than there are rules.

In the Guide's chapter titled The Z-visa Debate we do indicate that there are many foreign teachers who report having had successful outcomes with moving to China to teach on tourist and business visas.

However, doing so is not without risk. In our ongoing survey study of China foreign teacher satisfaction and retention, close to 53 percent of our 424 respondents (as of November 2009) indicated that they had arrived in China with either a tourist (L-), business (F-) or student (X-) visa and, of those 228 teachers, 192 or approximately 84 percent were eventually able to obtain a teaching position and receive a Z-visa, foreign expert certificate, and residency permit. Of course, the remaining 16 percent found themselves working in China year after year illegally.

In response to whether one should arrive in China to teach on anything other than a Z-visa, Ken and I both feel strongly that it is best to err on the side of the angels.

Yes, I did decide to err on the side of caution, especially since I found posts on another forum from several years ago complaining about conditions at Sanda. About things not being fixed in the apartments, rules about no guests, curfew being imposed upon teachers, and a vague complaint about lack of support for teachers from the administration.

Perhaps these things are not that unusual in Chinese universities, I do not know. But also of significant concern was Start Consulting telling me that Sanda University hires over 20 teachers every year, when they only have 22. So pretty much nobody returns to teach at Sanda again after finishing their contract. I decided it would be a good idea to take that as a clue.

I have also decided it is a good idea not have anything more to do with Start Consulting. After reading your Guide carefully, I was interested in teaching in a public university, because you made it sound like private universities were pretty much diploma mills for dumb, rich kids.

But in spite of my expressed interest in public universities, Start Consulting steered me to Sanda, I suspect because the commission is probably higher. Also Start Consulting could have informed me in advance that things were done differently with respect to visas in Shanghai, but she did not mention it. I do not think I would have gone through the interview if I had known that, certainly not if I had found the complaints about Sanda first.

So what I finally did was offer to take the physical here if that would convince them to offer me a letter of invitation, and then in the next sentence I stated that I would consider the contract I had already signed to be null and void if they did not offer a letter of invitation.

So I am back where I was but I have no regrets. Sanda just sounded too much like a potential headache.

Thanks for your perspective, I appreciate it.

Gregory

Hi Gregory,

What most prospective foreign teachers don't realize--and what you have recently learned--is that recruitment and "consulting" agencies regard the schools, not the teachers, as their real clients. Foreign teachers are simply viewed as a commodity.

Best of luck.

I did realize that the school would be seen as the real client, but I expected that there would be a recognition of overlapping interest, which as it turned out appears not to have been the case.

But I now realize that is probably because I came across as a little on the desperate side, so it seems to have been assumed that I would probably take whatever I was handed without examining it too much. But that is not my style.

Now though it is obviously time for a new approach without any consultants. I am not quite ready to give up yet. A little more persistence may pay off.

Thanks for your observations.

Gregory