Step 1: Research and Preparation

• Location Preference: Determine which city or region in China aligns with your preferences and goals. China’s diverse landscapes offer varied cultural experiences.
• Qualifications and Documents: Ensure you meet the necessary requirements, including a bachelor’s degree, teaching certification (e.g., TEFL/TESOL), criminal background check, and health assessment.

Step 2: Job Search and Recruitment Agencies

• Online Resources: Utilize job boards, ESL teaching forums, and social media groups dedicated to teaching in China. Websites like Dave’s ESL Cafe, TEFL.com, and ESLemployment are valuable resources.
• Recruitment Agencies: Reputable agencies streamline the job search process. Among the top options is Jingshi Tuotu Education Technology (Beijing) Group Co., Ltd.
• Jingshi Tuotu Education Technology (Beijing) Group Co., Ltd: This agency specialises in connecting international teachers with opportunities in China. Their expertise includes matching your skills with suitable positions and assisting you through the visa application process. Click here for more.

Step 3: Application and Interview

• Polished Application: Prepare a well-crafted resume and tailored cover letter that highlight your relevant experience, teaching philosophy, and enthusiasm for working in China.
• Interview Preparation: If shortlisted, prepare for interviews. Research the school or institution, understand their teaching approach, and be ready to discuss your teaching methods.

Step 4: Visa Application and Documentation

• Job Offer and Visa Invitation: Upon receiving a job offer, your prospective employer will provide the necessary documents for your visa application, including a work permit invitation letter.
• Visa Application: Submit your visa application to the Chinese embassy or consulate in your home country. The required documents include your passport, visa application form, passport-sized photos, and the visa invitation letter.

Step 5: Travel and Arrival

• Arrival Details: Once your visa is approved, finalize travel arrangements to China. Ensure you have your visa, passport, flight tickets, and essential documents with you.
• Orientation: Many schools provide an orientation program upon your arrival. This orientation introduces you to the school’s policies, and the local community, and helps you adapt to your new environment.

Step 6: Starting Work in China

• Settling In: Arrive a few days before your official start date to settle in, acclimate to the time zone, and explore your new surroundings.
• Cultural Sensitivity: Embrace China’s culture and customs. Respect local traditions, etiquette, and values to foster positive relationships with colleagues and students.
• Teaching: Begin teaching with enthusiasm and adaptability. Establish a strong rapport with your students and colleagues while bringing your teaching expertise to the classroom.

Navigating the process from finding a teaching position to starting work in China demands diligence and preparation. By using reputable recruitment agencies like Jingshi Tuotu Education Technology (Beijing) Group Co., Ltd. and following these steps, you can embark on a rewarding journey that not only enriches your professional experience but also allows you to contribute positively to the educational landscape of China. Embrace the adventure, cultivate cultural understanding, and enjoy the transformational experience of teaching in a new cultural context.

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And if there’s anything else you’d like to see or discuss, then get in touch!

The post Guide to Finding Teaching Work in China: Steps, Recruitment Agencies, and Process appeared first on British Panda.

More Information on VPN.AC and China VPN Services

Call it what you will: The Great Firewall, or the Golden Shield Project. VPN services help you tunnel through to access your non-Chinese internet services. That is, unless something very political is happening in China. If so, you may not be able to access anything outside of China. But on a ‘normal’ day, someone somewhere is tasked with identifying VPN services and ensuring that they are blocked in Mainland China. It’s like a game of whack-a-mole and it’s only a matter of time until it catches up with your current VPN. Take Express VPN as an example: It was solid for years, well priced and well featured, then throughout 2022 it became regularly compromised. Their team are skilled ad hard-working, but when the CCP party conference was underway later in the year it became less reliable. Downtimes and outages increased and service seemed to pitter to an end. This is a real pain, especially if you’ve just paid for an annual subscription.

However, as of May 2023, VPN.AC  works and you only need to pay monthly. Click here to give it a try!

The post Which VPN Works in China in 2023? appeared first on British Panda.

So you’re needing to translate a website, a sign, or some literature in China. Just when you need it most, your Google Translate is out of action because your VPN won’t seem to stay connected.

Thankfully, WeChat’s translation function is fast and effective. But how do I get my image into it?

1: Take a photo of the text, or a screen grab of the webpage or app page
2: Open WeChat, start a new message but to yourself
3: Share the image/screen-grab to your conversation
4: Click the image in the chat and you’ll see four circles appear on the bottom right-hand side.
5: Click the far-right circle and more options open.
6: Translate image text does just that rapidly and effectively

The post Help! My VPN Won’t Connect in China and I Need a Translation appeared first on British Panda.

Nowhere’s perfect, not that the obvious needs stating. Before I moved to China, I accepted that there would be certain aspects of the culture and political system that I wouldn’t fully understand or agree with. That’s only natural. I approached China as a visitor, and even thinking about changing anything would be as naive as it would be futile.

Two aspects of life in China, though, work negatively together, compounding each other’s severity, and the worse they get, the more unhappy they make day-to-day life in China:

The First is Zero-COVID

At first, it involved a few rescheduled classes, then showing health codes in more and more places. Its impact on both locals and visitors increased, though. City-wide nucleic acid tests would be ramped up to every three days. Failure to have a green health code (on a mini-program within WeChat) would mean no access to certain shops and restaurants.

Minor outbreaks would mean tests every 48 hours, making life pretty inconvenient. Watching YouTube videos of major lockdowns, protests, and in some cases, deaths as a result of the draconian measures, are stressful to watch. However, when you are personally on the receiving end of such restrictions, are forced to test, and then stay on an island until your negative results come through, China loses some of its shine.

A single day encompassed a positive conversation with a British colleague on how renewing our contracts for another year in Wenzhou is worth suffering regular tests, stifling summer humidity, and travel restrictions. Later that very day, I found myself trapped. As a Chinese colleague brought with him from a trip to Ningbo a yellow health code, every student and staff member had to have a COVID test. Busses leaving the island were delayed until negative results were returned. However, because my class finished at 4:30 pm, by that time, tests had drawn to a close, meaning I had to take a taxi to the nearest test centre, return, and then await the results before I could leave the island.

Consequently, I missed the last bus and could not leave the university compound until my test result came in. I was trapped until the next day. Thoroughly jaded from my experience, the reality of Zero-COVID was brought home.

The Second is Internet Censorship

Although I could use a teacher hotel free of charge, as I stewed in my room in the clothes I’d been working in all day, my VPN failed to connect, further enhancing feelings of isolation, separation from my culture, and disbelief as to why China was now disregarding advice from the WHO and ramping-up its zero-COVID measures. The new strains of COVID have been shown to be less fatal than the flu, and harsh lockdowns create their own casualties. However, making entire communities queue shoulder to shoulder, almost touching and allowing the ‘viral by nature’ bike shares to continue operating is confounding.

The denial of western media, from YouTube to WhatsApp, Google to Ground News, can instil a feeling of isolation. If you’re craving stimulation, entertainment and digital media, Chinese WeChat Channels, DouYin and the like, although they do carry some entertaining and useful content, drive home the level of government-controlled rhetoric, outright censorship and heavily-biased news. Be careful of WeChat’s ‘Hot” channels. Some of the videos are unpleasant, i.e., violent, xenophobic and worse.

At times like this, though, it really is a good idea to practice mindfulness and engage in meditation. Try not to forget why you’re in China, focus on its positives and remember, a good night’s sleep erases a multitude of negative thoughts.

The post Convincing Myself to Stay in China appeared first on British Panda.

So bearing the aforementioned in mind, it’s worthwhile preparing yourself, mentally at least, and having some strategies in place to make the summer months less arduous. You can find accurate details of the temperatures and humidity of most Chinese cities on Wikipedia. My city, Wenzhou, is hot but doesn’t seem particularly hotter than any other city in the southeast side of China. That is, however, until you take the humidity into account.

Wenzhou is hot and sticky. Add the fact that we’re experiencing hotter-than-usual summers across the globe, and this means that life in China over the summer months can be challenging. So here are some top tips for coping with Chinese weather.

1: Replace the term Acclimatise with Coping Mechanisms

If you grew up in western Europe, maritime, or temperate climates, trying to acclimate may well be a futile pursuit. Accepting that you’re not from a sub-tropical climate and adopting techniques and habits to make the weather more bearable is probably a more realistic approach

2: Stay indoors between 11 am and 3 pm

Although mentioning colonial years opens a huge can of worms, a song that hails from that era and that rings true to this day is Noel Coward’s “Mad dogs and English men go out in the midday sun”. The locals don’t. You shouldn’t. Wear at least SPF50 sunblock, and carry an umbrella if you do, regardless of whether your skin contains high levels of melanin, or not!

3: Always carry an umbrella

Although we may associate umbrellas with rain, utilising them on a hot day is surprisingly effective at keeping your overall temperature down. Perhaps it is a no-brainer, but it’s not habitual if you’re from a cooler country. It’s a great habit to adopt.

4: Don’t drink cold drinks

The Chinese tend to favour warm water. Granted, you don’t drink tap water in China; you need to boil it first. But there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that hot drinks can actually help keep your body temperature down. Drinking a hot drink results in a lower amount of heat stored in the body, providing that the additional sweating can evaporate, according to Smithsonian Magazine

5: Go easy on the Air-Con

It’s really, really tempting to jack your air conditioner temperature down to 16 degrees, but there are two problems with this. Firstly, cost; Setting your temperature to around 26 doesn’t feel hugely different and will cost a lot less to run the unit. Secondly, the closer your inside temperature is to the outside, the sooner you will get anywhere close to acclimatising.

There are a plethora of other things you can do to ease moving to a hot country. Some are more beneficial than others. However, the most significant tool you have in coping with a hot climate is a positive mindset. Accept that the heat is part of life in the region you’ve moved to. Stay out of the sun and do productive things while you do so, like learning the local language.

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Depending on current COVID-19 restrictions, you’ll need to go to a quarantine hotel on arrival. As of July 2022, the rule remains that, on landing, you’ll be PCR-tested and led onto a bus destined for a government-approved quarantine hotel. The duration has recently been reduced from 14 days to 7. 

But what am I supposed to be doing? Have no fear. Follow these simple steps for a smoother transition into Chinese life.

1: Get a sim card at the airport

Having a Chinese telephone number is your key to many, many things in China, including:

• Acquiring wifi access. SMS verification gets you on most wireless networks
• Setting up a Taobao account, China’s main online shopping site
• Logging into websites using SMS
• Receiving texts to update your health codes on WeChat. No health code, no entry to most public places. More on this next

2: Get WeChat App

It’s not overly dramatic to say that you have to have WeChat (WeiXin) app in China. It’s a huge, feature-rich app that manages and enables a rich array of features including:

• WeChat Pay. You can connect foreign (Non-Chinese) credit cards in Me>Wallet and begin buying things online and in stores using WeChat Pay. Once you have a Chinese bank account, you can link the associated card also.
• Local Health Code. Once you are free from quarantine, most establishments require you to use the city’s health code mini program. cab the nearby bar code and your green QR code will show, granting you access. The mini program will also show your COVID test and vaccination status
• Dining out: Many restaurants have moved from paper menus to WeChat mini-programs. Once at your table, open WeChat, scan the QR code on your table and order away!

3: Register with Local Police

So you’re out of your quarantine hotel. Not as easy as you thought, right? Now, you need to get your temporary housing document, and together with your passport, go and visit your local police station ASAP and ask for a temporary residence permit.

You are required to do this within 48 hr of arrival in China, but this will have to wait until after your quarantine.

4: Get Your Residence Permit

Gather your temporary residence voucher from the police, visa application report form from your employer, passport, and four passport photos. Visit your city’s citizen centre and get your visa, or residence permit added to your passport. 

Enjoy the next year on the right side of Chinese authorities.

The post Steps for Moving to China: The First Few Weeks appeared first on British Panda.

Whether you’ve heard of the city of Ningbo or not, chances are you’d still be blissfully unaware of the tapestry of cultural and technological marvels that the city is brimming with.

Located just below Shanghai, at the northerly tip of Zhejiang province, Ningbo is home to one of the busiest ports in the world; one that handles hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo each year; a port that is likely carrying a product destined to a store, a company, or warehouse near you, right now! But the port and the organisations that feed into it are just the tip of the iceberg. Together with some of these key organisations, ‘we’ were invited to explore and experience some of the gems that Ningbo has to offer.

By ‘we’, I am in fact referring to myself and some 30+ other foreign experts whose educations and careers have led us to pursue a future in China; in the province of Zhejiang to be more precise. From PhD students to engineers, artists to teachers, as well as entrepreneurs, this diverse, compelling and complementary group of individuals hails from all corners of the globe. They all now reside in Zhejiang, and because of this, were invited to come and learn about, experience, observe, and relish what this progressive, spirited city has to offer.

So what went down? Well, it went something like this…

Day 1: Old and New in Harmony

No, the title doesn’t refer to the delegates of this marvellous trip! On arriving at the rather plush Landison Plaza Hotel, we said our “hellos”, freshened up, explored the hotel facilities, enjoyed a buffet lunch, and then embarked on our first Ningbo expedition.

This was to Ningbo Museum, which, right from the start, impressed us with its striking architecture: Designed by an acclaimed Architect and the first Chinese winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, Professor Wang Shu, the building’s outer walls marry modern materials with reclaimed tiles and bricks from all significant eras of Ningbo’s history, therefore, laying the foundations of a theme that continued throughout the week.

The day culminated in a formal dinner. Local delicacies were complemented by wine, broken by speeches, toasts, and short presentations. Overall, the celebrations were meaningful, genuine, and relished by all parties.

Side note: Throughout the entire week, politics were not mentioned a single time.

Day 2: “Ay Up Me Duck”

If you hail from Nottingham or the surrounding area in the UK, you’ll know that this title is “Nottingham Hua”, translating roughly to “hello my friend”. Yes, throughout England’s East Midlands, we call each other “duck”. Therefore, the trip to Nottingham University Ningbo was of particular significance to this author. Having begun learning Mandarin Chinese through the University of Nottingham several years ago, the morning’s outing was somewhat of a pilgrimage.

Reminiscent of Nottingham’s Jubilee Campus, the Ningbo Campus, not only echoed a similar architectural design ethic, but also a similar commitment to educational merit, plus, an adherence to the British university education system. Lunch there was pretty good too.

Next stop: Tianyi Pavilion. Built during the Ming Dynasty, i.e., having some 400 years of history, it’s a nationally significant site. It’s the oldest existing library in China, set across grounds boasting exquisite traditional buildings and gardens. Despite the “good old British” taking a few thousand key volumes with them after the Second Opium War (being British, you come across a lot of this type of thing on your world travels), thanks to donations by private collectors, the collection has recovered to circa 30,000 volumes. Comprising mostly rare antique Ming dynasty printed and hand-copied volumes, visitors can learn how the books were made and can observe them in storage. Side note: It was rather hot that day. Even the more equatorial of us felt the strain.

As darkness descended and the heat receded, a little, we moved toward Ningbo’s Bund. Although one naturally thinks of Shanghai with the utterance of the term ‘Bund’, Ningbo’s Bund is no less enjoyable. Granted, it’s on a far smaller scale, but it provides a similarly exhilarating array of lavishly-lit buildings, river breezes, and water-bound excitement.

The nearby Tianyi Square provides visitors with an urban concept presenting 22 buildings following European style. A musical fountain sits beside a water screen where visitors can enjoy movies. It’s little wonder Tianyi Square won a prize for the best public art construction after being completed in 2003 under the watchful eye of its designer, Architect Qingyun Ma.

Day 3: Ahoy There!

The Port of Ningbo-Zhoushan is mammoth, and something that becomes more apparent when you ascend to the viewing deck of the visitors’ building. To cope with the ever-increasing demands of an open and expanding China, in 2006, the Port of Ningbo merged with its neighbour, the Port of Zhoushan, with the newly-amalgamated entity going on to outperform its nearby rival, Shanghai, in terms of cargo tonnage.

Thinking back atop the viewing platform, containers are stacked as far as the eye can see. A coach ride amidst the 311 productive berths, alongside super-size ships taking on their cargo, puts China’s growth and its reputation as the “factory of the world” into perspective.

After an exceedingly delicious buffet lunch, music was in the air. Piano music in this case. Established in 2002, Hailun Piano Co., Ltd manufactures pianos under its own moniker, as well as for overseas brands including Cline, Cunningham, and Emerson. Multiple stories of the company’s main building show the various, meticulously orchestrated stages of the manufacturing of the various models, with a grand piano taking up to two months from start to completion. Our tour of the building included an insightful overview of the company’s origins and growth, a presentation of the entire piano range, as well as an arousing performance by a musical maestro on a Hailun grand piano.

After, we went to board our bus, and on bidding our farewells to staff, we were gifted charming miniature glass pianos. Containing a music box-type mechanism, they play an emotional tune evoking memories of what had been a delightful afternoon.

Day 4: Peace and Love

Well, that was pretty much the vibration felt at all of the locations we visited, but particularly so at namesake Peacebird. Since its foundation in 1997, this future-facing clothing brand has evolved into one synonymous with quality and style, and the ‘go-to’ fashion brand for China’s urban females. Simply search either of China’s main retail sites and you’ll see that they are awash with a multitude of Peacebird designs. The Peacebird brand has also successfully extended to satisfy the demands of male and younger fashion consumers, and the company’s growth and success are more than evident at its breathtakingly-modern headquarters.

Evocative of creative and team-led organisations like Apple or Google, Peacebird’s space-station-like central building features open workspaces for enhanced team interactions, sweeping wooden staircases, cool break-out spaces, and if that wasn’t enough, carp swimming above your head in a bottomless tank! Look towards the centre of the building, and the outside space offers more spectacular koi carp, and the centrepiece is a catwalk leading to a stage emblazoned with the company’s modern, meaningful logo.

Next stop: Dongqian Lake. As hard as it is not to reference Hangzhou’s West Lake, Dongqian Lake is 4 times larger but also boasts an abundance of natural beauty. Zhejiang’s aesthetic charm draws on the juxtaposition of its mountains and expanses of water. Dongqian Lake’s beauty was there for us all to savour up close, thanks to us having our very own boat trip. In the words of Chinese Author and Poet, Mr Guo Moruo: Dongtian Lake offers “the scenery of West Lake, the spirit of Taihu Lake”.

Back aboard the coach, we sped across Ningbo to the far west side of the city, as tomorrow, we’re examining how the city holds up on the technological and manufacturing fronts.

Day 5: Top Gear

Hugging the Hangzhou Bay area of Ningbo, an array of business locations develop the technology, and manufacture the various parts for the car brands forming the Geely Auto portfolio. Founded in 1986 by business magnate, Li Shufu, Geely now sells cars under its own brand name, as well as Lynk & Co, Proton, Lotus, Volvo, and more. With 2020 net income topping CN¥6.44 billion, the Geely group comfortably achieved 1.328m sales throughout 2021.

Positioned at the cutting edge of the electric vehicle market, we were treated to a guided tour of where the engines are developed and tested.

Following a high-quality lunch at the nearby Ningbo Empark Grand Hotel, it was sadly time to return home.

The Takeaways

The first takeaway is that Ningbo is on fire! The pace and level of development are astounding. It’s brimming with creative energy, drive and direction, and it’s a city on the rise.

The second takeaway from the trip is that the message from Zhejiang is along the lines of “look where we came from, see what we’ve achieved, and now imagine where we can go next? Why not be part of it?”

However, you can draw your own conclusions. If you’re in any doubt, why not book a trip? I’m confident that Ningbo will welcome you! Find out more about Ningbo here.

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