So I take it from your response you think the toner situation is ok then?!

I BELIEVE THE ISSUE OF TONER............is swimmingly good Hahaha. As I said just buy some of the evil black stuff- end of Borey! hahaha-wo shi dui de hai shi wo shi dui de?

Now you are just being absurd, no self respecting FT would lug that lot about.

Reasons FT's may prefer to use their own laptops, off the top of my head, their own version of mac osx/windows/linux on it, and not dealing with an older or slower school provided pc. And how can that school provided pc be taken into the classroom anyway. I haven't seen one public school in China that provides laptops to their ft's, but then everyones experiences will be different and vive la difference. All I can say is the story about the laser printer, but then NO TONER is true from my one experience, and being nice and polite didn't work, nor did getting irate about it. Printer with no toner. But then one school did give all us FT's brand new pc's, but still no printer. Personally I just copied my ppts and videos to a usb flash and used that on the in classroom computer.

Good luck.

Hahaha, you have a bee in your bonnet about this wretched TONER, San Mig. Well, I'll tell you what you do-you nip down the toner shop and you purchase some toner, making sure they give you a receipt, which you then hand to the school with a gay smile- and if you have built up the same cordial relationship that i do, they will pay you.Hahaha- either that or find a chimney and scrape some of the soot into a bottle- looks the same -may work, hahaha- am I right or am I right?

You don't need an 'all singing and dancing machine' to cobble together a few powerpoints and BBC lessons for your students-but by all means bring along a tailor-made contraption for your own personal needs.

The last part about ft's taking the blame can only be legit if the Chinese employer didn't deliberately deceive them from the beginning. From my own experience as well as that of many others getting the potential employer to talk about what is and isn't provided was a challenge no matter what type of outfit the place was. Most places in China know they cannot provide living conditions that are up to standard, but because they have the local government in their back pockets it is not a priority that they care to address. If ft's really are to be blamed as you say, then they should probably give China a miss all together as there are simply too many pitfalls. Other countries such as Taiwan, Thailand, and Japan offer better alternatives.

Another good post, Dragonised. Yes, indeed, the Chinese employers are past masters at lying by omission in contracts. However, I still blame individual FT's for not questioning in detail about the contract wording; and failing to extract references from past and current FT's working at a particular school. I mean, are all Western FT's born naive; the Chinese think they are, and it's human nature to take advantage of this character flaw? I have stayed out of trouble in China, owing to my attention to detail. If you are lack-a-daisical it'll come back to bite you, and you have no-body to blame but yourself.

I think if you are an FT from a Western country, or anywhere else, you are under no obligation whatsoever to do anything for the Chinese: Remember, the world does not owe China anything, even though the Chinese have a superiority complex and victim mentality and think they should be ruling this planet.

Give em nothing and take em nowhere, that's my philosophy!

Need more FT's with a couple of balls in China.

Amen to that bro. You can find a few here and there but to find ones who stick to principle is tough.

I don't know about principles but what about the status quo?

I can agree that there's a growing lily-livered approach towards the erosion of facilities provided to the FT, like for an example the desktop computer. You can hardly blame school owners if they leap onto the subservient willingness of FT's to bring and use their own expensive laptops for school work. Where will it all end I ask myself; will future FT's be seen struggling with blackboards and retroprojectors at Beijing airport?...Maybe even further..perhaps we all will be required to pay the schools for the privilege of employing us. As I said, I don't blame Chinese schools, I blame FT's for not fighting hard enough to get a good deal....then when things turn sour they grumble.

Mancunian, you mean because white FT's did not kowtow to the Chinese and be sub-serviant to them that things "did not end well".

Kowtowing ain't as bad as they make it out to be actually- keeps the body supple; you have to get right down and sniff the floor. I should inform you though that you may be thinking that kowtow is the opposite of arrogant. However, may be better to Kowtow in China than kowtow at the JobCentre back in the West.

I'll bet you never rock the boat. Need more FT's with a couple of balls in China.

Gordon Bennet, how many FT's have to share these two balls? Hahaha

It's not a given, Dragonised, that if you're a white native born English speaker, every-thing will be fine and dandy for you in China. I have met white FT's who largely because of a bad attitude when dealing with the Chinese, have not done well, and it's all ended badly. However, on this occasion I don't want to quibble further with you, because you wrote a superb post-well done that man.

I missed a few posts due to being busy with my job, but Turnoi you have hit the nail squarely on the head (again) with your statements regarding working in the ESL industry. I think when we work somewhere we just can't take in how the country treats us based on our own whims and wishes, but rather how they treat teachers as a whole. For Native Speakers of English this experience can fall within 2 main categories:

1. You are a Native Speaker, you are White, you are under 65 years old, you are of medium or above medium height, and you have near Aryan or the median Western European face. In this case you will not have any problems finding any jobs in China. Even if you are a picky person you will not worry about getting work. Socially you will not need to make as much effort towards making an initiative on your own as people will come to your social circle voluntarily to the point where you need to drive them off. While you are still at risk for bad working experiences just like anywhere else in China you will generally speaking have your needs catered to and the attention you receive will give you a plethora of choices on who you can share a life with, where you can go for socializing, and enjoying better customer service than anyone else including Native Chinese people. Unfortunately, many expats who have been treated this way fall falsely into the belief that the Chinese treat them like this due to the inherent virtues of the culture rather than the

2. The second category would be everyone else. This would include the Native Speakers of any background including older Native Speakers who are White as well as Non-Native Speakers of any background (save occasionally for the non-native speakers who possess the "look"). You will not have your pick of what jobs you can get, and you will need to work hard at applying for work. You cannot enjoy the luxury of which city you may go to as your priority is on finding a job first. Getting attention to your needs will not happen automatically if at all and you will need to be a lot more pro-active to expand the diversity within your social circle. You may have to "hustle" as they say in the USA a bit more to earn your bread and you may need to hold more than one job to make ends meet. Now I may sound like I'm generalizing a bit, but do realize that since we are talking about the work scene in China things can seem a bit jaded. I read some articles that were culture related written by local Chinese people who have criticized their own for possessing too much of a hierarchy mindset, which means one look they take at you and they will already presume to know what salary, job, and quality of an individual you are. As many as 1/2 the local population may think like this.

Fortunately, I have sometimes met expats who tried to be fair with hiring people. I have also met Chinese people in China who did not always distinguish just on face alone, but also by teaching quality. But you do need to look hard, and you will feel like good, fair minded folks are needles in a haystack there.