Thanks, Wendy/KS for your support of my sentiments. Normally, I would feel bad about making such feelings public, but after four years, my perspective / attitude / and experiential knowledge has changed!

I came to China in 2003 with such good will to help students improve their English and perhaps slightly change their future prospects.

In the time I have been here, I have dedicated myself to my students, and with each year my teaching skills become stronger. Too bad none of this dedication and integrity is respected here.

I have not worked for ONE school who kept their word with me, or treated me (or my work) with genuine respect.

I just took a new job (at a much lower salary) with an "established" university of good reputation in hopes that things would be better. So far, I have learned that my students are not actually the TRUE students of the university. None of them entered this university on MERIT, but are here because their parents paid lots of extra money to buy them a place in a campus classroom.

The "teaching plan" (Ha!) is for me to prepare them for future study in England, but my 22 classes will have 40 students each and only meet with me once a week! Now, really... what are the chances of these young people actually improving their English under those ridiculous conditions??? (and keep in mind that the "Dean" described my new students as the "spolied children of very rich parents.") Needless to say, I'm less than thrilled about meeting these students next week!

My Z visa ends in 19 days and as far as I can tell, they haven't bothered to apply for a new one for me -- as repeatedly promised.

I truly think I will leave China very soon, once a for all...

Most contracts here talk about "mutual cooperation," but I have found that as soon as you ask THEM for cooperation, they are always "too busy," or give some other lame excuse for not doing their job.

No matter well we do our job, it goes unnoticed, unappreciated, and we are only used to make money. Our role here has precious little to do with real education or learning.

As I said before (and my students laugh because they know it's true): "We are 'zoo animals' in China!!!"

Very sad, but very true!

And from time to time, they like to visit our cages to see what we eat and do in our private time.

Again, I apologize for the profound cynicism but this is four years' of poor experiences in play here...

I urge anyone considering teaching in China to strongly reconsider.

There's certainly no money in it, and as we have collectively learned, no dignity either!

The great majority of my students (in all previous situations) have been wonderful to me and given me much personal reward, but the rest of it (school management, almost complete lack of professional ethics, etc.) has made the rest of it a nightmare experience.

And after four years, not only do I NOT see things improving, I truly believe they are getting worse!