A brief review of the school:

Location: possibly the most polluted and the ugliest part of Changchun, located right by the highway that big transportation trucks and long-distance buses take goods and people to and from Jilin and Harbin, plus other towns and cities in Jilin Province. The main campus is a 20-30 minute bus ride from the train station, and is is surrounded by small factories, goods shipping companies, auto repair shops. Big transportation trucks roam down the roads every minute. The main campus is dusty with constructions of three new teaching buildings going on 24/7.

Housing: Poor workmanship and flimsy materials resulting in problems like black mould, peeled walls, and quite a few FT's having roach problems -- and all of these apartments are 1 to 2 years old. Frequent power outage and low water pressure are a norm in this school. The broadband Internet connection, which requires a Chinese program called Dr. Com to login, is painstakingly SLOW. It's so awful, that many Chinese web sites (schools, governments, even Xinhua) can't open.

Fellow FT's: having read about the many rejects and creepy FT's in China, I had the misfortune of working with quite a few of them in the past year. CCNU does have a reputation of hiring some real losers, according to current FT's and students. Missionaries, creeps and a druggie are some of the people I worked with.

Students: Depending on whether they are three-year majors or four-year majors, and whether they are English majors or Bilingual majors. Four-year English majors tend to be the best students while three-year Bilingual majors can be bottom scrappers. There are, of course, exceptions.

Workload: FT's in the Foreign Languages College can be worked to death thanks to the English writing classes, with some classes containing combined groups of students and as a result, a room from as small as thirty-something students to as many as over 100 students -- this, on top of having to teach other subjects.

Pay: At first look, CCNU's salary offer does seem to be very high for a college/university job in Changchun as compared to other colleges and universities. Some of these other schools, including some big-name ones, offer as little as 3000 RMB, if not less. However, in the case of FT's working in CCNU's Foreign Languages College, the workload can be extremely heavy if you have to teach multiple subjects and you have combined classes of students, which makes the salary package a huge rip-off. In my case, I had to teach 15 classes of students in 20 hours every week in the second term. Ever tried reading 150 essays that pretty much all looked the same?

That said, readers should keep in mind that there are two groups of FT's at CCNU: those teaching FLC students, and those teaching the International Exchange/Cooperation College students. The FT's teaching IEC students make a bit more than those in the FLC, but they also teach more hours (though with fewer students and much easier lessons to teach).

Help and support (including textbooks): typical inept Chinese administration (Foreign Languages College) with screw-ups often and common; boring and useless oral English textbooks; English writing textbook written in Chinese; American history and culture textbook filled with misinformation, Party propaganda, and outdated facts. The leader of the FLC is useless and small-minded woman who'd cheated on and/or plagiarized her PhD thesis. She doesn't take suggestions kindly, can be very manipulative, and doesn't know anything about spreading workloads evenly. The FAO is practically invisible with frequent out-of-town trips and sometimes, even trips abroad. He is an OK guy, though. Pay is often a couple days late (now direct bank deposits), apartment problems are usually taken care of very quickly.