Luoding Polytechnic Guangdong

You should take my advice and avoid this place at all costs. I worked there recently and I am happy to inform you about the college and city. You will see in their advertisements that Luoding is a “famous cultural city” if its famous then why has nobody ever heard of it? The contract and advertisement states that you will teach 16 lessons per week. Upon arrival that will change to 24 lessons per week as there are never enough foreign teachers working there. You will be offered 78 rmb for 16 45 minute lessons as per the contract. What is not in the contract is that for the extra 8 to 10 lessons you will be offered just 30 rmb. Once you walk outside the college there is nobody to speak too. Nobody outside the college speaks English and remove those thoughts from your mind that it is easy to communicate using body language. That would require some sort of thinking or reasoning on their behalf.

The staff are horrible and not friendly in any way, they will never speak to you. The students are the laziest people you will ever meet in your life. You will be told they are at intermediate level. This is not true as many cannot understand you when you say “hello”. They do not want to learn English, they want to play with their mobile phones and sleep. Of course they do understand the word “money” and you will hear that word countless times during the weeks lessons. When they talk about money, 100% of the time it has nothing to do with the discussion that is taking place. Be prepared for students continuously asking you for money. Do not bother complaining to the head of the department as nothing will be done. I had a student threaten me by stating “I am going to kill you” I reported this to the head of the department and she just laughed and said it was lost in translation. And the list goes on and on. You are a foreigner and you are not worthy of anything. You do not have a name, you will always be referred to as “the foreigner”. Do not consider giving them some homework for the following weeks work as they will not do it. Even if its as simple as doing a quick internet search to answer 2 or 3 simple questions. They will not do it!!!!! Work interrupts their sleeping. Yes they pretend to be nice to you, smiling and saying hello fulfills their obligations of being friendly to the foreigner. If they smile and say hello then you are considered “friends” without any consideration to the true meaning of the word. Remember if they are being nice to you then the first thing you should think of is “what do they want from me?”

The city itself is disgusting including the people. If you see anyone smiling then take a photo. What you will see is lots of people spitting everywhere and cooking dogs on the road. They hate foreigners and you will be treated as such. In fact they hate everyone. Many shopkeepers will refuse to serve you just because you are a foreigner. The streets are full of rubbish and human waste. The choice of food is minimal. Pork, duck, dogs, cats, bats and that’s all. If you value personal hygiene then this place is not for you. You will have great difficulties trying to purchase soap at the supermarket because the vast majority do not sell it. I walked 4 km to a supermarket that sells soap, passing 6 other supermarkets along the way that do not sell it. Forget about coffee, deodorant and chocolate!!!!!!!!!!

Winter is cold and your room is very cold. There is no heating. The water and electricity are constantly off and the internet is even worse. You will be supplied with a computer from the 1990’s and if you have problems with the computer, and you will, then the computer technician will come to help you. He will arrive at your room with a very large screwdriver and a cloned copy of windows xp, apparently a large screwdriver and a window xp disc fixes everything. He will then sit in front of your computer not knowing what to do and just hit right click refresh, right click refresh, right click fresh for the next 20 minutes. They are obsessed with right click refresh.