Congratulations silverboy for moving the topic onto something that teachers might actually feel is worth discussing. Although i see from your comments that you won't be talking about teaching again. Funny that as this is of course essentially a forum to do just that. The rather large clue is the title ;-)

I'd agree the pay for most jobs in china isn't great. If you're in it for the money there are much better places to teach. What any good teaching job in china (or the rest of the world for that matter) should offer is to cover the cost of a round trip airfare as well as free accommodation. In that sense while you are right that you are not going to be taking sack fulls of money home with you, you also shouldn't be lumbering yourself with a great deal of debt - how many people in the west can say that these days?

I don't see how you can say that it damages the career prospects of younger people. I guess that would depend on the career the person was intending to go into. Furthermore not every decision a person makes is motivated by their future career prospects.

The average 25 year old in the UK can claim about £250 a month for unemployment benefit even the lowest paid teaching jobs in china pay more than this and that money goes further in a country with lower costs of living. Also what you wrote suggests that an employer would prefer to employ someone who had sat on the dole for a while rather than going out and getting a job, whatever it may be.

The problem with many foreign teachers is they believe they are entitled to respect just because they are a foreigner. I'm sure you'd agree that respect is something that one earns rather than just a default feeling you should have towards someone because of where they were born. There must be people who don't respect or at least dont appreciate my methods as a teacher here but to be perfectly honest I couldn't give a tiny rats arse about the majority of those individuals. I'd also suggest that if you are coming to china and still hoping for the 'wow' factor from the locals then you should head away from the major cities where they are likely to be more 'grateful' for having a foreign teacher.

As for Internet dating sites I'll leave such approaches to you. I'm more of a traditionalist myself and prefer the thrill of the chase in the real world. What I'd say is that picking up Chinese girls to mess around with isn't very much different from back home and there are plenty of them who are happy to experiment with a foreigner. If on the other hand you're looking to marry one then you'll have to deal with a more traditional ideas of the role of men and women and the reason to marry in the first place which, as you pointed out, tends to be for financial security.

Yes, it was a little naive to thing that you could make a big difference to the society at large. Again you have to wonder if some foreign teachers view of themselves is if they are the big white hope for the Chinese and that their very being in the country is enough to make it a better place. These kinds of people are simply setting themselves up for a fall. My advice would be to find yourself a good little university where you wouldn't receive a huge amount of appreciation from the powers that be but you also won't be unappreciated, in other words you'll just be left to your own devices and you can concentrate on teaching and life beyond that. Once you're able to do that you'll generally find that you will get some appreciation from your students because our foreign teaching styles tend to be far more engaging than that of our Chinese counterparts.

Support a hostile country? People who freely voted the likes of Bush and Blair into multiple terms in office have shown as much support to hostile countries than I have. The billions of people living in the west hovering up cheap Chinese produce have given as much direct support to Chinese than I have. We all live in the same hipocrasy! What I can't abide is the ultra negative, unbalanced and misleading statements that you've spewed across this board.