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I am not in China, hence I would prefer the most assurances possible regarding my contract BEFORE I arrive in China.

So, if I sign an emailed contract and send it back, should I demand a return copy with the school's stamp and signature also?

Or should there be some more official stamps?

Or are signatures of A and B enough, to start with at least?

Anything less than this seems pretty risky, but will schools do that?

I'm referring to university/colleges here.

How can you best assure your teaching contract will be honored IF you are not in China?

Salut

It is true to say that job contracts in China are often not worth the paper they're printed on; however, it's naive to believe that that isn't true also in the West; for toerag-jobs in any event; and lets wake up and smell the kippers lads, teaching oral English is a toerag itinerants sort of occupation.

Now ,yes, you should get your contract sorted out as well as you can...but don't put too much emphasise on a good contact, or your Chinese emplyer honouring it..no put more emphasis on your own people skills to see you through; an awful lot of of FT's come to China with too much baggage- bad attitude-cussed attitude-uncooperative attitude- a moaning groaning demeanor; in other words all primed and ready to upset the Chinese and persuade them into renegading on your contract. If you have a good attitude and smile at your Chinese bosses, they will put themselves out for you.

As for your contract, yes they should send you two, stamped(they don't use signatures) one to send back to them. I notice, that perhaps you should ,with respect, not start out by demanding things-you say "should I demand a return copy with the school's stamp and signature also?" Try and take a more subtle approach to getting what you want out of the Chinese. Try this-'It's going to make me very happy if you can quickly get a signed copy of the contract in the post to me, please, Candy, and I thank you very much in advance for your kind cooperation' rather than 'I absolutely need you to send me that contract, because that's how we do things in the west!'` We don't want to show any red flags to the Chinese Dragon- am I right or am I right?