Hey Kl:

Good point you brought up, and one I agree with wholeheartedly. The students are generally well behaved and a pleasure to teach, while I might dread teaching their Western counterparts. Here I'm talking more about the children and teens, though I've had a few spectacular brats in China. Most my Chinese students are quite nice, though in the public school system they can be more lackadaisical and it can be difficult to keep the energy level a high as I like it to be.

The students CAN make up a lot for the bosses, as can the chance to travel and the opportunity to live in another country to begin with. But you'd still have all those same things if you had a good boss, and if the boss is bad enough he or she can ruin almost everything. In just the last couple years schools have become more corrupt, inventing or borrowing new duties to assign foreign teachers, and finding new ways to cut corners or cheat teachers. I just heard of a school making the foreign teachers call students on the telephone after the day's classes. That's new and clever, but sucks for the teacher, who wasn't offered any extra money for doing so either. I heard Aston has pushed back it's monthly pay date from the 10th to the 15th, and also no longer pays overtime (100 yuan and hour) to teachers who do Summer Intensive teaching on top of their regular classes. These are new developments, or rather, regressive practices. Public schools are getting cozy with the PSB personnel they had to answer to in the past, and now they can all profit off of the exploitation of teachers. Universities are playing clever games to get out of paying teachers for holiday and end of term allowances.

As for joining the Chinese in smoking in public, or in restaurants, you say it's your "right". An interesting idea that I don't have a firm conclusion on. As a smoker you may think it's fine to smoke wherever you want. Non-smokers will disagree. If I am driving a motorbike, in China I can honk at you if you are trying to cross a road and it's your light. In China that's my right. I can honk at pedestrians if they dare ever cross my path, no matter if it's their right of way or not. Similarly, I can spit on the floor in restaurants; litter on the stairs in my building; habitually visit pink houses; cut in line at every opportunity; and if I were to own a business I could fleece my employees. For some of those things, I guess, one has to ask oneself what one's own conclusion is and act accordingly. Personally, I think the traffic laws (as they are practiced) in the West are superior, more effective and efficient than the "might equals right" traffic rules of China. So, it may be my right to barrel-ass down on pedestrians while blasting my horn, but I'd be a dickhead to follow through with it. Gotta' think about other people's rights, and not just one's own.