I don't feel at all sorry for Western women teaching in China. If they are blonde, that's a big plus. Slim is good too, but overweight isn't bad. Overweight women back home are discriminated against, but less so in China. How many Western women come on these boards to complain? Very very few!

In Shanxi I worked for a Chinese agent who seconded me to senior middle schools. He told me the senior middle schools almost always accepted a female Westerner before a male Westerner. I've seen Western women become very popular with their bosses and with students in China. As for street manners by locals to foreigners, they can be very bad! But let's face it, teaching oral English for 48 clock hours a month for 5,000 Yuan, accommodation rent-free, with a Chinese teaching assistant helping you prepare 1 lesson /week and assisting you in class is a walk in the park for a relatively high pay in a county where a barber earns just 800 Yuan a month. You name me another country where I can get a better deal than that. I BET YOU CAN'T!

I don't wanna work hard for a living, and I don't wanna be poor. China is ideal for me!