StevieB,

Sounds like you may be looking at SilverStar in LinYi, NW of Yuncheng.

If that is the case, you need to know that Yuncheng area has some fairly hard-core, nationalistic, formerly Red Guard (who were middle school students like yours) type people, who live in the smaller cities around Yuncheng. If you are in Yuncheng, not that bad. You will only hear the word 'laowai' 10 times a day. But if you go to Xinjiang, or Linyi, or XiaXian NE of Yuncheng, you need to know that these places are hotbeds of 'Traditional Chinese Culture'.

That is, off the charts xenophobic to the point that in public you will be stared at, commented on, and pointed at, about every 10 metres once you set foot off campus. Expect to hear the word laowai 40 times a day, constantly.

I will assume that you cannot speak nor read Chinese, so your ability to understand this will be limited at first due to language competency.

Your students will be great. Teaching in China is more of entertainment, but within that the kids are fine. It is not like teaching in other nations. The kids want to have a one hour break from their 16 hour days of memorisation, and you are it.

It's their mom's, dad's, relatives and anyone you meet outside the school gate who will become an issue.

You will be overcharged up to 5x the price the first few weeks, I suggest you avoid any large purchases to keep these loses to a minimum until you learn local prices.

Your apartment will have a surveillance camera pointed at your door, this all started late last year, and with the current administration being in power for at least the next 7 years and possibly longer (17 more of this?), it seems very unlikely that attitudes towards foreigners will change anytime soon. Locals will be opening their mobile phones and reporting your activities just about everywhere you go in the smaller towns. Yuncheng not so much.

Shanxi is much more traditional (nationalistic xenos) than most of the rest of China, and of course Beijing and Shanghai are nothing like the Yuncheng area.

This is from those in Yuncheng, as well as friends in larger cities in contact with people and schools all over China. These new anti-foreigner attitudes are in just about every smaller city in the country.

You could work in Shanghai for 3x the money.
It's up to you. If you want to put in the years and gain experience for a teaching career, this is an easy way to do it.

If everything written does not bother you, then go for it.

Just make sure that you are paid for 12 months a year, not 8; that you are paid at least 7000 a month to start; that you get a completion bonus and free accommodation; and under NO circumstances is anyone to hold your passport or FEC for more than 3 weeks for processing. The FEC is your property, under Chinese law. Do not let them keep your passport for 'safe keeping' - that is a means of control (and done all over China, not just in Yuncheng).

Lastly, the Internet.

You will be mostly cutoff from everything that you now assume you can do, and proxy VPN's no longer work inside China.
It is particularly bad in Yuncheng in the smaller cities, so keep that in mind. Banking, blogs, email to friends, all social media that you use, all of it will be gone once you set foot inside China. Many news sites will be blocked as well. Everything Google is gone.

The Internet issue is country wide, no matter where you go.

Good things?:
You will be able to save 5000 of the 7000 a month you earn, and the fast train is there to take you to Xian and Beijing.
You will see the real China not a showcase big city of it full of expats.
You will be the only non-Chinese person in town.
You will lose a large amount of weight your first months.
You will learn a near-Beijing dialect that is fairly commonly understand country-wide.