I wouldn’t work for this program if I were you. Yes, the pay is reasonable but you need to take into account that there is no holiday pay between semesters, so you’re not making as much per annum as you think. It is enough to get by in Shenyang. In fact, you could even save more than half of your salary, but you’ll be living in the armpit of one of the most wretched cities in all of China, breathing absolutely poisonous air.

Back to the job. It’s a rotten gig. The students are of a woeful standard. Don’t be fooled into thinking that places on this course are highly sought after.; these kids are what is left over. VU happily hoovers up the dregs, packs them into dirty, damp and ill-equipped classrooms, hands the teachers the most pathetic of EAP courses and demands you teach to the letter. Don’t go getting original. As they say in Korea, ‘the nail that sticks out gets hammered down’.

The manager is a middle-aged, bigoted Fillipino woman. What she has to say about Chinese people is truly horrible. She should feel lucky that she is employed there as her English is pretty bad. She’s a massive gossip. I heard she got a guy fired for questioning her management but I dunno, it was all kept hush hush. Her husband teaches on the program so watch what you say along the corridors coz he leaves his balls in his wife’s office.

The teachers were okay, you know, the usual mix of drunks, losers and just plain dodgy people you get on the ESL circuit in China. Typically, there was a fair amount of backstabbing and out and out rude behaviour. Farting on each other, dodging bills, generally just running each other into the ground. One guy looked spaced out on something, another smoked dope on campus pretty regularly. There was an Australian couple who seemed okay but they moved on.

The Chinese staff will never break breath to you. You are a white face to them. Don’t be taken in by the weekly meetings or the boatload of grading you are expected to do.

None of it matters. Your opinion is just white noise to management. They sold their souls to the VU devil and will spout whatever nonsense they are asked to spout. The degrees are bought. Regardless of the pitiful standard of work produced, kids will pass, you will burn out after a few semesters and wonder why the hell you ever got into ESL in the first place.

So yeah, if the money seems good enough to subject yourself to this sham, go for it. Give it a year and move on. You are nothing more than a pawn in a very corrupt game. Education this is not. It’s disgusting and anyone who has renewed contracts with these cretins are not the kind of people you want to invite over for dinner. A truly sickening, soul-destroying couple of years it has been. You might feel proud for like a week thinking that you work for a western university program, but once you see for yourself how little money reaches the classrooms and how diabolical the course is, you’ll realise you’ve been played.

Yes I’m bitter. Why I stayed as long as I did? I was broke. Never again.