In reply to dah.

Teaching in China is not for everyone. I know, I've been doing it for many years. Some experiences are good, some bad. You will find a little or a lot of both.

Most people enjoy the novelty of teaching in China, but few will do it for a long term. Life in China away from the big cities is still a rigorous exercise in conditions 50 to 100 years behind the times.

Most of Chinese culture is still entangled with its thousand year antiquity. This is a great stumbling block in my opinion to its success in the 21st century. In other words, authority is still generally authoritarian in China. Leaders are expected to take the liberty of enriching themselves and therefore their families, even at the expense of their own lives.

Many successful men in China are executed. That's right "EXECUTED" because they took advantage of their positions and got wealthy through corruption as they've been expected to do by Chinese culture.

You are right that Foreign teachers are mostly window dressing in this new China where making money is the dominant activity of the Post-Mao era. The Chinese teachers and staff will be in control even if it means the kids are taught non-standard English as they are in most schools.

If you want to teach in China, you need to throw away your ethnocentric values, because unlike President Bush, you have no army to back up your way of thinking or enforcing your own sense of morality.

Cheers,
QD6.