Contracts 合同 Part 2 – Bad Contract

Posted on 3 February, 2008 by DC

Here are some of the more important parts of a particuarly bad contract that I once signed with Star Education – It’s bad but not the most unfair contract I’ve seen in China. Most teaching contracts are set out in a similar fashion to this and do I hope this can be of help to anyone who wishes to sign a contract to teach in China.

In the contracts there’s all sorts of waffle that really isn’t so important to you, most of it is there as it’s government policy to put these things into work contracts.

Below is taken from the annex or the part of a contract that is written by the host institution (i.e a company/language centre), not the government SAFEA booklet as that’s standard accross China and only used by mainly public universities and colleges.

3.1

This is a real trick that could get you into a lot of difficulty with a dishonest employer. Usually you should ALWAYS have the amount of hours you work PER WEEK – and state that what exactly a week is i.e. – Monday to Friday.

Having hours per month means that you will probably have different class times each week, no real fixed schedule. It will mean lots of travelling between schools and will kill your free time.

The employer will say that 20 hours a week = 80 Hours a month, If so then why not put 20 hours per week into the contract not 80 hours per month?

The worst thing is that if you only get paid if you work all of the hours in the contract (i.e handing in timesheets) , and if the company you work for can’t give you all the hours – for whatever reason – you will not get paid fully. Also if the company says you must work 60 hours this week to make up all of the hours you are meant to work in a month, you have to do it – essentially it puts lots of strain on your time

It is in the employers interest to have contract that specify monthly hours, not yours. It is a practice used by farming companies and some private schools.

3.2

This is too general, try to get it narrowed down to exactly what you will be teaching. I.e oral English, English writing or whatever it may be.
3.3

Again far to broad. Changchun – although not a big city in China – still has about 7 million people living there. Also the way the Chinese designate their cities through the various sprawling districts, you could end up working 40km away from the city centreitself as it’s still classed as Changchun. I once worked an hours coach trip from the centre of Changchun in a place called shuangyang （双阳）which is still considered part of Changchun by the government.

This means that you may have one class in the east of the city in the morning and anoter in the west in the afternoon. You’ll have no time for lunch because it will take you all the time to get there. You may have to take a taxi because the buses take too much time and and the end of a days work you may have made very little and be totally exhausted.

Try to get the locations fixed, the names of campuses, buildings if possible. If you have to work elsewhere – get transport (i.e taxi) paid for - good schools will have no problem doing this.

3.4

Again get it as specific as possible unless you don’t mid teaching all ages.

This is a trick clause and should be removed from all contracts before signing. Bsaically what it is telling you is that the company/school probably can’t get you enough classes and so don’t want to pay you all of your salary. It puts you in a very diffcult position if the employer has no work for you, as you are still employed by them but are not being paid! A good employer will never have anything like this in it’s contract, if you see it in an initail contract it’s a big red flag. Avoid.

4.2

So leading on from the previous point, when you dont work 80 hours a month you will only be paid pro-rata at 62 an hour. This is very bad indeed. Furthermore as most classes last 40 or 45 minutes you will only be paid 42 or 47 yuan per class. If a class is cancelled (as they often are) you will have to make up the hours in your free time.

To put this in perspective, I know Chinese English teachers who make more than this per hour and they work far fewer classes a week.

Good organisations do not do this. A class, whether it be 30 mins, 40, 45, 50 or 1 hour is classed as a teaching hour. Again, if you see this in a contract – run.

4.3, 4.4

Repeats the above condition. Just remember, why would an employer put a clause like this into a contract? What are his/her motives? It certainly isn’t in the interest of his employees…

You get paid for the months classes, so if you start mid-month, will only get 2 weeks pay. Basic meaning is that you will be paid in arrears. Universities don’t pay in arrears, they pay on a fixed date (usually the 15th) and the pay is for the full month.

Agreeing to this could cause you to lose half a months pay – as you may never see the pay for the arrears worked.

Your overtime will be paid at 80 yuan an hour – but only if it exceeds 80 hours a month. So if you have only worked 70 hours in the month, there is nothing stopping your employer making you work 10 hours in one day and you will not see any overtime.

This clause protects the employer from ever paying overtime to his employees, he/she will give the work to those people that have not made up 80 hours a month rather than pay over time. Incidently, overtime is always paid at a miniumum of 100 Yuan an hour and personally I wouldn’t put this into the contract. I would deal with any overtime as it comes, on case-by-case basis, and negotiate at the actual time. I have been paid 200 yuan an hour for some jobs, It depends on the actual situation.

4.6

No holiday or vacation pay. Very bad indeed, everyone should get paid for at least the October and May holidays. And make up the classes missed. No winter vacation pay, so will have at least 2 months where there is very little work available and no guaranteed income. Unless you moonlight.

4.7

Probably the most straight forward part of the contract, you get 800 Yuan for rent each month. This is extra to your salary and you get it each month regardless of how many hours you work. 800 really isn’t enough to get a decent apartment in central Changchun, for that you need more like 1500 yuan a month.

Actually I was told that this 800 would not be paid to me as the company had no classes for me – and so I wouldn’t be teaching for 2 months - As you can see that is basides the point, I get this regardless of how much I work. This eventually led me to perform a runner from the company as it was my only prudent choice of action at the time.

Note the wording ‘fulfill the contract’ this can be misconstrued and twisted by any employer. Get dates i.e. 31st July 2007 will get paid …. for Flight ticket – this leaves no ambiguities. Also only from Beijing, you still have to get to Changchun. Wihout discount that’s another 2000 Yuan to your ticket price. To be honest to get to the UK from Changchun return, if you include all transport costs is 7000+.

The final passage is next to meaningless as it says should not, which in legal documents means nothing whatsoever.

7.4

Again badly worded, can be misconstrued. Get exact pay dates into the contract.

7.5

This is potentially disasterous for the teacher. If a school re-schedules, you MUST obey any class shifting – even if you are only given 30 mins notice. This should never be agreed to, it must be reasonable.

8.3

Standard government stuff, but is far to sweeping and needs to be tidied-up. Not to enagage in any mass activities is far too excessive - you could argue that by signing this you cannot teach as that in itself is a mass activity!

8.7

Ignore, not important – almost all contracts have something like this in it. Just don’t tell party A, but make sure other work does not clash with one this work.

8.10

Ignore. Just dont tell them, it’s none of their business what you choose to do in your free time. They are trying to cover themselves if you get hurt or injured whilst not working as technically as an employer they are vicariously liable for you.

10.4

Designed to scare you more than anything else. I highly doubt whether this is based on actual fact, but to be honest it’s not important. You have to ask the rhetorical question – Why would somebody ‘ sudden disappearance/departure of party B from his or her post’ ?

Clearly they have had problems previously and are trying to scare people into not running from a contract that has been dishonoured by the employer. In my experience people don’t just run for no reason. Some are home sick and leave very soon after arriving in China, but most do it because their employer is screwing them/going to screw them.

London Chinatown 伦敦中国城

Posted on 12 November, 2007 by DC

Been lazy/too busy to update things here… Have lots of things to write about, will put them here once I have time.

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The other day had the opportunity to check out London’s China Town, I’ve only been once before, many many years ago.

It’s situated very close to Leicester Square and makes up a much smaller area than I expected. I really was expecting a little more than just a few streets…

As expected, Chinatown is not really reminicant of any place I’ve seen In China, for me the only striking simularities being the obvious characters on signs (almost all traditional characters) and the Chinese looking people walking around the area.

fruit and veg chinese supermarket Cantonese 粤语 is the main language spoken here, most Chinese here I would guess have links with Hong Kong / Taiwan or southern China. I haven’t heard much Cantonese before and I have to say it’s a very ugly language to listen to and sounds really aggressive to the untuned ear.

I was sitting in a cheap buffet restaurant (£5/75元 all you can eat – Incidently – you wouldn’t want to eat too much food here!, but for London prices it’s very cheap) and the manager was telling the fuyuan (waitresses) in really stongly accented Mandarin where he wanted the customers to sit, whilst chatting with some customers in Cantonese. The fuyuans were clearly mainlanders.

I wondered how/why they got/came to the UK, they clearly were not students/skilled migrants, but I didn’t ask them for obvious reasons. From what I heard they spoke very little english beyond restaurant vocab.

I couldn’t help thinking that their quality of life here couldn’t be much better than what they had in China？ Perhaps I’m wrong and they are here legally, but knowing how very difficult it is for Mainland Chinese to get work outside ancestry, I highly doubt this. – ~~My guess is that they paid a gang in China and came here illegally…- working in Chinatown for less than minimum wage…- posting cash home or paying off the debts to the gangmasters… Who knows?~~

I think there are two sides to Chinatown; the obvious side you’ll see walking down one of the pedestrianised streets- tourists sightseeing, taking pictures and visiting restaurants. Locals and tourists alike wanting to try sample ‘real’ Chinese food and perhaps what they think It’s like in a Chinese restaurant in China.

The problem with this, I think, is that there are so many rules and health and safey regulations that to have a ‘real’ authentic copy of a Chinese restaurant in London would probably be illegal! And to be honest I dont think It would be popular with British people ‘laowai’ – so you end up with a compromise, not one or the other. Just as in Changchun the ‘western’ restaurants (i.e. 欧娄巴） are also compromises – it’s a question of supply and demand – you give the customer what he/she wants or expects, whether its ‘real’ or not is not the point!

And the other side, the darker side. Chinese people and immigrants from other asian countries working (many illegally, but they do jobs that many people here simply wont do.) for very little pay and poor working conditions.

Something else that I noticed or at very least percieved was the relative ‘poverty’ of the Chinese (excluding asian looking tourists/students – who stand out like saw thumbs) looking people – I’m sure most chinese speaking immigrants end up here,

I am also sure there are operations in people trafficking probably operated from within this area. -I’m not making a judgement I’m just saying, I think that’s how it is.

There was an interesting banner draped over a shop that looked as though it had recently been closed down, (see pic on left) stating that the British were not supporting migrant workers – I can only guess why this shop was boarded up, It would be interesting to find out why. I wouldn’t be surprised if it has something to do with hiring illegal workers.

What I found funny was the way in which the Chinese have exported their business models and how they are being used in London – here you can find small shops (just like those in Changchun) selling anything – fake DVDs, SIM cards, foreign foodstuffs, you can even change your renminbi

There are adverts places outside, posters, billboards – just like those in Changchun. I think the the Chinese here are incredibly entrepreneurial and profit conscious, they even use western selling ideas (never seen in China) – such as buy one get one free or two for the price of one. Also it’s the only place in the UK where I’ve seen there are too many staff!

It much harder to do this here as its not so easy to strar up a business, but i think there is greater potential to make more money long term.

I have spent some time in various Chinese restaurants and being the UK they wont let you take in your own drinks, afterall this is financially to their dis-advantage and how other restaurants operate in the UK. Yet they keep other Chinese practices – such as service being very direct to the point- which of course in the UK, can be misinterpreted as being rude and impolite.

But it’s accepted by the customers I think. Personally I would rather have one or the other – western service or chinese service and all that goes with it – but that’s not how things have developed.

I find it curious how the Chinese food here has been anglocized with things that people from the UK think is ‘Chinese’ just as western foods in China are ‘Chinacized’ to suit tastes, because that’s really what Chinese people expect of western food.

This runs through many areas and happens I think because of a combination of perhaps ignorance on the customers part, stereotypes things from films TV, and adaptation on the businesses part – that is changing a product to meet more local demand.

Anyway, The ‘Chinese’ food here I’ve tried thus far is pretty bad. Awful..

If I want Chinese food I like then the only way is took cook it myself but I knew this would probably happen before I left China…

Luckily I have a sweet toooth and so can get used to things here but I can imagine how difficult It must be for someone new to the UK. The food isn’t as bad as I remember, it just seriously lacks taste and flavour!

I’m not so sure now that If you look hard enough, you’ll be get lots of different types of Chinese food, as I only seemed to be able to find the Cantonese restaurants!　广东菜真难吃了！

I did find several Chinese supermarkets and was very happy to find they sell many of the same things I saw In Changchun. Those packets of instant noodles for 30p (5元), sunflower seeds for 2 pounds (30元) a packet and one of my favourite drinks – 水晶葡萄 grape juice for a very reasonable 60p (10元) a bottle!

Unfortunatly I was unable to find many of the sauces that I recognised in Changchun. Predictabally, almost all the ingrediants are imported from Hong Kong and so are quite different from the stuff in dongbei.

An interesting problem I encountered was working out what was what, as the characters used are traditional and so are difficult for me to read and a westernised English name or Cantonese name is used, rather than pinyin

For example: hoisin sauce is haixian jiang 海鮮酱. I dont know the English name or cantonese spelling/pronuncaiation so I am having to learn!

But I did find these sunflower seeds (xiang guazi) 香瓜子 for a very reasonable 2 pounds for a big bag!

Qingdao Beer

Posted on 23 September, 2007 by DC

Recently I’ve been on a bit of a quest to find some Chinese things here where In the UK as I’m just curious about these things. I’ve finally found Qingdao beer in the local shop. It’s different from the Qingdao in Changchun in size and flavour. The bottle is a very small 330ml almost half the size of the ones in Changchun. It cost £1.38 or 21元 which is a little expensive considering the size, but not so much here relatively speaking.

Strangely this is 4.7%, much stronger than the 3.8% Qingdao in Changchun and so it tastes quite different! Not as good in my opinion!

More on Reverse Culture Shock

Posted on 23 September, 2007 by DC

I’m getting lazy with upating this, will eventually get around to sorting out the whole website again…

Want to add some of my thoughts on the reverse culture shock thing that happens when you come back to your home country after a while outside. I’m in a weird stage at the moment, past the initial moments but yet to fully assimilate everything.
I found this breakdown of the stages to RCS and have added a few personal thought to them:
STAGE 1: Disengagement

While you are still abroad, you begin to start thinking about moving back home and moving away from your overseas experience and friends.

Yes, very true – especially in the last few weeks/months, start to look forward to getting back home and seeing family/freinds again.

STAGE 2: Euphoria

You may be very excited to be back in your own country and others may be equally delighted to have you back. After people express their pleasure at seeing you again, and listen politely to your stories for a while, you may suddenly and/or painfully realize that they are not particularly interested in what happened to you and would much rather prefer to talk about their own affairs.

Yes true to an extent, though depends on whom you’re talking to. Do notice that most people I know have absolutly no idea what my life was like in China. Really no idea at all. I think It’s very hard for them to imagine what it was like and so perhaps they are more interested in talking about things here in the UK. I know that relating to people is hard, especially if you talk about thing they can’t imagine and they talk about things you don’t know anything of – i.e. anything to do with popluar culture etc!

I just try to keep as busy and occupied as possible, always doing something or other. Whether its work, or visting people or places or just walking somewhere, I find it makes things much easier.

STAGE 3: Alienation

In this stage, you experience dampened euphoria with feelings of alienation, frustration and anger. You may even feel like an outsider – a foreigner in your own country. It will be different from how you remembered it (The pollution may be worse. The pace may be more hurried and hectic, etc.) Suddenly you feel irritated with others and impatient with your own inability to do things as well or as quickly as you hoped. Resentment, loneliness, disorientation and even a sense of helplessness may per vade.

I think I’m in this stage at the moment, I agree things are different from before (It’s not just me ) and generally I would say they are for the worse. Yes, It’s very easy to get annoyed at other peoples behaviour but for me it’s more of the whole culture of everything that annoys me most – The general way people think and act.
I often see this as myopic and ignorant a general narrow view of life. However, I also see many many positive, great aspects to life here – people are so comfortable, there is no poverty, no food shortages, the police actually do their job, there is much legislation to protect individuals interests, – you can easily live a very comfortable life. So I see why people are like this but on the other hand it really makes me wonder – can I live my life like this?

For most people this is a no-brainer, and the answer is I think is if you live here all your life, in the same area, surrounded by the same influences then you know nothing else. It is comfortable so why risk change!

STAGE 4: Gradual Readjustment

The fourth stage of reentry includes a gradual readjustment to life at home. During this stage, you will no longer be shocked by the variety you find on the supermarket shelves and be able to contain your comments about differences between cultures that come to your attention. If you have difficulty filtering out the foreign words in your conversation, you will find that your English-only conversational skills will improve during stage four.

I’m sure ´Culture Shock´ and ´Reverse Culture Shock´ are real issues and should be considered carefully by anyone who travels overseas for long periods of time. There is no doubt that travelling is an extremely healthy thing to do, it is not only adventurous but we gains insight into our own lives from people and their traditions of Countries we visit. It is also a helpful way to be objective about where we are from, our own lives and a slow process of building more trust in the world as we share more and more of our own native lands with people we historically have deemed to be outsiders.

I’m not at this stage yet, guess it will take more time. I believe there is a part of me that thinks by re-adjusting totally I would be losing things that I have gained from living In China. Also I have this horrible fear that once I’ve ‘readjusted’ I will become like most other people who live here and become stuck in my cocoon, narrow minded, even not wanting to go back to China again. I know many people who, once settled and into this mindset have changed their views on life and have assimilated back into the grind of everyday life. I do not want that to happen to me, but I don’t want to be an outsider. It’s difficult.
I have a theory, I think that perhaps it is not such a good thing to assimilate into everything here, I may live, work,eat, breathe here but I will keep my mind open. However, when you are subjected to living in a culture, you take in thoughts subconsciously- whether this through media or whatever- and I think this has an impact on the way you act/think/do things whether you like it or not!

Don’t work for Jilin University

Posted on 11 September, 2007 by DC

JILIN UNIVERSITY DOES NOT PAY ITS FOREIGN TEACHERS !

This is my final post about this problem, I hope others can learn from this and perhaps it will help them in the future.

This post is a return to the previous jida problem I wrote about in July. I’d almost forgotten about this, until this morning received an email from a Mr Yan asking why the school had not yet received any marks from the final exam I gave to my students. Of course the reasons for this are axiomatic – those marks are the only quid p jilin university lie ro quo I have left.
Am I being un-professional by holding them back? Perhaps but this is my only option. My hand has been forced.

It has crossed my mind just giving in and handing over the marks but this would undermine my position as I have others still persuing them through ‘legal’ means. I feel a little sorry for the students who are caught in the middle of this, they are though, used to such problems happening, it’s just one of the many unfair aspects to the education system in Changchun.

I don’t want to seem to be complaining all the time about things and I wasn’t going to say any more about this on my blog, until I got the email. I now feel compelled to put this here to set the record straight, as no-doubt, the university will say all sorts of poisonous lies in an attempt to discredit me. As I am no longer in Changchun I have nothing to fear by writing the names of those invloved and exactly what they said to me.

I have been discreet up to now, not using names, being vague In the hope that things could be setteled without any loss of ‘face’ on their part. This isn’t going to happen now.

In my previous post I wrote about 2 people at Jida who threatened me with withdrawing money from my bank account ‘a back transfer’ to use their exact words as well as other things.
There’s nothing like a bit of naming and shaming so -

These two people are:

姓名：张广翠 zhang guangcui
职务：副处长 vice director
办公电话： 85166576

E-mail：gczhang@jlu.edu.cn 工作职责：
分管外国专家和港澳台事务工作 – manages foreign experts general affairs
or find her picture here
and

姓名：赵勇 zhao yong – this ironically means brave. haha
职务：项目官员 project officer
办公电话： 85166567

E-mail：zhaoyong@jlu.edu.cn 工作职责：
负责长期外国（境外）专家项目；相关专家的接待与安排。- don’t make me laugh!
or find her picture here

I now know this technically cannot be done but It was a clear threat made to make me go away and give up chasing the money. The university only owes me 2 months salary, not very much money in the scheme of things but they did this to all the foreign teachers and so you can understand we’re now talking about hundreds of thousands of yuan, which is a lot of money in any country, especially so here.

Reputation and face counts for so much to these people, I just hope that everybody that reads this understands that I am doing this because others need to know about what really goes on. Many international universities have partnership programmes and do business through the department of International Co-operation, I hope people can read this and see how they really treat their foreign employees. Do I have an axe to grind? I don’t think so, I’m back in the UK doing new things. I just want others to be informed of this, It is too bad to go un-noticed. From a dodgy company I would expect this, but from Jilin University you do not. Aferall they are ‘one of the best universities in China.’
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A problem with a big university like Jida is nobody communicates between departments, nobody really knows what’s going on. So a Mr Yan, whom I have no grudge with whatsoever, isn’t (or claims to be) unaware of what has been happening, wrote this email I just recieved:
Here’s the email with my responses indented:

Dear David,
It’s nice to get your reply. I am glad that I can contact you by email .
First of all, the students taught by you think they have learned a lot in your classes and they really regard you as a responsible and competent teacher.

Thank you. I also have learned a lot and the students were wonderful, so many great experiences in class. I shall miss the classroom and teaching aspect of things at Jida. The students were a pleasure to teach.

They are longing for the results of the final exams which they have prepared for carefully and diligently for a period of time.

The students know their results, just I haven’t given them to the school yet. You already know why.

Secondly,to be honest, I don’t know what has happened between you and Jilin University Department for International Co-operation regarding salary.

Sorry, I don’t believe you.

But no matter what the problem is, it is your students rather than Jilin University Department for International Co-operationthe that care about the exam results

10/10 for honesty. You heard it from the horse’s mouth – ‘it is your students rather than Jilin University Department for International Co-operationthethat care about the exam results.’
So Jilin University doesn’t care about it’s students exam results. hmmm where have I heard that before! Money is everything for them. Such greedy, selfish people.

Your refusal of my request for the exam results can not help solving the problem regarding salary at all, and it can only lead to the cancellation of the subject you taught last semester and all the students will not get the results of the subject at last.

And that says it all. The students mean nothing to the university when they are prepared to ‘cancel’ a semester’s worth of classes for the sake of pocketing an extra buck. Or maybe they are more afraid of losing face by admitting they have in effect stolen money that should have been given into teachers salaries?

It is a waste of time for all the students, and as a teacher myself, I think it is unfair to all the innocent students indeed.

Your university started this! I worked hard, never had any complaints, the students liked me, never turned up late for work – and you say its unfair. This is a twisted response from a morally bankrupt university that brings shame upon honest hard working teachers. You say you are a ‘teacher’, how would you react if I took 2 months salary from your bank account?

So, for the benefit of these innocent students, would you please send me the marks for the students final exams?

Another twisted arguement, trying to blackmail me. Remember, I worked, did nothing wrong. You did not pay. End of arguement.

And all the students will appreciate your kindness.
Best wishes.
Sincerely Yours
Yan Shijun

This chap is the head of the Medical School Education Department, obviously somebody has leant on him to write this as I’ve never heard from him before. Never even saw him before. Don’t know who is is.
Like I have said before, teaching in China is massively rewarding and a really great thing with which to pick up new ideas on life. At times it’s simply brilliant. So much fun.

What annoys me is I did my research with this position at Jida, I checked everything- left no stone unturned.
The contract is unambigious, yet, I still got cheated. I tried to reason, but failed. They were not willing to listen.

I guess they point I’m trying to make is: Regardless of where you work, regardless of the reputation of the university, regardless of what the contract unambigiously says – You can be screwed, nothing can help you.

Just go into contracts with the impression that you will be cheated at some point, then perhaps this will not come as a surprise. It is sad, but the only logical answer I can think of!

Differences

Posted on 1 September, 2007 by DC

Extremely busy! Gradually adjusting to life here, still is going to take months not weeks -if ever- to get fully back into things!

Also, there really isn’t much to write about, things just aren’t that interesting!

Trying to re-adjust not just to the surroundings, but to the way I’m doing things myself. I have picked up Chinese ways of doing things and here they can sometimes not be so useful!

I’m trying to store away the ‘China’ habits that are not so accepted here, like crossing roads whenever I see a small gap in the traffic, pointing and using lots of body language, using the Chinese hand gestures for numbers (totally useless here), not saying ‘please ‘and ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’ all the time, standing too close to people in queues, always on my toes to get on the train before anyone else (much to the consternation of others).

And other things mostly related to language and being overly direct, that is, getting straight to the point perhaps sounding like an oaf to others…

Whilst at the same time, trying to keep those many good habits I’ve picked up. Like starting early, saving, cooking, walking, using public transport and wearing clothes for more than 1 day (Unfortunately others don’t understand this, and would assume I’m ‘dirty’ – so probably best not to do this )
There are other small things, take for example, not wearing slippers or sandals every time you enter a home. Just socks feels odd , there is definitely something missing! So I now wear sandals in the house despite it being carpeted, out of habit more than anything else!
It’s probably not surprising how being away alters your perception of things, especially things you previously did. There are some things that I previously never even considered or thought about, that I now have opinions on or I think about. I notice things that others do not, especially the more negative aspects to life.
I often find myself asking ‘why do people do things this way?‘ and their response is simply ‘that’s how its always been done!’ Knowing no other way.

I think once you’re used to doing something, you don’t think so much about why- just do it.

I think my being in China has caused me to develop this ‘rose-tinted vision’ of how things are back home, when the reality is, of course, quite different and so I notice things.

When I was in China, even though I lived there for almost 3 years, subconsciously I could always say to myself ‘This is China, if I don’t fully understand why things are like this then – so be it!’ I could accept that things are different. But being in your own country and not liking what you see, this doesn’t apply.

Ok, I’ve only been back 3 weeks or so, but I find the ‘culture’ -for want of a better word- a little backwards! Only now I fully understand the very good aspects to Chinese society that have been long dead in the UK.A good illustration of this is in the prices people pay for goods and services. The UK is so ‘developed’ that you throw things away, because financially speaking it’s not worth fixing. There isn’t the care paid to things, knowing that they can be replaced cheaply. Everything is disposable and short term. China is also short-term, but in other ways – at least there, anything can be fixed.
Take Fruit & veg. Healthy food is more expensive than pre-packed, ready-made junk food.

Indeed People pay a premium to eat ‘good’ food, so you have the bizarre situation where people who cant afford/don’t eat healthy food are fat, or often obese – whereas in China its the opposite of course.

There are so many other situations where I see other things like this, I think that as ‘developed’ the UK is, there are many aspects to life here that are worse than in a place like China. I think most of these issues stem from people having more money, less free time in their lives than they once had, and the commercialisation- instant society- that has developed.

In China I seldom watched the news because who wants to watch one-sided-broadcasting in a foreign language? Here I also don’t watch the news anymore, but for other reasons. It just annoys me listening to other people speak about irrelevant subjects and things in such narrow, insular ways. I also find myself correcting language mistakes (even though my English is also bad! ) – well it used to be my job! – the way the English language is changing I won’t be surprised that in say 50 years, dialect will be so thick you’ll need interpreters from one English to the next!

Back Home

Posted on 11 August, 2007 by DC

So been back 5 days or so, still getting used to things around here. It’s exciting and different, Will take quite a while for it to all soak in, I think. Not really sure what to think, still processing it all…
But one thing is certain – It’s one thing going to a new country to live for the first time, quite another coming back to your home country after a period away.

I have begun to realise just how developed things are in the UK and also how comfortable people live their lives. It is very affluent here, people are less concerned with the harsh realities of life, things like TV and popular culture seem more important. I think It is very insular here. I believe there are many problems here caused by people generally having too much money.

I’m still not used to seeing green grass, breathing clean air, not used to walking down the road and not seeing any other people, not used to seeing so many vehicles on the road, not used to seeing everything in English – what no characters!

There are no real poor people here (In comparision to Changchun), signs are everywhere telling me what I can’t do, even though It’s plainly obvious… A total dependence on cars, pre-prepared meals, instant gratification, buy now pay later attitude – Certainly different from what I’m used to!

Other striking thing is, of course, language. Interesting use of words , interesting pronunciation, lots of dialect and slang – indeed I would say that even the best students that I had taught would find it very difficult to understand most people here.
I feel as if things have changed since I’ve been away, but It could just be me! I’m not sure.

Things are clean, ordered, regimented, and I think after a while this will be a little boring from my perspective!

Life may be better in many respects here, but it is I think it is duller because it is so much more predictable – which is probably a good thing in many ways.
I guess If you never leave here for a while, you’ll never have the chance to even see things from another perspective and that surely is a bad thing, just takes a while to get used to things again.

The End

Posted on 3 August, 2007 by DC

So that’s pretty much it! Done. The story is over.
I will be leaving Changchun tomorrow (4th August) and (most probably ) China on the 5th at 13.50. Should get to London at 17.50 UK time.

I almost certainly shall never live in Changchun again, when I return to China it will be elsewhere. Despite what people may think, this is a good city to live In, It is a nice place and I’m certain I shall miss aspects of my life here once I’m back in the UK.

Final photo in at Changchun Airport

Having read through much of my blog in recent weeks, I think that If I had read this before I came to Changchun I probably wouldn’t have come!

I want to say, that there are of course pitfalls to coming here to work, but, by and large it has been a really positive experience. I have enriched myself and have many new life experiences – which If I had never come here – I am certain I would never had the opportunity to have.

Even In bad times, I have never regretted my decision to come here and I think that speaks for Itself.

The experiences have allowed me to develop thoughts on new things and have given me a sense of direction that I previously never had. Furthermore, It has also given me an opportunity to focus my understanding not just of other peoples, but more profoundly of myself. I have adpated to various situations and have been able to solve many problems that have come up in my daily life, this also makes me feel better as a person.

For that I am very happy.

Goodbye Changchun!

再见长春！

Beifang

Posted on 31 July, 2007 by DC

Just got back from Beifang Shichang 北方市场 or the North Market, It’s a large textile and fabric market in the east of the city, where you can get clothes (or anything really) tailored.

Foreigners come here because you can actually get clothes that fit you, and because it’s so much cheaper than getting tailored things made in the west. It’s strange, many Chinese have a totally different perception of tailored clothing – that it is not so good, they would rather buy from off the peg. Also lots of people tell me they think tailored clothing is expensive, I have friends who say that they only time they had clothes made was when they were children, or many years ago when things were less developed.

I think it’s cheaper – especially if you are too big/tall to find clothing from elsewhere, and there is much more choice (for men anyway).
However, the quality of the fabric varies from very good to very poor, as does the quality of the workmanship.

Therefore, I think you have to be careful when getting things from here, it would be quite easy to get conned.

So they way to avoid this is – of course – to know people who work here, to have a contact that can guaranteed you quality of work for a good price.

There are some very high quality tailors that will charge you a normal price. For example, for a suit (trousers+jacket including all materials except the outside) the labour should cost around 120 yuan. A tailor you don’t know will try to get you to pay 2X 3X 4X this price.
Your tailor will measure you and tell you how much material you need to buy, in order to make whatever it is you wish to have made. I require 2.8 Square Metres of fabric in order to make a suit.

It can be time consuming finding the material you want, but it takes even more time bargaining it down to a price that is reasonable. Many foreigners come here, especially the foreign workers, and I think they don’t get a great deal on the price (what’s an extra 1 or 200 yuan to them?), so when the sellers see a foreigner they expect you to pay more even more than they normally do.

I often tell them, I can’t afford those prices, I’m a poor student with no money – Look at my clothes, do I look like I have a lot of money? Of course this approach fails as by virtue of being foreign immediatly makes me ‘rich’ in their eyes at least, however saying this always makes people laugh.

The great thing is that there are so many vendors you can just move on to the next one, compare prices and use the old ‘but she over there said this cost …’ technique. This is an effective way of getting a fair price I think, but it does take time which makes It great Chinese pratice!
Almost every vendor wil tell you how great this or that piece of material is, how beautiful a certain colour is, which one is best quality and so on. I guess you have to be able to decide what you’re looking for then try to get a price that is reasonable or you could spend all day here choosing, such is the choice.

There are many types of fabric ranging from formal looking materials for suits, to bright fluorescent shiny fabric that wouldn’t look out of place in the 1980s. Actually, comparatively speaking, Changchun doesn’t have such good choice when it comes to different types of materials, Shenyang is much better and cheaper.

In terms of suits, and lets face it that’s what 99% of foreigners have made here, the material ranges from about 50 yuan per sq/m to over 200 yuan a sq/m. I went around everywhere just casually asking the price – I have an idea what things should cost – because I’m interested in what kind of mark up they put on the fabric when a foreigner asks how much it should be. The most expensive price I was given was 275 a square metre , the lowest 85 – the real price is probably more like 40-50 and 150-60.

I’ve had a few suits made, I’ve tried the cheaper fabric 50yuan sq/m and the more expensive stuff at 90yuan sq/m – and they are all fine, but my tailor said to me that the cheaper material is cheaper because it wont last as long.

Once you’ve got the material you want, you take it back to the tailor who most probably has a magazine full of images of different clothing. You browse through this and pick whatever style you like, the beauty of this is you can ask for pretty much any style you want – I got a very nice suit made but requested bright red lining just because I could!

You can also take pictures of clothes you like, which are perhaps too expensive to buy in the shops, or copies of clothing made – It goes without saying they can copy almost anything!

Sod

Posted on 30 July, 2007 by DC

Took this the other day- ‘Sod’ soap.

Made me laugh anyway.

Blog @ Changchun China 中国长春博客

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Category Archives: Opinion 意见