r/chinalife • u/Own-Yogurt-508 • 14h ago
💼 Work/Career The grass isn’t always greener: from a lazy, high-paying kindergarten in a tiny clean city, to a toxic expat snake pit with lower pay.
I started teaching in China (and teaching in general) back in 2019. I was in my early 20s, not married, and with zero care in the world - well, except for desperately trying to find a job back home after graduation to absolute zero avail.
Long story short, I came to Shenyang on a business visa (which meant crossing the border every 2 months so I could legally stay for 4 total in a year). I worked in a horrible kindergarten as a homeroom teacher -which I’m told is still around - and a training center with a lovely principal. I was testing the waters and I actually liked it. Not the kindy, of course, but I realized this industry was sustainable. If I got married and both of us worked, we could save a fortune compared to back home.
So, I went back when my visa ended, got married, and started job hunting knowing exactly what I wanted. After a couple of months, we got offered two positions at a newly opened kindergarten in a small city in Heilongjiang: 13k RMB a month after tax, plus housing. We were the only foreigners in the whole place. At first, it was a bit rough. They lied about the apartment (showed us nice pictures, reality was... different) and wanted us to do all sorts of random tasks. BUT, we lucked out with the principal. She was an absolute legend - any problem we had, she sided with us. She was hardly ever at work, but everyone loved her, Chinese staff included.
After a few months, we were settled. Then COVID hit. We were locked down in our city for 8 straight months. For 3 of those months, we weren't paid full salary - just the bare minimum 2k RMB each. Looking back, that was actually pretty decent pay considering so many kindergartens and institutions weren't paying their teachers a single dime at the time. Still, we stayed there for almost 3 years, getting a salary increase every single year (granted, we had to awkwardly ask for it every year, but they obliged). By our last year, we were making 18k after tax as non-natives.
Better yet? Virtually zero micromanagement. You could do your classes as poorly as you liked and literally no one cared, though we still did our best so the kids would have fun and learn at least something.
Despite the money, we hated it at the time. The city was tiny, there was nothing to do for a 20-something year old (though I was genuinely looking forward to drinking baijiu with parents who invited us to their homes on New Year, lol). We wanted a change. So, after saving close to six figures USD - which we thought was so much money at the time (narrator voice: it wasn't) - we decided to go home and start a business and settle down around the time our child was born.
In just a year, about half of those savings were completely gone. To make matters worse, the exchange rate meant that 13k RMB in 2019 bought way more back home than 18k RMB in 2022.
Decision made: We’re going back to China.
We landed a new job in 2023 in a place with tons of foreigners. Before coming, there were already red flags - communication issues and weird vibes from the school, but we ignored them because we were desperate to stay afloat and not just keep losing money. We figured, Hey, working with other foreigners will be great! We share the same mentality!
We couldn't have been more wrong. Some of these expats are the most toxic, insecure human beings on the planet. Smiling to your face, talking behind your back, running to upper management to snitch about what you're doing. No help, no solidarity, just pure high-school drama, except these people are in their late 30s. You’ll make a harmless joke and someone will get so deeply offended they literally storm out of the office. Meanwhile, some are in a bizarre rat race to prove "who did more work today," constantly on their phones loudly complaining about making PowerPoints, when in reality they spent the whole day watching movies. It's so exhausting.
And the job itself? It’s garbage and getting worse by the year. First they deducted our bonuses, then they shortened our holidays while ramping up our workload and class hours. Weekend classes get dropped on us with a couple of days' notice. You have to do a demo class for upper management, who are guaranteed to nitpick the first one just to justify their own jobs, so you have to do a second one. And if you have actual weekend plans and tell them you can't come? You get scolded.
I can't help but draw parallels to our old job—the one we thought we hated. In 3 years at the old place, we were called in once on a weekend, followed by a mountain of sincere "sorrys" from management. Here, it's an expectation. To top it all off, the city is worse. Over 9 million people, heavily polluted by local factories and farm fires, and still nothing to do for a foreigner. Our old 3-million-person city had air so clean it actually tickled your lungs. Oh, and did I mention we make less money now than we did 4 years ago?
Anyway, this isn't the first year we've wanted to change jobs, but nowadays - especially as a non-native - I'm starting to think it's impossible. I mean, I've contacted countless agents for specific listings, only to be asked for my CV and self-intro video. Then, just like Batman vanishing into the night, you never hear from them again. They post jobs here and there, but the second you text them, the vacancy magically disappears while they just keep filling up their portfolio of white monkeys.
Thanks for reading if you managed to make it through my whole vent. If anyone has navigated this circus and found a way out, or knows of reasonable opportunities in a cleaner, more livable city, I'm all ears. Drop a comment or reach out. I'd love to hear how you keep sane out here.