One of the biggest complaints of previous Asian-American teachers in China that I have heard of is that we have a relatively difficult time securing extra-legal (to use a euphemism) employment that most other foreign teachers enjoy. That is, because of the technical restrictions on our visas, it is illegal for us to teach anywhere other than the school with which we applied for the visa for – so for me, I can only legally teach at Yucai Third Middle. Most teachers ignore this restriction, though, and go ahead and take tutoring jobs without any problems.
Unless they’re ethnically Asian, many of whom found that Chinese tutoring schools and Chinese parents would rather have a white person teach their children English. There being no equal opportunity laws in China here, this is done quite openly, and I know of a few ethnic Americans who have been sent letters plainly telling them that their application was appreciated but not of the, hm, persuasion they were seeking. And that’s just for the ESL chain schools and institutions; the individual families who could hire personal tutors for their children don’t bother asking them at all.
Happily, this situation has been much different for me, mostly because I am in the more open-minded Nanshan District I think (these suspicions being confirmed only a few days ago by one of our program coordinators, which I can write about later). I have had one tutoring offer already (though it was put on ice later for lack of participants), and nobody here seems to doubt my English skills. But still, I haven’t and probably won’t do any teaching work outside of Yucai Third Middle, simply because…of time!
Already I have found plenty of things to do:
- Run and work out at the gym on Gongye Ba
- Practice three different musical instruments (guitar, piano and erhu) and even doodle around with jazz piano when I can
- Write fiction (which still hasn’t really gotten anywhere yet, but I’m hoping to at least start before NaNoWriMo officially starts
- Practice Chinese
- Catch up on my reading list (Working right now on Yu Hua’s Brothers and Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore)
- and oh, a new project, try to figure out some music production software like Sony ACID or FL Studio.
- PS: maybe one day make a video montage too.
So suddenly having all these projects to do is taking time away from keeping this blog as current as I’d like, to speak nothing of finding additional employment! But I reason it this way: with so many projects and hobbies to find fulfillment in, for me right now, time is more valuable than money. Especially with medical school looming imminently in the near future, I think this year is my year to basically take care of everything that would otherwise manifest as a terrible, terrible midlife crisis (band, anybody?). I may not have as much pocket change as other expats, but I’m not really here for the reasons other expats are, either. More on the that (which I’m still discovering anyway) later.
