Anyone here live in China?

[LeSwordfish]

I'm investigating the prospect of working for a year in china teaching english, and I was wondering if there were people here online who live in China who I could badger with questions about living there.

To start off, are VPNs allowed? I'm a fairly heavy internet user - would I be at serious risk using a VPN for twitter/facebook etc?

[Winter_Wolf]

Ah, hahahah. Used to live in China and go back because family. You can TRY whatever vpn you want. Probably it's already blocked or will suffer serious downtime and slow speeds. You won't find a free one that works. Period. You'll forgive me not divulging any vpn service, they tend to get clamped off so quickly that any recommendations are practically worthless within a month at best. That said, what does or doesn't get through is all very random.

But if you're really going to teach English, spend less time online and try to explore. Meet people, learn to speak Chinese like the locals. Classroom Chinese is somewhat limited in practical day to day.

I could say more but years and poor luck have left me with largely negative opinions of China. Which is unfair because there are lots of great people and cool stuff. I'm going to be honest, you'd lose a lot of what you take for granted if you go rural rather than urban, but even rural China is likely to be pretty densely populated by non-Asian standards. Also the people are generally nicer and you "get more China" from China. Compared to say Shanghai, which is very international.

[KnightOfV]

This was my life. I taught in Beijing for a year. I have a serious love/hate relationship with the place. I could tell you both horror stories, and heartwarming anecdotes. The good news is that any city in China (not just Beijing) should have a good community of expats happy to welcome you.

To answer your direct question, VPNs are not necessarily 'allowed', but I've never heard of anyone getting in trouble for using one. A lot of Chinese will as well. The good ones (in my experience) are the ones you have to pay for. I liked a VPN called "PandaPow". Google it. I used it for about a year and it never failed me. Cost me about $100 US for one year. Without a VPN you can't access Facebook, Twitter, YOUtube, most social media, a lot of US news sites, and other seemingly random things. So yea. Do your research and pick a VPN for sure before you go, it's no risk at all and pretty much the norm for any Westerner living in China.

But still take some time to explore as previously recommended. There are some great people living there and crazy stuff going on.

[LeSwordfish]

I don't have much choice over whereabouts I'll end up, sadly: we pick our top three regions. I'm mildly athsmatic, so decided it was best to avoid either Beijing or Shanghai: the regions i'll be requesting are Zeijang, Shangdong, and Hebei in that order (as having decent internet uptake rates and decent air quality).

Whether I could deal with bad or no internet is another thing to consider, but for now thanks for the responses: it's good to know that I won't be dragged off in chains for using a VPN. (I'm willing to pay - already paying for one in the UK actually.) I'll check out PandaPow. I assume I have to install it before I get there? If the VPN i'm using gets shut down, how easy is it to find and install another?

Another question of the "oh god why is he even thinking of this" variety - i'm mildly allergic to nuts. Apparently chinese food uses peanut oil a lot. How easy is it to avoid peanut oil or similar products?

[KnightOfV]

Ideally, install the VPN before you leave. But there are VPN sites in China that are not blocked, maybe you'll have to ask others who have lived there awhile for recommendations. It's a never ending game of whack-a-mole, where the gov will block a site hosting VPNs, but then they set up a new site, on and on. It's common enough I think you'll be fine, but I'd come prepared.


Food varies from region to region. A lot of food I remember was soy based sauce. I have a problem where I'm sensitive to MSG, which they add to a bunch of stuff. I had to pretty much go trial and error, where if I felt crappy after eating someplace I would just avoid it later. If it's a minor problem, you might have to do that. If it's more serious, try to early on get your employer to teach you Mandarin for "I don't want peanut" and practice saying it a lot. Unfortunately, there's no guarantees. I've heard a few stories of people saying "I don't want X in my food" only for the server to seemingly agree, then give them it anyway because of communication barriers or servers being ignorant about what's in the food.

China has a bit of a learning curve...

[JCarter426]

My friend teaches English in China. I will relate his responses, as helpful or unhelpful as they may be.


To start off, are VPNs allowed? I'm a fairly heavy internet user - would I be at serious risk using a VPN for twitter/facebook etc?

"No. It's not the 60s."


Another question of the "oh god why is he even thinking of this" variety - i'm mildly allergic to nuts. Apparently chinese food uses peanut oil a lot. How easy is it to avoid peanut oil or similar products?
"Not too hard if you have friends."


I assume I have to install it before I get there? If the VPN i'm using gets shut down, how easy is it to find and install another?
"Not too hard if you have friends."


I don't have much choice over whereabouts I'll end up, sadly: we pick our top three regions. I'm mildly athsmatic, so decided it was best to avoid either Beijing or Shanghai: the regions i'll be requesting are Zeijang, Shangdong, and Hebei in that order (as having decent internet uptake rates and decent air quality).
"Terrible. Terrible. So terrible."

(My friend has lived in Shanghai for the last three years, and spent two years in Lanzhou before that.)

"He should be getting hired directly. And he can only choose a province? And he chose Hebei?"

[Winter_Wolf]

I'd call it a big red flag if you're getting assigned to a place but they'll "try to" respect your preferences. Let's be real, you're going to end up where the people in charge of placement need a body. This must be something like Chinese English Teaching, I take it? The mainland counterpart of Japan's JET program?

Learn to love WeChat if you're going to China, it's THE big social media thing. Pretty useful too.

Additional: you're mildly asthmatic in the UK. There's really no such thing as Clean Air anywhere you're likely to get placed. This is not my opinion, by the way; it's the opinion of virtually every Chinese national I've ever spoken with at any length. Luckily for me I was able to breathe pollution a lot more easily than pollen, but I doubt that's a universal truth for asthma and allergies.

You can have a great time virtually anywhere in China, and I don't want to scare you off from it. On the other hand, I'm bitter, jaded, and cynical in my years. Hangzhou is really nice, so if you end up not getting one of your picks I hope you end up there. Actually of the twenty odd places I've been, only Suzhou and Lijiang put me off from the get go.

[gooddragon1]

I know that people do go to China and come back. However, I would not voluntarily go there given the nature of their laws. I suppose it depends on your risk tolerance.

[LeSwordfish]

I think it's similar to JET - it's the British Council, so i'm representing british culture as well as teaching english. They find a school for you, do a lot of middleman work, and provide support if things go wrong. The choices aren't fixed yet (I give them tomorrow at the interview) - any recommendations? Is Hangzhou not in Zheijiang? I can't be any more precise than the region request, sadly. Like I said, passably clean air and passable internet connection are all I was trying for.

Is pollen a big deal? I'm not seriously athsmatic (a bit phlegmy at worse) but I felt it was best not to risk that over the course of the year with the legendarily bad inner-city smog.

[Winter_Wolf]

Hangzhou is indeed in Zhejiang. Probably could fix your typo, since there are cases of a single letter making a difference in pinyin spelling and hundreds of kilometers of distance if you're unlucky. It doesn't seem like it, but the difference between "ze" and "zhe" can be huge. I just assumed it was yet another in the myriad of places I'd never remembered from train schedules; my bad. It's also a thing why you want to be able to talk like and understand locals' Mandarin over standard classroom Chinese. Mandarin is based on northerners' pronunciation, but if you wind up in Zhejiang, you're speaking something that is much softer/fuzzier in pronunciation.

I'm really really really allergic to pollen, so probably not the best judge of it, but like I said, I can breathe pollution with a lot more ease than anyone should be able to. I could make jokes about how I'm evolved to thrive in the atmosphere of a toxic post industrial hell. Put me in the same room as a lily for five minutes and we can joke about how nature wants me to die a painful, bleary eyed, snot covered death.

[JCarter426]

Is pollen a big deal? I'm not seriously athsmatic (a bit phlegmy at worse) but I felt it was best not to risk that over the course of the year with the legendarily bad inner-city smog.
I asked my friend if Shanghai's air quality is worse than anything in Britain, and he said "I'd hope so for England's sake."

Although, he added "I think it's fine, though. I've never had a problem."

As far as recommendations go:

"Even picking a city is hard. It's a meaningless question above the district level. Say he gets Zhejiang. His school might be in the countryside. Say he does get Hanzhou. He still might be in a suburb with farms.

Also, which level will he teach? "