|
||
| Xing Peng, Yang Jiang | ||
| When we boarded a plane to Hong Kong on July 29, 2003 little did we know that our Chinese adventure would last three times shorter than we had expected, but that’s the way things are. We regretted having to leave our Chinese friends and the place we began to call home behind, yet it would be a lie to claim that our today’s disappointment means everything was all right – it was not and that is why we want to advise possible next teachers in the private Xing Peng Chinese English School in Yang Jiang against getting too enthusiastic when they are offered a job there. Some of the facts will definitely ring a bell – there are things in China that will never change. Pictures of the school sent by its owner’s right hand Peter Ng (beware of “roger_peter86hk@yahoo.com”) looked promising, just as the conditions – 7000 RMB for 25 forty-minute lessons a week, primary and high school students, free apartment, full ticket reimbursement upon arrival and assistance in obtaining visa on the spot. For fresh philology-of-English graduates from Poland like us it was more than satisfactory. Soon we flew to Hong Kong both apprehensive and hopeful to be greeted by an extremely kind and helpful Chinese as well as Canadian citizen – Peter Ng. Indeed he got us through all the visa formalities on the Chinese border, initiated efforts to find our lost suitcase, paid for the beautiful hotel and took us out for a splendid dinner in a charming restaurant. There was no cultural shock for us then, just sheer joy and euphoria. Then the three of us went by bus to Yang Jiang and the five-hour journey through Guang Dong province was something we will never forget. When we got there it turned out the apartment for us was not ready yet, so again we were taken to a hotel. We met the school’s owner, Mr. Liu, who treated us to surprisingly traditional Chinese cuisine and took our passports to obtain working permits. We had no reasons to worry about anything – all seemed to go well. The next day our apartment turned out to be a spacious air-conditioned one, with a balcony looking onto the school and the mountainous horizon, but with little furniture. The school’s president gave us what Peter Ng called “extra money for clothes” – 500 RMB (because of the lost suitcase and the consequent lack of clothing). We were told that during August there would be only so called “summer school” so we would have only two to three lessons a day. Scorching heat, a lot of spare time, “extra money”, trips to South China Mountains (enormous limestone caves!) and the tropical Hainan Island, and everyday dinner with the school’s owner made us feel we were there for real. Our suitcase was found, Peter personally dragged it up to the 5th floor, and our apartment was steadily getting better furnished. At this point we wanted to be given the ticket reimbursement, but Peter was postponing his dealings with the boss (let alone his problems with the printer, USB wire etc. that kept preventing him from issuing the contract to us – at this point we had only a .jpg scan of it and with time it proved to be all we had). We asked one of the local English teachers to talk about the tickets with the school’s authorities. To our great relief the whole sum was paid and Peter made to go to Hong Kong to send the money back to Poland. In few days time the money reached our families. But when the end of August approached we wanted to get paid for our work, so we asked Peter Ng, our self-appointed translator and go-between for help. According to him, everything was all right; we just needed to wait some time, because salaries were allegedly paid during the first week of each month. Reassured by the honest reimbursement we trusted and waited, spending a lot of time discovering exotic food, drinks and the city. Yang Jiang is a relatively modern, clean and safe city, with few historic sites, but with monumental mountains around and a renowned beach one hour by bus from the city centre. There are very few foreigners; you can meet some only when there is the International Kite Festival or somebody has come to do business with local household utensils factories. Xing Peng school is situated few minutes on foot from a beautiful city park, with a huge artificial lake and natural hills around. Just at hand there is post office, police station, banks, western and Chinese restaurants, and two hypermarkets. The bus (only 1RMB) can take you from the school to almost every place that is worth visiting, that is shopping districts, best restaurants, DVD stores, long-distance bus stations, Macdonald’s etc. There is also a brand new hot-spring spa outside the city. The climate is fabulous – one can without too much difficulty get used to temperatures above 30C and occasional rain, and as to the infamous typhoons, they usually pass the city, causing only some tree damage and impressive tropical thunders. After initial hesitation we quickly got to know the city and made ourselves at home, which influenced our moods favourably – we felt we can make it and enjoy our one-year stay there. The school year started, but there was no job for us – one of the headmasters (there were three of them, apart from the president and the owner) gave us “extra money” to buy what we needed and promised to prepare our timetables for us ASAP. After two weeks of loafing around we were finally given one for the two of us – we had to share as few as eleven classes per week. At this time it got harder and harder to get hold of Peter so we started to communicate with the headmasters with the help of local English teachers (Peter Ng had strongly advised us against doing so because of their alleged “envy” of our salaries). The results were stunning – they told us it was never planned to give foreign teachers as many as 25 lessons a week, what is more, what Peter described as “extra money” was in fact our salary paid in advance, which meant we were paid 4000 RMB for both of us. We needed to talk to Peter, for it seemed he was playing his own game while maintaining he was “translating”. When we finally caught him he explained that because of the lack of job we would have only these eleven classes a week, but he would arrange private lessons for us to make up for the difference. Taking into consideration that we were paid 90 RMB per forty minutes compared to 70 if we worked full time, and having found the cost of living in China considerably low (especially when the basic products like meat, rice and vegetables we could take from the school’s canteen free) we decided not to fight for more work – spare time in China was priceless to us and still we earned almost twice as much as local teachers who had to spend nearly whole day at school, not to mention we had electricity etc. for free. And we got a few private students: adults, managers and clerks deeply interested in foreigners. Making friends with them helped us feel more and more comfortable in Chinese culture. But the words “Don’t worry, I’ll arrange the money for you” became Peter’s everyday line, with slight variations like “Come to my apartment tomorrow” (which was empty the next day) or “Call my mobile tomorrow” (which obviously was then turned off). Apart from his usual cagey replies there were also blatant lies, e.g. “I didn’t know the previous teacher and I can’t give you his e-mail address” which we soon discovered to be totally untrue. And then a former local teacher of Xing Peng paid a visit to our apartment and painted a disenchanting picture of what had happened to the previous foreign teacher, an American. Some of the features sounded alarmingly familiar, these of taking passports away, delays in obtaining visa and not paying what had been promised. The American had to fight for his money, even go on strike to get as little salary as one to three thousand RMB for the same workload that both of us were assigned to, and left after four months. Suddenly anxious, we decided to get down to the nitty-gritty with Peter and get our passports back to take care of our visas personally. The American had done it by threatening the school’s owner with the American Embassy in nearby Guangzhou, but we wanted to talk everything over without any threats. But Peter disappeared – his phone was turned off, his apartment abandoned, the school’s president himself kept coming to ask us whether we had any contact with Peter. Not only did he let us down, he also made it more difficult for the headmasters to contact the school’s owner, a notorious gambler and a businessman with links to senior officials of the Party, who had a nasty habit of not answering when called by the headmasters. We contacted the American teacher over the Internet and talked openly to local teachers as well. Some of the above revelations were true, but the American told us there was no reason to worry too much – we were paid not bad considering the actual amount of work, we had been given the ticket reimbursement which he could only dream of, our apartment was far more comfortable than his had been and we had good relations with the headmasters, which had not been the case when the American was here. Encouraged, we talked explicitly with the school’s authorities. They promised help in getting the passports back from the boss and applying for visas, and agreed to pay the money on a regular basis, that is 1000 every Monday (before that we had to ask for money when we wanted some, which was not very convenient). They did what they had promised; everything seemed to go well, and then some time later they asked us to go to the police to get visas. When we got there all our confidence was left shuttered. Our Chinese visas issued in Hong Kong, which we believed to be three-month, were long expired – Peter obtained only five-day ones to Shen Zhen Special Economic Zone, not to the mainland China (!). Any traveller who stays in China longer than his visa allows to faces high fines (for Polish citizens it was 100RMB per every day beyond visa validity, for Americans it is 500!) so we got scared that we would not be able to pay our way out of China – just multiply almost three months of illegal stay by 100RMB and you get the picture! Peter must have known it, because he was the one who did the talking. We can only believe that it must have been partially because of the new Chinese foreign policy and thanks to the school’s president that finally we were not fined. But it turned out that there is no possibility for us to stay in China any longer – we had to leave immediately. Thankfully the president eventually managed to obtain visas prolongation and we were given another two weeks to prepare to leave China. Our days in Yang Jiang were over. It is impossible to describe our last moments in Xing Peng. In spite of all the anger and grudge against Peter Ng (his whereabouts still unknown) we felt terribly sorry we had to leave this all behind. Saying goodbye to our fellow teachers, who were always friendly and helpful, to our dear (though sometimes naughty) students, to the places we got to know so well, the beautiful park, buses with steel seats, awful seafood, mountains and beloved apartment was really hard. And it did not help that we got more “extra money”, real this time, and could afford to spend a few days in Hong Kong – we were too downcast to enjoy it fully. On November 11 we landed back in Warsaw. Now we look back on those days in mixed sorrow and anger. It should have lasted longer, it is an ironic twist of fate that when so many foreign teachers with visa problems, money difficulties and apartment horrors dream of coming back to their country and cannot, we did not want it at all but had to. There were hard times, especially when Peter’s lying became obvious, when we had to reconcile ourselves to the fact that we would not become millionaires this time, when we were afraid we would not get back our passports, but it is unfair that when we overcame the obstacles and settled there, enjoying our life and work, we faced unwanted return home. Those three months are difficult to be evaluated clearly – it all could and should have been better, but in this journal everybody can read how often it is far worse. We do not want anybody to share bad aspects of our experience, which is why we want you all considering working in Yang Jiang to ponder over the points below: 1. Work in Xing Peng is fairly easy (local teachers will assist you in making up the lesson if you wish, but you can also deliver your own lessons), but sometimes unrewarding (while with the primary school students teaching can be fun, more than a few students of the high school can’t speak a single word of English and they do not even intend to). 2. Pay per lesson is fairly high but because of the shortage of lessons the salary will not cover excessive needs (forget about saving a small fortune), but is more than enough to afford a comfortable life there. 3. The headmasters are gentle and will be very helpful if you work well and do not botch your duties; talk to them with the help of Miss Sam, because the rest of local English teachers speak mostly very poor English. 4. Take care of your visa and passport yourself – remember, you will stay there only as long as your visa is valid. If the owner takes your passport and keeps it longer than you wish, go straight to the police. Don’t be scared of them – they are really sympathetic towards foreigners. 5. NEVER BELIEVE PETER NG – if he is recruiting to Xing Peng either drop it immediately or debunk his lies. 6. Don’t allow the things to develop without your participation – demand the reimbursement, regular wages, keys to the computer room etc. Be polite but stand firm – you will get respect and most of what you require. 7. If you are self-reliant, want to spend some time in a nice environment, get confirmed teaching experience, not overwork, earn some money, live in a free flat, have easy access to Chinese culture, and have nowhere better to go, then Xing Peng might be something for you. If you are looking for something more serious and reliable (or better paid, or in a historic city, or without lizards, bats, cockroaches and dragonflies playing around etc.), then forget about it. However well we coped with the situation, you might get into more trouble. It is not likely that the situation in Xing Peng will get much better – when we left they still did not have a government permit to employ foreigners and their poor record in this field will not help them in the future. The general advice for foreign teachers is not to work for a school that does not provide you with an official invitation and assist you in getting visa from Chinese embassy in your own country, so Xing Peng surely will not stand a chance in most cases. But who knows – now, when Peter Ng with his lies is gone, someone more reliable can take over and be in charge of foreign teachers’ interests. Thanks to the recommendation letters we got from Xing Peng it was pretty easy for us to find good jobs in Poland. Now we want to get more teaching experience here, and come back to the Middle Kingdom or Korea next year, where we will seek a one-year reliable job, like the American teacher who also taught in Xing Peng. The three months we spent there is an unforgettable experience in all aspects – if we wanted to describe all that is worth doing so, we would write a book, probably like most foreign teachers in China. (And what you’ve just read is only a brief outline, believe it or not ;). In this journal you can read how to prepare your visit to China, what to take into consideration and what not to do on any account. Do pay attention to all these pieces of advice, because it is also up to you whether you will leave China with regret or relief. Dawid & Joanna Bielsko-Biala, Poland If you wish to contact us, please do: beriskorf@interia.pl |