 Welcome! Linda here from ITTT. Thanks for joining today. Thanks for taking some time out of your day. I know it's a little bit later than usually, but that's because we have a guest today, which I'm gonna announce and introduce in a short while. So thank you guys for being here. Yeah, this is what we're gonna talk about today. Teaching English in China, what you need to know for the next year. A lot of things have changed because of COVID, because of the pandemic and all those things. So that's why we invited Dan from Teach English Global and he's gonna tell us all about it today. So yeah, thanks for being here. And as always, please don't forget to like and subscribe so you never miss any of our other upcoming live sessions. We go live every week, usually this day, different time. Sometimes it might change when we have guests like this. So yeah, you want to be here for that like and subscribe on YouTube, on Facebook, you're already here. So yeah. And let's see. A little bit about myself first before we add Dan, if you're watching this for the first time. Yeah, my name is Linda. I'm a travel writer and content creator. That's one of the many things that I do. Basically in my handle is Linda goes East, East because I've always been super interested in Asia. Ever since I was a teenager. So I have my own website, Linda goes East.com. I'm originally from Germany and the US. My mom is German. My dad is American. And I've been living in South Korea for the past seven and a half years. But before that, I actually also lived in China. I studied Chinese and China. I always call it my first love. So that's why I'm also very excited about Dan being here and talking about China today. And yeah, I'm also a Teflon diesel marketing professional. That's why I'm here today talking to you guys about ITTT and Teflon. And yeah, if you're watching for the first time and you don't really know what ITTT is, it stands for International Teflon TESOL Training. And the website is TeflonCourse.net. And we are a leading Teflon TESOL course provider worldwide. So that's basically it. I know many of you are already TEFL certified, ready to go, ready to hopefully move to China after you see this. Many of you are not yet decided, haven't decided whether or not to go somewhere or maybe you want to teach online. But either way, I think today is going to be very special and you're going to learn a lot of new things. And I'm also very excited about it. Yeah, we also, I always mention this, we have a 30% off today, as always during our live session. So what you can do, you can either scan this QR code with your phone. If you don't have a phone, no problem. You can use the link. And I'm going to share a link with you in the common section real quick. Looks like this. It ends with Facebook live minus Linda. And yeah, this code gets you 30% off of any TEFL or TESOL course from ITTT, which you might want to get because as Dan is going to tell us, TEFL is actually a requirement to teach in China. But more about that in just a bit. And yeah, I always also like to start off with asking you guys where you are right now. So I'm in South Korea. And Dan is actually in the UK. It's very, very early. So we're very lucky to have him here this early. And where are you watching from right now? So I see a lot of people here on Facebook and on YouTube. Where are you guys watching from today? And what time is it there? Let us know. We're very curious. And then, yeah, I think now this is the intro. Everything has been said now that needs to be said. So we can invite Dan. All right. All right, Dan. Hi. Hey, Linda. Thanks for having me. How are you? Yeah, not too bad. Thank you. How are you doing? Yeah, pretty good. Pretty good. It's like it's 4pm now in Korea. What time is it where you are? He's just gone 8am. So apologies if I look a little bit tired. No, that's great. That's great. Thanks for getting up so early. No, it's all good. No, happy to be here. Yeah. Cool. So I'm in Korea, you're in the UK. And we have John here who is watching from Barbados. Cool. Awesome. Oh, it's 3am. Oh, my God. Even earlier. Wow. It's commitment, isn't it? He stayed up late to watch. Yeah, we appreciate that. Awesome. That's great. All right, cool. Then, yeah, without further ado, let me just turn this on and then Dan, you can take it from here. Sure. Thank you, Linda. So as Linda's mentioned, I'm here today to discuss teaching English in China. There's been quite a lot that has changed with teaching in China over the last couple of years, one obvious reason being because of COVID and the pandemic. But there's been several other things that have changed within China that not a lot of teachers are really too aware about. For some teachers, it's having a bit of a negative kind of impact on their decision whether to go to China or not. And yeah, basically today, I just want to kind of go through everything to do with teaching in China, answer any questions, and hopefully give teachers, I guess, a bit more of an insight as to what the market looks like, what their life would be like if they went and sat in China. Definitely. Yeah, a lot of things have changed, right? I mean, not only China in many countries, but I think China is one of the ones that had the biggest changes since COVID, or even Yeah, for sure. Like, to start with in 2020, it seemed they handled COVID the best. They didn't really have many lockdowns. Schools were open and stuff. And then as the rest of the world has kind of come out of COVID, they're still lingering a little bit in it. They're having small lockdowns every now and then. This is impacting some schools. So yeah, it's the teaching market there, I'd say, it's definitely been different to everywhere else worldwide when it comes to Tefl, for sure. Definitely. Great. All right, cool. Then you prepared some slides. Let me get that up for you. All right. And then, yeah, tell us about Yeah, I'll just give everyone a quick introduction. So I'm Dan, as Linda's mentioned, I'm from the UK and a city called Manchester. I myself did used to live in Shanghai, in China. I taught as an English teacher there in a training centre, which is a school type. We're going to discuss later on. Before I went to China, my background and career was working within recruitment in different industries. So I've kind of always done this job, but just never within teaching. When I was in Shanghai, and I'd say more specifically when I was first looking for a position in Shanghai, I just noticed how there wasn't really any Western recruiters working within this kind of space, especially those who'd actually been there and taught themselves. So the interview process for me when I was trying to get a job in China was just a little bit complicated. I was speaking to loads of different Chinese agencies. I must have had about seven or eight different interviews, which just didn't quite feel right, felt a little bit different to what we're used to in the Western world when it comes to doing interviews, recruitment, stuff like that. But yeah, anyway, I ended up finding a relatively decent training centre, went to Shanghai and had quite a few friends who had ended up in these not great schools and not having the best experience. So it kind of gave me the motivation to start Teach English Global, which is a teacher recruitment company specialising in helping teachers from the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, which are the seven native speaking countries, helping teachers from those countries find positions in China that match any preferences that they've got, essentially. I do also work with schools in South Korea. That is a slightly newer side to the business. But my speciality is certainly China having taught there myself. And I'd say about 80% of the schools that I work with are in China, I work with all different types of schools. So I have international schools. Typically, they look for officially licensed teachers. So that school type is probably not going to be too relevant to what we're discussing today. But I also work with public schools, kindergartens, language schools, which are known as training training centres in China, universities and teacher agencies. So quite a wide variety in all different locations, all of the big tier one cities that people will be familiar with like Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, and more sort of tier two, tier three cities that perhaps the average Western hasn't heard of before. So yeah, how we differ from recruitment agencies as well, I did just want to kind of go through this. I think I've touched on it a little bit in this intro, but there's really not too many recruitment agents helping teachers go to China, who've actually taught in China themselves, who've actually been through the visa process, been on the ground as a teacher, know how the schools work. And so I do feel that kind of sets us apart from other agencies. And from experience I found that's been quite a nice way for me to kind of get on the same level as the teachers I'm speaking to, because I've been in their shoes. And I know what it is they're looking for when they they kind of describe the situation in the rain. And I prefer bizarre in China. Awesome. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I mean, I taught English in China, and I also taught English in Korea, obviously. And I think yeah, most of the recruiters are definitely locals, they're Chinese, or they're Korean, and they aren't English teachers, they don't know what it's like, or they don't have to do the whole visa process. So it's definitely great to have someone like you there who has done it themselves. So that's Yeah, for sure. And one, one thing to add as well with a lot of the local agencies that are Chinese or Korean, obviously, there's a massive, massive cultural difference in China from the US or the UK. So how they would typically go about doing a recruitment phone call or an interview might seem a little bit strange to some people in the UK or the US. And so again, I think being from that same kind of culture as a lot of the teachers, it helps me work well as a bit of a middleman really between the Chinese schools and the Western teachers. Yeah, you can teach some intercultural competencies there too. A lot of cultural differences. Yeah. If you don't know about it, it seems strange at first, totally. Exactly, for sure. Cool. We have also here Mrs. Abuela, watching from France. Awesome. Hi. Thanks for being here. Awesome. Okay. Yeah, then let's talk a little bit about the types of schools. You already mentioned that a little bit, the types of schools most teachers will work at in China, and also the requirements for those schools if they're different for depending on the school type, all those things. Let's have a look. Yeah. So there's typically five main types of schools in China. If you want to break it down. And international schools, which are essentially the private schools that people will pay to send their children to. And usually in international schools, you'll find students are international, hence the name. So the students will come from all kinds of countries throughout the world really, whose parents might have moved to China for their own work. And these types of schools are without doubt the best when it comes to facilities, pay, benefits, holidays. But the standard of teaching that's required is also as good as it gets really. So I'd say about 80 to 90% of international schools across China, they look for teachers who have already got an official teaching license, such as an American teaching license, a PGCE, QTS. Quite a few international schools will take teachers on who have got maybe three years experience in a public school or a kindergarten or a training centre, but who are looking to study online for their PGCE or something at the same time. I'm going to discuss that in more detail at the end of this webinar for anyone who might be looking to go down that route. So that leaves four of the types of schools, public schools, kindergartens, training centres and universities. These are the four types of schools that teachers who do a TEFL certificate typically end up going into when they first go to China. I'd say by far the most popular for a first time TEFL teacher is a training centre. Training centre is basically another name for a language school. So in a training centre, you would teach English to students who are coming after their public school, so late afternoon, early evening, and also on the weekends. Public schools and kindergartens, you do get quite a lot of TEFL teachers working within this environment, but what I've noticed from experience is that a lot of first time teachers who have never been to China, they'll maybe go and teach their training centre for their first year, maybe their first two years. And then if they want to try a different environment, maybe a different age group, different curriculums, whatever it may be, they then go and try a kindergarten or a public school after that. Public schools can be quite an intimidating setting for a first time teacher, especially in China. The class size can be up to 50 students. I know it's a lot, isn't it? You're doing the state run curriculum. Kindergarten is usually up to about 30 students, so still quite a lot. Training centres is typically about 10 to 15 students in a class. So again, this is why quite a lot of new teachers like that environment, because if you've never really taught before, or maybe you've only taught for a year or so, it's a lot easier to integrate into that environment, build your confidence, learn as you go when you've only got 10 students in front of you rather than 50. And then universities I'll just quickly touch on. I'd say this is probably the least popular or least common school type that a lot of teachers end up at, simply because there's just not as many vacancies and opportunities. Most university positions usually have quite low hours, so that you might have 15 teaching hours a week, and then that's it. No office hours or anything like that. And as a result, the salary and benefits are probably the lowest out of the five school types. So I was going to say that sounds great. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it is quite appealing for a lot of people if you want to maybe study alongside teaching, or you just want a lot of free time, then it could be quite a good fit, but most teachers are going to China. They want to save a little bit of money, because as we'll discuss in the next slide, the salary in China is one of the big advantages it has over teaching in English in other countries. So yeah, at universities, you wouldn't really save much money, to be fair, you don't enough to kind of live on and get by. The requirements. So as I've mentioned, international schools, typically, you need an official teaching license for public schools, kindergartens, training centres and universities, you need to have free things. You need to have a bachelor's degree. You need to have a TEFL certificate. And you need to have a clean criminal record, because you'll need to provide a criminal record check, such as an FBI check, if you're in the US, and a DBS check, if you're in the UK, or whatever your country's equivalent is. Cool. Interesting. Yeah. And also one thing I just remembered, because I worked in China at a training centre, the work hours are also very different, right from training centre compared to a public school, because I remember I worked, I worked, I think, I think I worked Saturday and Sunday, and had then Monday, Tuesday off, and I also worked like late, I think from 1pm to. Yeah, yeah, thank you. Yeah, I should have mentioned that actually, it did slip my mind. So the I guess the one it's kind of seen as a as a downside really of training centres is the schedule. So all of the school types will be Monday to Friday, typically eight to 430, maybe 830 to 430, something like that. Whereas in training centres, because you're teaching students who are coming after their public school, and basically outside of normal school hours, you'll usually do free afternoon or evenings, and then it's weekend. So a typical schedule is exactly what you just mentioned, Linda, you would do between nine and six on Saturday and Sunday. And then you would have two consecutive days off, that could be Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and the free week days, you would usually start early afternoon, maybe about one 2pm, have a couple of hours to do any lesson prep, any lesson planning, and then you would start teaching usually around 4pm. Yeah, the schedule is a little bit different. For some teachers, this can be a bit of a, maybe a bit of a red flag, they think, Oh, I don't want to work weekends. But one thing I always tell teachers who are going out to China for the first time, the majority of your friends in China, if you're going to work at a training centre, will be other teachers who are either working in the same school, for the same company, are typically working at other training centres, since this is the most popular school type. So a lot of your friends are going to be on similar schedules, and are also going to be working Saturday Sundays. So your weekend will just be your two days off. All your friends will have those kind of days off as well. There's still obviously in the, especially in the Taiwan cities in China, there's always things going on. And even on Mondays and Tuesdays, the nightlife doesn't really quiet down in the big cities. So yeah, you don't really miss out on much. And what I remember, I actually, I think I had the same thought in the beginning, kind of sucks. But then it was actually great because you could do stuff on Monday and Tuesday, like going to the bank or like the post office, all those places who normally are closed on the weekend. So it was actually pretty good. Yeah, I agree. I taught in a training centre and I found Monday to Friday just used to fly by. Even the days you're working, like, you'd probably only teach maybe two or three hours on the days you're actually in. So that week go really, really quick. On the downside, though, the weekends were usually pretty busy. And you'd maybe be teaching five or six hours on both Saturday and Sunday, which when it gets to Sunday night and you finished work, you do feel pretty exhausted. Yeah, that's true, especially if you're a public school teacher and you have to 50 kids. That's crazy. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah. Wow. Cool. What about have some things changed now since pandemic and everything or just in recent years, new regulations? There's been a couple of changes. One quite important one I wanted to touch on was to do with training centres, actually. So last July, about 15 months ago now, the Chinese government introduced some new education regulations. I think a lot of people would be familiar with this because of the online English sector, which was quite heavily hit. I did a live session about that too. Yeah. Oh, did you? That was pretty big news for everybody. Everyone was like shocked. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, a lot of companies, they just basically closed overnight and hundreds, thousands of teachers who were teaching online from back home basically lost their jobs. The online sector was definitely the one that was hit the heaviest, but it did have an impact on training centres. So just to give a very, very quick overview on what these regulations were, the Chinese government basically didn't want any after school programmes teaching the state run curriculum. So this wasn't just English, it could have been maths, science, geography, whatever it was. Because obviously in China, it's quite competitive in the schooling system. A lot of parents were sending their children to go to after school to basically learn what they've already learned that day in the public school. So there were new training centres who had curriculums that were similar to the same as or maybe linked to the state run English curriculum. So a lot of these training centres either closed down or had to change their curriculum or make some adjustments to their schedule and a few other things. So as a rough estimate, I'd say probably maybe about 30% of training centres, they'd closed down or significantly reduced the amount of centres they had. And whenever I'm speaking to a lot of teachers who want to go and teach in a training centre, this is a concern that they sometimes raise with me like, is this going to come up again? Will schools close down again? Typically, I can say that any school that's open now, any training centre, there's a very, very strong likelihood that they're going to be staying open in the future. Because since it's been 15 months since these regulations were introduced, a lot of these training centres have had to make these changes if they needed to. And they've had to apply for a new school licence or a new business licence. And even the schools that didn't have to make much change have had to apply for a new school licence, which has now been issued. So the government obviously thinks these schools are meeting the regulations and requirements. So yeah, I don't really anticipate there being lots of training centres closing again within the next couple of years. But yeah, they were hit quite heavy over the last 15 months or so with these regulations. Well, that's good news then. That's great. Yeah, for sure. Good. And also for anyone watching, feel free to ask questions during this. That's why we're here. So yeah, if you have any questions, anything on your mind related to China teaching in China, Dan is here to answer your questions today. So feel free to ask. All right, good then. Let's talk about money. I think everyone wants to know how much can you actually make teaching English in China? Yeah, that's one of the main questions I get whenever I speak to teachers. What the salary and benefits are going to be. I'll just very quickly start by saying, China is certainly number one, or within the top two to three countries when it comes to teacher salary for ESL, TEFL teachers. In Asia, I'd say the second country is probably South Korea, but salary in China is in a lot of schools nearly double what's getting paid in Korea now. It's yeah, it's very a lucrative place to go and teach. Teachers can save a lot of money when they go to China. And it is one of the main kind of draws of going to the country. And being completely honest, it was one of the reasons I went to China. I knew I could earn quite a lot of money there. I know I could save money and send it home. And I was trying to pick between different places to go and yeah, that ultimately made my decision. So I'll just break down what the typical salary and benefits are. And they swole vary slightly from school to school. And the salary and benefits here aren't for international schools, because I don't want to touch too much in international schools today, since this is a TEFL kind of chat. So for public schools, kindergartens and training centres, the average yearly salary, sorry, the average monthly salary will be between 17,000 and 24,000 yuan a month, which on average is about 2,700 British pounds per month, or around 3,000 US dollars per month. Like I say, it was very slight between different schools. And one thing that does impact it is also the location, which I'm going to touch on in the next slide. On top of the salary, a lot of schools will offer a either housing allowance, or they'll already have an apartment that teachers can use when they move. There'll be a contract completion bonus, which usually is around 10,000 RMB to one month salary. This completely varies between school. There'll be flight reimbursement. This will either be paid to the teacher when they first arrive in China, or at the end of the contract. Or there are some schools who will actually just pay for the flights themselves to bring a teacher over to China. Again, it varies school to school, each school. Some will maybe not offer as good a flight reimbursement, but their contract completion bonus will be better. And like, it usually all balances out as being quite similar packages between the same school type. For a training center, the holiday is usually 10 to 15 days plus you get national holidays. Those 10 to 15 days you can take any time throughout the year. The schools do prefer if you take during winter and summer times when they're not doing their typical semester. But yeah, if you want to take that throughout the year for whatever reason you can. For public schools and kindergartens, it's a little bit different. Public schools obviously have periods of time off over summer and winter. So what a lot of public schools will do is offer this entire holiday time off, but your salary will be reduced. So for example, you might get six weeks off over July and August, but you would get maybe 10,000 RMB per month rather than 20 or something like that. At kindergarten, they will either do something similar or they will run summer camps and summer courses where teachers will still work, have their normal salary and everything. And then usually they would get the same holiday days as a training centre. Obviously at the minute in China, there is quarantine. It's 10 days at the time of speaking. I don't work with a single school that doesn't cover the cost for this. They'll reimburse this period in a hotel. Is that 10 days everywhere in all the cities or does it vary from city to city? Because I've heard different things. It's pretty much 10 days everywhere. So you'll either spend 10 days straight in one hotel and then be released or you'll do seven days in one hotel and then be moved to another hotel for three days. That just seems to be completely random how they're doing that. I guess. I don't know if it depends on how busy each hotel is or what. Yeah, but 10 days in one hotel, there's regular COVID testing when you're in the quarantine. But yeah, once that's done, you're free and you can either travel to the city you're going to be teaching in or whatever it is you're going to China to do. Health insurance is covered by literally every school. It's a legal requirement in China to provide at least some kind of baseline health insurance. A lot of schools do go above and beyond that bill and have their own policies where they'll cover teachers for quite a bit more. The visa is covered. Visa costs such as getting your documents authenticated, which we're going to discuss in a later slide. This varies again from school to school. Some schools will reimburse all of this. Some schools will just pay for the work permit and the visa on their end and the teacher is required to pay for the document authentication. With a lot of schools, there is training and career development opportunities. So if you're someone who's looking to go to China and potentially start a long term career within teaching in the country, maybe you want to look at going into curriculum development and getting promoted to be a senior teacher or a head teacher. A lot of schools do offer these opportunities. I would say kindergarten and training centres probably more than public schools. If you work hard and do your best when you're there, there's a very good chance you'll get promoted and whenever opportunity comes, they'll promote someone who's internal and already working for the school. Awesome. I think the benefits are definitely really the biggest selling point for China, I think, because the salary is quite high and then you have all of these benefits. So you can really save a lot from your monthly salary. Yeah, I mean, on average, as like a rule of thumb, I always tell teachers that you easily should be able to save half your salary. Wow. So if you're on 20,000 RMB per month, you should easily be able to send home 10,000 RMB per month. Obviously, it depends on what lifestyle you've got. If you live like a king or queen and you're out every night of the week eating and partying and traveling, then maybe not so. But yeah, a lot of teachers, I'd say, can't really save half of what they're earning. Awesome. 10,000 is how many dollars at the moment? So that would be about, I want to say, about 50 or 1,600. Let me just check. Wow, I see that's a lot of money. 1,400. I think it's gone down a little bit. Yeah, about 1,400 is a month. It's about 1,500 pounds a month. So it's a good amount to be saving and sending home. Absolutely. Great for paying off student loans or any kind of debt you have back home or just to save. Just to save. I mean, I met a lot of teachers who they were just going to China to save a deposit for a house. Yeah, we're going to go for two or three years, send home as much as they could, and then return to their home country, not only with some really good teaching experience that they could use back home, but with the money to buy a house and potentially settle down when they return. Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, cool. We have a question here, and I'm not sure if we can answer that, but let's try. From Kaon Miat Thanh, I'm probably pronouncing that wrong, so I'm sorry. She's asking, or he's asking, what is the most difficult sound in China? And I meant the local people are having difficulties in pronouncing English. So from your experience. Yeah, I understand the question. You might be able to help with this, Linda, since you also taught in China. What word or sound do you think a lot of students struggled with? Definitely like the TH sound, I think. Yeah, I agree with that. It doesn't really exist in a lot of languages, not just Chinese, but... Yeah, I'd agree with that. Yeah, I think it varies a lot from students to student as well. Like I had students in China who there would just be a random word or a random sound that they just really, really struggled with for some reason, but it wasn't like a common sound that a lot of students did. So I think it does vary, but yeah, TH, I would say, is quite common. And I think not so much like sounds, but also just think of a grammar because Chinese doesn't have tenses. So just the whole tense system, like when you talk about the past, these past tense verbs, something like that, maybe? Yes, I think that's a very good point to be fair. The tenses with verbs, a lot of students would get a little bit confused with and they'd use the wrong tense. Right. Yeah. Cool. Good question. Yeah, that we have our YouTube from India and they're asking how to apply for a T-SOL job in China. And I think we're going to talk about that anyway very soon, right? The steps to apply. So that will be covered. Stay tuned. All right. Awesome. So that's that. And then, yeah, you already touched on that the salary kind of depends on the city you're teaching in. So let's have a look at the different cities. Yes. So in China, again, speaking from experience as a recruiter here, I would say the four most popular cities that teachers want to go to are Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. These are four of the big Taiwan cities. There are probably four cities that the average person around the world has heard of, whereas other cities such as Hangzhou, Ningbo, Qingdao, people might not necessarily have heard of. They are popular for a reason. One reason being that the salary is typically higher in these cities. The reason being, though, is that the cost of living is typically a little bit higher in these cities as well. So it typically balances out. If you were to teach in Beijing, you would earn more money, but your cost of living would be higher. So you would come out with probably the same, whereas if you were to teach in Hangzhou, for example, which is another popular city, but a little bit smaller, or even some of the tiff and really smaller cities, your salary base salary would be a lot lower, but your cost of living would be substantially lower as well compared to Beijing. So again, you'd probably come out with a similar amount each month. Another reason why these four cities are quite popular is because they've all got big expat communities. There's a lot of teachers who work and live in these four cities. I mean, don't get me wrong. There's a lot of teachers who work and live in a lot of cities in China, but these four are quite popular, especially for new teachers who've never been to China, because you're going to be meeting a lot more Western people, you're going to be meeting a lot more teachers. And it is very, very important when you go to China to make sure you get a good social group and you make friends there. When you're coming from a country like the UK or the US, we've mentioned earlier on how there is a very big cultural difference. So it can be a bit of a lonely place at times if you don't know anyone or don't have any friends, because it's a little bit harder to integrate with the locals. So when teachers go to these big four cities, like you can go out any night of the week into a bar and there might be some Western people who you get chatting with, a lot of the time they'll be teachers in some capacity. So yeah, that's certainly the most popular, I would say. The main, I'd say the main living cost that makes these cities more expensive is just housing or apartments. Like buying food and like a typical day of spending money might not be too dissimilar between Beijing and Hangzhou, but the rent for an apartment in a place like Beijing would be at least double somewhere like Hangzhou. So yeah, that's kind of how the costs of these cities do rack up a little bit. Try to think of there's anything a little while what makes them different. Yeah, I guess a lot of the popular cities as well, because the four cities I've mentioned, they've got four of the biggest populations in China, which means there's obviously a lot more Chinese people there who are sending their children to learn English. So for a lot of the big schools, big training centres, kindergartens, international schools, it probably makes sense for them to be positioned in a city like Beijing, because there's more potential students that is going to come to the school. Whereas if a really big training centre opens up in a really rural part of China, they're going to struggle to attract students. So there is also just more opportunity in these cities. There's more vacancies, there's more schools looking for roles, which I think in part probably ends up attracting more teachers as well. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, for sure. Maybe something I would add just from my own experience. So I the first city in China I lived in was Guangzhou and I absolutely loved it. It was great. Lots of foreigners there, definitely. And then the second city I lived in was Changsha in Hunan province. And not a lot of people know the city. But I also found friends there, you know. So I think, yeah, you can make friends anywhere. And also you can make Chinese friends, local friends. And I found that a lot of Chinese people, they're so interested in making friends with foreigners. I think it was actually a lot easier to make friends with locals in China than it is in Korea. It's very interesting. Yeah. So that's my own point. Yeah, like a lot of the local people I met in China are super, super friendly. Like they really do want to kind of make the effort. Like you said, potentially make friends. One kind of obstacle is just a language barrier at times. You can kind of limit how good a friendship you can get with someone. Which is why I mentioned meeting Western people. It's it is good for teachers when they first get there just so they've they've got some friends before they learn to speak a bit of Chinese and integrate more with locals. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Totally. And also one thing, even if you live like in a city that's not one of those major cities, I found at least when I was living there traveling within China is super easy. You hop on a bullet train or they have a lot of overnight buses and even domestic flights. Like I lived in China a total of a year and a half. And I've been to almost all of those cities there. So you can really travel a lot, even with the salary, because you can save so much money. That's how I invested my money into traveling in China. But yeah, yeah, I agree. Domestic really cheap. I've got a few teachers at the minute who are flying from Shenzhen up to Beijing and they're paying like 80 US dollars for an internal flight, which is probably cheaper than a lot of a lot of train tickets back in the UK, certainly. Yeah, it's really great. Cool. OK, let's have a look maybe here at the question. Mrs. Abuela is asking what's the difference between Teflon Tea Soul and which one is better or best to teach in China? OK, I'll answer that. I think some in the comments has answered that quite well. Also, there's really not. Yeah, there's not too much difference. It's almost just a different name. Both of the certificates can be used to get a visa in China as they can in other countries like Korea. Yeah, it's basically just a different name. Teflon Teflon Tea Soul. ESL, like it's industry and has different names. But yeah, honestly, there's not too much different. If you've got a Teflon certificate, that's worth just as much as a Tefl certificate. Right. It usually depends on like where you're from, what term is more used there. So I think in the US, North America, they use Teflon more, whereas in Europe and I think in Australia, they use the term Teflon more. That's kind of the only difference. So and with ITTT, actually you can choose if your certificate, if you want it to say Teflon or Teflon on it, you can choose that. But it's just a personal preference, but you have the option and it's the same. Yeah, it's interchangeably used interchangeably. But good question. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Awesome. Yeah. So now I think this is what a lot of people have been asking about now. Now we're getting really into the details of what's the best way to find a teaching job in China? Let's have a look. How do you go about then? So there is a few different ways to find a teaching job. Free ways involve kind of doing it yourself and doing your own research and putting yourself out there. And the fourth way, which I'll cover a little bit more detail is for using a recruiter, such as myself and teaching English global. Free common ways, if you want to find a job yourself. Number one would be using job boards where ESL jobs are advertised. One of the common ones is ESL Cafe, a lot of schools and also a lot of recruiters post adverts on these job boards that you can respond to. You can send your CV to another option is to apply directly to schools. So this will involve a little research, maybe say, for example, you really, really want to go to Shanghai. Maybe you'll do a bit of research and get a list of training centres in Shanghai or kindergartens in Shanghai, depending what school type you want to go to. And then you can contact these schools directly or you can apply directly on their website. They say it's quite a good way of, I guess, putting yourself out there. However, a lot of schools might not be recruiting so it can be a lot of time spent when you might not get too many responses or actually get many opportunities from it. Third way is referral or through a friend. When I was living in China, I know a lot of people who they got their jobs because their friend used to work for that school or their friend knew someone who used to work for that school and recommended them. So yeah, I'd say they're the free main methods if you want to go it alone. The other method if you want any help is for using a recruiter such as myself. So there are a few benefits to using a recruiter. First of all, it's going to save you a lot of time. As I've just mentioned, if you apply directly to schools, you could do maybe 30 applications and you might get two or three responses. Whereas if you go for a recruiter who's got vacancies and knows which schools are looking, every school that they put you forward to, there's a very good chance of getting an interview or something coming of it because the school actually needs a teacher. Another pro of using a recruiter, especially when it comes to teaching in China, where a lot of people maybe have gaps in their knowledge, is you can get advice for free. So like I'm doing now on this this webinar, talking through teaching in China, giving advice when you speak to a recruiter like me on the phone. Any questions you've got or it's sort of salary, the different cities which we've covered, the visa process, the time frame, which we're going to cover later, all of these kind of things. A recruiter who's been there, done it like myself and knows China well, can answer those questions for you. And a lot of the time, I'll speak with a lot of teachers who maybe they've never taught before, but in their in their mind, for some reason, they just think, right, I want to teach in a public school. They don't really know much about China. And after a 20, 30 minute call, they'll usually come off the phone, really wanting to teach in a training centre and wanting to be in a different city. Like they'll learn so much just from having a chat with a recruiter. Using a recruiter as well, you're going to get help with interviews, contracts, visas. If you go it alone, let's say you go on a job board, you find a position, you apply and you get an interview, you'll be going into that interview completely blind. You're not going to know what questions are going to come up, what format. Whereas if you go for a recruiter, then before the interview, the recruiter would give you a call and say, these are the type of questions that are likely to come up. They're looking for someone who maybe presents themselves in this way. There's different tips that a recruiter can give you just to to kind of enhance your chance of succeeding. When it comes to contracts and offers, a recruiter can read through it with you. They can spot any red flags where maybe it's it's not the best contract to be signing. If you've got any questions or there's anything you're unsure of, maybe like to do with how much you're going to get taxed in China, for example, or social insurance or things like this. Just looking at a Chinese contract yourself with no experience, you might be a bit unsure about this stuff. But again, a recruiter can help you. And then when it comes to the visa process, I think we're going to touch on this in a slide or two. A lot of recruiters, certainly the things that I like to do with help teachers with the entire visa process getting a visa in China, as you'll see shortly, isn't the most straightforward thing to do. And if you go it alone, then a lot of the time you'll have to kind of figure this out yourself and it can get a little bit messy and a little bit expensive when you're doing that. So having a recruiter who can kind of guide you is certainly very helpful. And one last thing I do just want to add, because I speak to a lot of teachers who don't really understand how recruiter works. They think maybe a recruiter takes a cut of their salary or charges them a fee for the service. That's wrong. It's completely free. Any recruiter who's trying to charge you money, I would not go with. Recruitment should be completely free for the teacher. So, yeah, all of this stuff, saving time, the advice, the help of everything, it's all free of charge. So, yeah, I would always recommend using a recruiter. I certainly wish I did when I first went to Shanghai. And the fact I didn't is kind of the motivation for me to start teaching this global and and help teachers actually speak to a recruiter who, as I said at the start of this webinar, has been there themselves and taught, knows the country well, can answer any questions and just generally wants to help. Awesome. Yeah, for sure. Why wouldn't you take this? All of these amazing things, the advice and everything, if it's free? I mean, yeah, definitely. Awesome. We have a couple of questions. Yeah. How do you apply? Where do you apply? What link, et cetera. So I'm going to share the link with you because obviously I TTT and Teach English Global are partners. So that's basically how you can apply. Let's see. This is the website. And you basically just go on the website. There's an application form and you fill out the application and then you're going to be. Dan is going to. Get in touch with you, right? Correct. Yes. Awesome. Yeah. So this is the link. Oh, and there was a question also from Sam for you, Mr. Dan. Do you recruit only for China or other countries as well? So I also recruit for South Korea. I would say about 80 percent or so of my schools are in China, though. But, yeah, to answer your question, I do recruit for South Korea. I do have plans over the next few years to be operating in a few other countries as well. But yeah, that's that's not yet been confirmed. So we'll see how that goes. OK, you heard it here first. Great. Awesome. Cool. Asian countries or can you share that? And looking more the Middle East potentially great region too. Yeah. Yeah, for teaching. Awesome. OK, cool. All right. Yeah, then we're going to talk about the time frame. How how long is everything going to take? Because you mentioned the visa process is rather complicated compared to other countries. So how what's the time frame from applying looking for jobs to actually landing in China and starting to teach? Yeah, so this is quite a common question I get when I speak to a teacher for the first time. They want to know how long it's going to be until they're actually stood in front of a class of students teaching English. A lot of teachers they want to be gone within a week. Like they want things to go really, really quick. So I do always have to kind of break down how things work and give them a realistic time frame because it's going to help the teacher plan the last few months they've got in their home country. You know, they've got any any events they need to be around for. Maybe they've got a job back home and they want to need to have noticed that a certain date. So yeah, the time frame, which I'll break down now in total from the day you actually apply on Teach English Global until the day you'll stud teaching is usually anywhere between three months and five months. And there's a few different variable factors which I'll go through. So to start with, when you do your initial application, I would get in touch with you, have a phone call to kind of just introduce myself and find out what you're looking for as a teacher, what preferences you have, how much experience you've got and just see which kind of school would be a good fit. I would then get your application sent over to some schools. We would get interviews arranged. Those interviews would hopefully go well and we would get some offers. And then we would decide which is the best offer and you would accept an offer. That usually takes two to three weeks. Some teachers, it can yeah, maybe even less than two weeks, they might apply. They want a training centre in Beijing and I have one school that comes to mind and everything just goes really quick. For teachers who are maybe a bit more open minded, it's probably nice to have a few different opportunities so it takes longer to do multiple interviews. Once an offer has been accepted, then we start the visa process. I'm going to cover the visa process in a lot more detail on, I think the next slide, but just to give a very quick overview of how long that would take. So there's three sections in the visa process. The first one involves getting your documents authenticated, your bachelor's degree, your TEFL or TESOL, your criminal record check. This can take anywhere from one to six weeks. I've had teachers before who they've already done their document authentication to be super prepared before applying for jobs. Some teachers are at completely at the beginning. It takes a little bit longer. On average, it is usually three to four weeks. I know over the last couple of months, South African teachers, it's been taking up to two or three months to get their documents authenticated, which it's just worth adding that. So if you're South African and you're watching, it might take you a little bit longer to get through this process. Once the documents have been authenticated, you would send everything to your school. They would apply for your work permit, which on average takes about four weeks. During this time, there's nothing you need to do as a teacher. You're literally just sitting and waiting for this work permit to come back. And then once that work permit does come back, you would do your visa application. So you would go to your nearest Chinese embassy, put your application in for your Z visa, and it would take around two weeks before you've got your passport in your hand with your visa in it. Normally, I start looking for flights with teachers once they get the work permit back. And then once the application, the visa application has gone OK, we book the flight usually for around one week after the visa has been returned. So then you would fly to China at the minute, as we've mentioned, there's 10 days quarantine. So you'd spend 10 days in quarantine and then you would probably have around 10 days to two weeks and just getting settled after your quarantine, finding your apartment, getting used to the local area, opening your bank account, registering at the police station, going in and actually meeting your your future co-workers and everything like that. And then sometime I thought you would start probably start training for the first week or two and during that time, you'd gradually start teaching as well. Yeah, awesome. Yeah, so it's not as fast as many people think. It's like, oh, I got the job. I'm going to buy the plane ticket and I'm there tomorrow. Doesn't work. Yeah, it takes it takes a little bit of time. You do need to be patient. It can at times be a little bit frustrating. One thing I do just want to add, though, is that the the time frame and the whole process now is a lot smoother than it was about six months ago because there was a stage in this process, something called the P.U. letter that some teachers might have heard of, which came after the work permit that the school had to apply for. And yeah, that was just a little bit complicated. It was brought in by the Chinese government because of Covid. That has now been completely eradicated. So yeah, the P.U. letter is no longer needed. So everything is, although it takes time, everything does go as planned. Like eventually you will get to China. There's not really any to, to say, too bigger obstacle in the way that could stop teachers getting out there. Awesome. Cool. We have a couple of questions here. Let's have a look. Can maybe Dan, you can answer this one. So are Indian tutors or teachers accepted for a job in China? Unfortunately, not. So and it really is a shame. I get a lot of non native speakers applying via my website who are from places like India who they have good teaching experience and they probably would be a very good teacher in China. Unfortunately, the Chinese government has made it a requirement for the visa that teachers hold one of seven passports which are native speaking. So that is Canadian the United States Ireland, the UK, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. If you don't hold one of those seven passports, it is going to be very, very, very complicated and difficult for you to get a teaching job in China. Korea has a similar kind of policy as well. I think if you're from India and you're looking for a test or job teaching job abroad I think you'd probably better looking at countries in Europe, maybe Eastern Europe countries in South America where the requirements on your nationality aren't strict at all really. I also believe in Japan. They don't have a restriction on nationality, I think. Yeah. So if you really set on East Asia, Japan also might be. And also the the Korean Epic Programme they actually have this one exception that if you for only for Indians which is really interesting. If you are Indian, you fulfill all the other requirements and you have an Indian teaching license, then you also qualify for the Epic Programme. Yeah, very interesting. Yeah, that's interesting to know. I didn't know that. Yeah. Cool. And I think this also answers Sam. Yeah, Sam's question too. Yeah, same. Yeah, I think yeah. It's so unfortunate. I think it's very in 2022. This shouldn't be the thing that only seven countries are considered native speakers. It's kind of yeah. It is frustrating. Moving forward with that. Yeah. Good. But what about age restriction? That's also a thing in China, isn't it? Yes, it is. So typically, and again, this is a rule set by the Chinese government on the visa. So this isn't something the schools just decide this isn't anything to do with. And usually, you need to be under the age of 45 if you want to teach English in China in order to qualify for the visa. So if you're over the age of 45, this is to teach in a public school, kindergarten or training centre with a legal Z visa. If you're over 45, it's going to be very, very difficult. It's going to be just as complicated as if you are a non-native speaker or deemed a non-native speaker for international schools. I just want to add the nationality and the age doesn't really apply as much for international schools. A lot of international schools, if you're a licensed teacher from your own country depending what level your English is at, then exceptions can sometimes be made. And this also goes with age as well at international schools. But yeah, if you've done a TEFL certificate and you just want to go over and teach English, if you're over 45, then it's going to be a little bit complicated to find a school. Great. Good. Then walk us through the visa process a little bit. So the only visa that English teachers can get is the Z visa, right? Yes, it is the Z visa. I probably should have put that on this slide. Yeah, it's the Z visa. There's three steps to it, which I've briefly touched on in the last slide, but I'll go over in more detail. So to start with, once you've accepted a job, there's three documents that you need to get authenticated. Bachelor's Degree, Tafel Certificate or TESOL or CELTA, whatever variation it's fine, like they're all accepted. And you need to get a criminal record check done. So if you're in the UK, this would be a DBS check. If you're in the US, it would be an FBI check or you can get a state level background check. The criminal record check needs to have been done within the last six months from when the work permit is applied. So if you've got an FBI check from two years ago, that's not going to work. You're going to need to get a new one done. Once you've got these three documents, these three certificates ready, you need to get them authenticated for which there's three steps. So the first step is you need to get the documents notarized by a notary public or a lawyer. This is basically where someone who's licensed to do so will look at the documents and basically confirm that they're real. They're not fake. Once these documents have been notarized, they need to be apostalled or have an apostle attached to them. This is usually done at the government level in your country. So in the US, you would send your documents to the US government. They would attach the apostle to the documents. And then the third step is you need to get the Chinese embassy in your country to stamp and authorize the documents themselves. So you can either post the documents to the nearest consulate. You can go in if you make an appointment. And yet they'll basically look through. They will add like a big rectangular sticker to the back with a stamp. And that's just their way of legalizing and checking. They're all good. Once you've got these three documents with all those stages done, that's everything done on your part. You would then send your documents to your school in China. If your school is in Beijing, you would post the documents. But for most of the cities, you can just send over scans and then they would apply for your work permit. It's very quickly touched your Beijing gain. So the reason that they require the documents to physically be there is because the rules for Beijing is slightly different. And another way in which they're different is that for Beijing, you would need to get a medical check done before handing your home country. Whereas for most other cities, you get the medical check done once you arrive in China. So yeah, that's just worth noting as well because Beijing, as we've discussed previously, it's one of the most popular cities. The medical check is pretty simple to do. You would just contact your local hospital, local medical center, clinic. A lot of places can do them. You have one big sheet of paper that you would take. They would basically test you for a lot of different things and then put the hospital stamp in a signature. That's it. The medical does not need to be notarized, apostoled or Chinese consulate stamped. But yeah, that's the document authentication. On average, it takes about three to four weeks to do this. Once your school has received everything, either via post of its Beijing or scans for the cities, they will work in applying for your work permit so they will submit your application to the local bureau depending on what city you're in. And it will take about four weeks for your official work permit to be issued. Your school will then send you a scan of your work permit and of an invitation letter. Once you receive that, you've got everything needed to go and do your visa application. So you'll book an appointment at your nearest Chinese consulate or you can do a postal application for a lot of places in the US, I know for sure. And you'll do your official visa application and you'll either have to post your passport off if you're doing the postal application or your physics take your passport and hand it over at the consulate. If you do a face to face appointment and they'll go for all your documents, check everything's good. If it is, they'll take your passport and then a week later, you'll receive that back with your Chinese Z visa, which basically takes at one full page of the passport, like a big rectangle. That has a three month expiry date. So from the day you receive your Z visa, you need to enter China within three months. Once you enter China, the Z visa will be converted into a residence permit. You don't really need to worry too much about this. This is something the school will basically take care of. But yeah, what's important to know is you need to be in China within three months. I have had a couple of teachers in the past who they've spent two three months going through this entire process, paying money to get their documents sorted got their visa and then waited too long and not being able to enter China in time. It's expired. So yeah, it's it's very important if you've got any kind of arrangements or things back home, you need to stick around for and it's going to take longer than three months. Don't do the visa application straight away once you get your work permit. Just sit on the documents for a while and only apply once you know you're going to basically be in China within three months time. Awesome. Yeah, that's great. Cool. Cool. Great. And then also something I'm very curious about how because of covid pandemic lockdowns and everything. How do people teachers get to China now? How does it all work? Very good question. So pre covid, obviously the the most sensible way to get to China was to fly directly in e visiting a variety of airport or just in a direct flight. When I flew to China, I transited in Dubai, I believe. But yeah, you could basically transit anywhere. Since covid, things have been a little bit more complicated, to say the least. So first of all, the price of flights into China has skyrocketed over the last couple of years. That's due to the Chinese government basically reducing the number of flights coming in, which has meant the demand is really high, but the supply is not there. So the price has gone up as well as that the Chinese government have a requirement that if you transit during a flight, you need to get a covid test done in the airport that you're transiting. So let's just say, for example, I'm in Manchester now in the UK. If I was to fly from Manchester and stop in Dubai, I wouldn't be able to board that second flight to China because Dubai doesn't have the covid testing facilities in the airport. There's only a few airports that have this. So in Europe, it's Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Paris and there's one more that's split mind. Well, that's great. Wow. So if you're going to fly to China and transit, you've got you've got to basically pick a route that stops at one of these airports. Now, if you were to go on Sky Scanner or Kayak, one of these like flight websites, and you type Manchester to Shanghai, loads and loads of flights come up, but about 90 percent you can't get because they don't meet this requirement. So one method that a lot of teachers have been using to kind of get around this is entering China via Hong is first of all, a lot cheaper than flying straight into China. And it also saves having to transit a certain airport stay in the airport for 20 hours, do another covid test. Over the last couple of months, I've helped about 30 teachers enter via Hong Kong and yeah, it's it's quite a smooth process. There's a lot of different steps, which are very quickly covered now, but generally it's going to save teachers a lot of money. So how it works is you would fly from your home country to Hong Kong, which is quite cheap. You can transit anywhere when you're doing this as well. Once you arrive in Hong Kong, you would do three days of kind of like self quarantine where you can move around the city, but you need to get a couple of covid tests done on the second and third day that you're there. During the time that you're in Hong Kong, you would apply online via a lottery type system to get a crossing slot into China. And this normally takes about a week or so for you to get an appointment. So teachers are spending about a week. What was that? Sorry, lottery. That's interesting. Yeah, it's yeah. So I think every day they give a thousand slots. And I think there's about is that because of covid? Yes, it's it's kind of yeah, it's a bit of a bottleneck system in Hong Kong at the minute. There's about nine thousand people, maybe ten thousand people every day applying and only one in ten getting a slot. So it takes about a week, maybe ten days of applying every day. You basically need to log on to a website first thing in the morning, put your application in at eight in the evening, you find out if you've if you've been successful. Once you have finally been successful, you will go to the the Shenzhen Hong Kong border on the day of your crossing. And then you'll have like a free hour. Crossing where you go through the customs where they're going to check your visa. They make you do another covid test. There's a variety of different QR codes and stuff that you need to show. But then you're in China and then you'll get taken to a hotel, usually in Shenzhen or one of the surrounding cities, and you'll do your 10 days quarantine. So it's a little bit of a pain. It's like it adds 10 days or whatever to the journey. But honestly, it's so much cheaper. The average flight price from the US to China in July was about eight thousand dollars, whereas doing this Hong Kong group, even though I didn't know we it was only about fifteen hundred dollars. That's including hotels, food, drink, everything in Hong Kong. So the schools also cover that then. Not really. No, no, it depends on the school. Some some will cover the hotel cost in Hong Kong and some will reimburse the flights. But generally, the schools don't cover stuff on the Hong Kong side. Once the teacher enters Shenzhen and then starts that new quarantine, that's the bit that their school will reimburse. So yeah, it's it's worthwhile doing. A lot of teachers don't have eight thousand dollars hanging around. So it's it's obviously a more viable option. One thing to add, though, things are moving in the right direction. I'd say the average price now from the US to China is about three thousand dollars. So that's more than half over the last few months. And it is still going in that direction. I've seen a lot more teachers who are flying directly in now compared to July, August time. So yeah, I think if you will apply for teaching fishing now and you were to head out in maybe January or February, this entire slide might just be pointless and direct flights might just be back to normal. They might even get rid of the covid testing rule. But for the time being, Hong Kong is still a very good option for a lot of teachers. I actually also went in via Hong Kong when I went to Guangzhou because it was actually cheaper. So yeah, that was it was not too bad. I was a lot of people at the border crossing, but I guess now it's less people. So that's nice. Yeah, you didn't have to do a lottery system, did you? Oh, I don't think so. But this is like this is 10 years ago. Exactly. It was very different than, you know, yeah, it would have been a lot more solid pre covid. It is literally just that was a lot of resources. Yeah. Right. Cool. Then you're in China and you're the first weeks in China. What do they look like for teachers? Yeah. So regardless of whether you fly direct or go via Hong Kong, like I've just discussed, once you first get into China, you're going to do 10 days quarantine. This quarantine, you don't need to pre book. You don't need to arrange yourself. You will literally get taken from the airport or from the crossing in Shenzhen by some government officials or police directly to a hotel that's been kind of designated for you. This isn't something you can pick. It's completely random, which hotel you go to. I've heard mixed reviews. I've had teachers who've had squat toilets when they weren't expecting them. Mixed reviews on the food. Some teachers have had really nice hotels and had a nice relaxing 10 days. Some have been counting down until they get released. It's complete hot look really. That's how you'll spend the first 10 days. Once you get released from quarantine. If you're in the city, you're going to be teaching great. If you're not, let's say you fly to a different city or you cross at Shenzhen. First thing you'll do is obviously get an internal flight up to your city or down to your city, which, as I've mentioned, they're quite cheap. It's about 80, 90 US dollars for an internal flight in China. Yeah, it's really not too expensive. Once you arrive, you'll work and finding an apartment. So you'll spend the first few days searching around for an apartment, depending on where your school is based. You'll speak to housing agents typically that the school will put you in contact with and any preferences you've got, such as how many bedrooms, what your budget is what the maximum commute you're willing to do is going to be. They'll factor all these in and they'll they'll present you with options. I do have quite a few schools now, though, that during the 10 days quarantine, they're having their teachers find the apartment then, kind of to kill two birds with one stone because obviously 10 days of kind of sitting around not doing much their use, they're making better use of that time by putting the teachers in contact with agents and getting the ball rolling with viewing places and a lot of the time signing up for places once you've got your apartment sorted, though, whether that's done in quarantine or actually when you get to the city, you will then do a couple of other things. So first of all, I've not mentioned it here, but you will go to the police station to register your apartment. This takes a couple of hours. Someone from your school will typically take you to do this. Then within those first few days, you're going to open a bank account, which is obviously very important because your salary will be paid into it. Until you have a bank account open, it's quite difficult to use a lot of the Chinese payment apps like VChat, Alipay. So for those first couple of weeks in China, it's quite good to have first of all, some cash that you've got in your home country and also make sure you've got a visa card because master cards don't really seem to be working in China recently, whereas visa cards, you can withdraw cash on from back home. But yeah, you'll open your bank account. You'll obviously have a few days settling into your apartment, buying groceries, bedding, towels, anything that you need for your apartment, pots, pans, plates and just generally getting used to the area. Finding your bearings and yeah, seeing what's nearby you will then begin training. This kind of varies depending on what school you're in. So if you're at a training centre, you'll do a week or two of training before you actually do any teaching where they'll teach you the curriculum. You'll go over different teaching styles, classroom management, behaviour management. This is because, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of teachers who are first time teachers go into training centres. So a lot of training centres don't like to just kind of throw you in the deep end straight away public schools and kindergartens you'd get a little bit of training, but you would typically start teaching a lot sooner. So yeah, it depends on the school type and then you'd start teaching and what are the common struggles a teacher might face during their first few weeks in China? And I did want to touch on this because a lot of teachers for the first two, three, even four weeks. Squat toilets, no. Squats. Like a quarantine hotel. Be fair, that is a struggle for some teachers. Ultra shock for sure. Yeah. Aside from the squat toilets, I would say a lot of teachers do generally feel quite overwhelmed in the first month. And there's a few reasons why. First of all, there is the culture shock like you're on the other side of the world in a completely different culture. Like whether you're from the US, the UK, South Africa, Ireland, Canada, wherever, China is a completely different country and culture. It's not like, because I'm from the UK, it's not like me going to Spain, where everything's still quite Westernized and stuff. It is very, very different. So a lot of teachers kind of take a bit of time to get used to that. On top of that, during the first couple of weeks, there's so much going on, you're finding an apartment, which in itself, if you were to do that back home is quite a stressful experience. You're then opening a bank account. You're going to police stations. There's a language barrier, so you might struggle to communicate with people. You've got all of this kind of stuff going on. And then to top it off, you're starting a new job teaching, which a lot of teachers haven't done before, or maybe don't have much experience. So all these things kind of added together. It can make a teacher feel a little bit overwhelmed for the first month, like they're constantly busy constantly not too sure what's going on, a little bit stressed out. This is very, very common. I speak to so many teachers when I'm just checking in with them after two, three, four weeks, who are feeling a bit stressed. And I always just say to them, honestly, just ride it out. The first the first month or so is a bit all over the place and a bit hectic. Once you get past that first month, you get into a regular schedule and routine that work. You start to make friends and socialise more. You get used to how things work in a shop or on the metro and how to actually operate the culture shock goes. You actually really enjoy yourself and that, yeah, it starts to feel like you're you're there for all the reasons you went initially. You obviously start to get your first paycheck and start seeing the financial rewards as well. But yeah, the first month, it can be a bit bumpy. It's definitely worth mentioning that. Yeah, for sure. And I think a lot of people. It's weird because you kind of feel like you're a child because you can't do anything on your own. And for a lot of people who are used to being independent and doing everything, that can be quite a struggle, I think because the language barrier, you don't know how things work in this country. You always need maybe your co-worker, your boss accompanying you somewhere to go to open a bank account and all of these things. So you feel like a little bit like a little kid once you know everything. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I always say to teachers when they first arrive, do not be scared to ask for help. Don't feel cheeky. Don't feel like, oh, I want to figure this out myself because you're just going to make life hard for yourself. Just ask for help. Either ask me, ask the school, ask the landlord, whoever it may be. And typically people people are happy to help in China, like, especially when you're clearly new to the country and you're still figuring things out. No one's going to be annoyed at you if you don't understand something. Yeah. And usually at the school, they would kind of assign someone who usually is like the most fluent in English to help you out, be like your assistant for the first month or so and go everywhere with you. So you always have someone to ask. Exactly that. You're not alone there, no. Exactly. Awesome. Cool. And then, yeah, your predictions, what are you thinking? What's the future? What does the future look like for teaching English in China? A lot of people are saying like because of those new regulations, it's it's getting more difficult. But what are your thoughts and COVID, of course? So. Yeah. First of all, I just want to start by saying some of these predictions could come back to haunt me because China is a very, very unpredictable place. Like things can just happen all of a sudden in China, like if the government introduces a new regulation, if there's a new COVID outbreak, anything could happen that that could kind of change things. But these are kind of my predictions for what I think the Tefl market in China is going to look like over the coming years. So let's start with COVID. We've obviously mentioned earlier on how it's impacted flights there has been lockdowns in cities sporadically and China is still kind of battling COVID, whereas it feels certainly in the Western world almost a thing of the past. I can't remember the last time I wore a face mask, for example, here in the UK. I think China is gradually going to come out of COVID. Again, this could come out to bite me. But the reason I say that is, first of all, they've made the visa quite easy to obtain again. The visa rules now are the same as they were pre COVID. There's no P.U. letter anymore, which shows that they're opening up. There's talk of tourist visas potentially starting soon, student visas. So they are willing to give more people the opportunity to enter the country. This has been highlighted with flights. So as we mentioned on a previous slide, the price of flights into China has dropped drastically over the last three or four months. It's more than halved. So it's a lot cheaper for people to get into the country now and more international flights are starting to look daily in China. The lockdowns when it comes to COVID don't seem as severe as they were. Six months ago or a year ago. I'm sure a lot of people saw in the news Shanghai was in quite a bad lockdown for quite a long time. What they seem to be doing now is just having very, very small short lockdowns in certain communities or districts if there's an outbreak or a sort of rather than shutting the entire city down for a long period of time. So I don't really have many schools at the minute that are closed because of lockdowns. I don't want to say there won't be more lockdowns in China in the future because there's a chance there could be. But I do just generally get the feel that they are slowly coming out of things. They're just not doing it as quickly as we did in the Western world. They're not ripping the plaster off, so to speak. But they are slowly opening up, which means more teachers are going to come in and that's going to stabilize the Tefl market a little bit more. I touched on the training centre regulations before. So regulations were brought in 15 months ago that impacted training centres. All schools since then have had new teaching licence, business licence issued. So those regulations shouldn't really have too much more of an impact on the training centre system. But as I've mentioned a couple of times, it is unpredictable. Like the regulations that they brought in 15 months ago, no one foresaw them. Like there was no rumours or murmurings for months beforehand. Literally, I woke up one day and just saw on the news that China has introduced some new regulations, it's going to impact the English market over there. And as we saw, the online sector absolutely crumbled as a result of it. So they could potentially bring something else in. But personally, I don't see it. China has got the greatest demand for English teachers in the world. There's nearly a billion people in China who are learning English. It's got one of the fastest growing economies in the world. It's got a very, very large middle class who are now sending their children to teach English. So even if the Chinese government were to introduce more regulations on training centres or TEFL in general in China, that demand for learning English isn't going to go away. A lot of parents in China, they want their children to learn English and maybe go to university in America or the UK. English is the global common second language that people use to communicate. So that demand's always going to be there. And I personally think it would be a little bit reckless of the Chinese government to completely try and get rid of training centres in the TEFL market because it is a big part of the teaching system over there. It's a big part of the economy. So yeah, I personally think things are stabilizing. I'm not just saying that as a recruiter who wants to send teachers to China. Like, if I didn't think things were stabilizing, I'd be I'd be focusing more on South Korea and other countries. But I still think China is the place to go and teach. Teachers can earn the most money there. Experience and amazing culture integrate with amazing local people. Gain some great teaching experience with opportunities to progress their career whilst they're over there. And yeah, that's that's kind of my prediction. Like I say, don't don't hold me to it too much. One thing I did just want to touch on as well is what would be the best way for teachers to progress their career whilst China. So if someone maybe doesn't have an official teaching licence, but they see teaching as a future career, what can they do when they're in China? Do they have to stick at a training centre? Is there any way they can get to an international school? There is. And I'm going to break that down now. So a lot of teachers who do a TEFL and haven't taught when they go to China, they start off in a training centre at least for the first year or two years. But quite a lot of the time, if teachers who are doing this really, really enjoy teaching, they know it's a future career for them. They want to in a different environment, maybe earn money. There is ways that you can kind of progress through the system in China. And there is a way that you can get licensed without having to go back to your home country. The way you can do this is through something called an IPGCE, which is an international PGCE, postgraduate certificate of education. There's certain universities in the UK, the University of Derby and the University of Sunderland that offer this, where it's a completely online course. So you could be teaching at a training centre still and doing your IPGCE online. Usually it takes a year to do. And once you've got that, you're deemed an official licensed teacher. A lot of international schools would then take you on and give you that opportunity where you could gain experience in a, I guess, a more enhanced setting. A lot of international schools as well. If you've taught for maybe two or three years in a training centre, maybe you've done a year in a public school as well, they will take teachers on who are studying for the IPGCE at the same time. If the teachers show in the commitment that look, I want to be a licensed teacher, I want to start doing this course. A lot of international schools will take teachers on who are doing that. So yeah, there is ways for you to kind of progress and get that teaching process whilst in China. You don't need to go back to your home country, which a lot of teachers think is the only way. Right, yeah. Nice. Awesome. Good stuff. Great. I learned a lot. That's it. No problem. No problem. Yeah, totally. I actually have one question for you. What's your favourite thing about China? Favourite thing about China? I've got a few things. A few things. I'd say one thing I'd say would be this might sound a bit silly, but the efficiency. So I feel like a lot of things you do in China, especially compared to the UK, super efficient, for example, finding an apartment in China can take two days. In the UK, it would take you about three months to find a place and go through various checks. The public transport is just next level in China, always on time. Here in the UK, it's probably 50-50, whether your train is actually going to show up or not. So that's one thing. And then another thing, which I think probably doesn't get appreciated around the world, is just how much of a beautiful country China is. There's the vast variety of landscapes and stuff they've got there is unbelievable. It's an enormous country. If you venture outside of the big cities, like you still get that real traditional Chinese feel in a lot of the rural cities and towns, that it probably felt the same 1,000 years ago in those kind of places. Yeah, there's all sorts. There's mountains. There's anything that you're into, like if you're into hiking, if you're into outdoors, there's something to cater for you in China. It's a really beautiful country. So I'd say that would be my second thing as well. Yeah, no, I love to hike. So probably also like the landscape, because it's something I love to do when I was in China, travel, take the train, take domestic flights. And literally they have everything like mountains, national parks, deserts, beach, tropical beaches, like whatever you can find it there. It's great. And also those little villages that are really untouched, beautiful. Yeah. And just the history there's especially also in Beijing. I like Beijing. A lot of people don't like Beijing for a lot of reasons, but like I really like Beijing for the history, the forbidden cities. Great. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, one one more thing actually just to very, very quickly add. We mentioned the four most popular cities before, didn't we? Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen. Those cities do offer very different things. So Beijing and Guangzhou for example, you do get a much more traditional Chinese feel. There's still a lot more traditional Chinese architecture because these cities are so much older. Whereas Shenzhen and Shanghai almost feel a little bit futuristic, very, very modern and they've over the last 30, 40 years, they've just come from nothing really. So yeah, that's just worth noting because I know some teachers they want that Chinese feel. So a city like Beijing or Guangzhou might be better. Whereas others, they're not really too bothered or they want the more modern feel where Shanghai and Shenzhen might be more appropriate. But like if you're in Shanghai, you can just take the train and go down to or next to Hangzhou or Suzhou, beautiful. Yeah. I'd say with Shenzhen as well. Right. Shenzhen, you can you can get the train to Guangzhou. Like these places are isolated, but I feel that the architecture in Beijing and Guangzhou, it just feels a bit more Chinese, if that makes sense. Yeah, more traditional. Yeah. Nice. Awesome. Well, this is really, really great. And let's just share one more time how people can find you and how it all works with applying. So I'm just going to share this link one more time. And obviously, you also have your own website, which is TeachEnglishGlobal.com. Yes, that's correct. So anyone who is interested and wants to apply, click on the link that Linda's just shared. That will take you through to an application form on the Teflcos.net website, fill that application form in and that will then come through to me. I will review your application, reach out to get in touch and arrange a start-up introductory call where we'll go through any preferences you've got about teaching in China and what it is you're looking for. We'll chat about any experience you've got. And then depending how that call goes, I will then get your application over to some relevant schools in China and we'll work and get some interviews arranged for you. Awesome. Sounds great. Well, thank you, Dan, for doing this today. It's very useful. Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure. Awesome. And thanks for everyone watching today. And yeah, if you have any questions for me or for Dan about ITTT or Teach English Global, you can also leave comments here even after this life is over. We always get back to you in the if you watch this as a replay, it will always be in my in our playlist on Facebook and on YouTube. And yeah, I think that's it. Awesome. And yeah, thanks again, Dan. No problem. Thanks, Linda. Awesome. Bye.