Shipped to Shanghai! Vol. 15 -- Stay or Go? (a.k.a. China Bitching Session!)

"There is no never-ending banquet under the sun."
--Chinese proverb

I was at a crossroads. Fall will be here in a few months, and I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing then. The constant question in my mind was "Stay or go?"

The idea of moving on to Taiwan had been on my mind for a while now. Many of my fellow ESL teachers had friends working there, and the reviews have been positive. More than once, they've said, "So-and-so's been teaching in Taiwan for __ years!" At the other end of the spectrum, most of the ESL teachers I know in China have rarely stayed longer than a year. I did meet one enthusiastic teacher who said, "Dude, Shanghai is the new Paris!" Then again, I have a friend who hates it here so much he commented, "I'll never return to Shit-hai ever again!"

I fall somewhere in between. There are times when I'm excited to be on the cutting edge of the global economy. The world is coming to China to do business, and Shanghai is the #1 city for that. Other times, I think I'm an idiot for leaving the paradise that is Hawaii.

I considered some other ESL hotspots. Japan I dismissed right away as too expensive. South Korea is the best for saving money but I've heard bad reviews from more experienced English teachers. More importantly, Korea had winters; I've had my fill of those. Thailand was party central, but the pay was even worse than China. I knew one Canadian guy who copied the movie Apocalypse Now and went to Cambodia. He's living like a rock star in Phnom Penh. See Taiwan vs. Korea vs. Japan for an excellent comparison of the ESL hubs in Asia (just ignore the weird pictures).

Taiwan seemed to come out on top in all respects:

--No winters. But my Taiwan students warned me that it did rain a lot, especially in Taipei.

--Mandarin-speaking country, so I wouldn't have to switch languages. I also wanted to keep studying Mandarin, a very marketable language nowadays.

--Relatively high pay, second only to South Korea. Japan pays even more, but that's negated by the high cost of living. A friend of mine countered that I could save a lot of money if I didn't work in Tokyo or Osaka.

--Health insurance. Chinese ESL companies don't provide it. I had to supply my own health insurance with International SOS. I might switch to World Nomads, because it seems geared towards younger, Internet-savvy travelers.

In contrast, the Taiwan government requires everyone to have health insurance, including foreigners. All the companies there offer it. One ESL company I saw even gave it to their part-time English teachers!

--Not a Communist government. As an American, this really only touches my daily life in a few ways, namely the restrictions on exchanging money and the media censorship. If I went by what the government-controlled news reported, I'd think that all China's problems come from the foreigners, that all Japanese are evil, and that China is superior to all countries in all ways. (I can't read that last part without laughing my ass off)

--Friendly people. Granted this is based on the cool Taiwanese students I met when I studied in England and the few Taiwan students I teach now. They're so warm, friendly, and energetic.

(Warning: The following are broad generalizations that don't apply to all I've met)

The Chinese adults I teach shatter the myth of being the calm, spiritual, Confucian-style thinkers seen in movies. Chinese can be more driven, workaholic, and materialistic than Americans. They don't want to learn how to think, to imagine. They want magic sentences they can memorize and instantly sound like professional Western businesspeople. After having their natural-born instinct for business suppressed for so long and seeing other Asian countries become major economic powers, it's like they're in a big rush to catch up.

--Taiwan is a more developed country. I don't just mean utilities and sit-down toilets (squat toilets are common, even in a big city like Shanghai), I mean the people too. The hygiene habits of the Chinese are a shock: spitting on the street, blowing out snot on the sidewalk without a napkin, throwing trash everywhere without a second thought, etc. As bad as it is here, the real kicker is that Shanghai has made the most progress in this area; it's supposed to be way worse in Beijing and elsewhere.

I read what I just wrote. Man, I must sound like the most ignorant American pig on planet Earth. So much for sounding like a sophisticated man of the travel scene.