Hi Everyone,

I still feel very emotional about my contract not being renewed.

I want to understand my rights as a worker in China.

1. In Western countries, most employment is at will. If a worker does not show up one day, that is his prerogative. Likewise, an employer can, and often does, lay off or terminate a person in an instant.

2. It seems difficult for both parties in China to do so.

3. I do commend my workplace for telling me early, "we are not renewing your contract."

Rather, it just hurts that I work 60-70 hours a week for 3.5 years, only to be treated like this.

4. Was what they did legal? Was it normal?

5. I would appreciate anything constructive, not sarcastic, cynical or rude.
3.

I hope the thrill of traveling this land never deserts you, my friend. I hope the fan boy "Can I take a picture with you?" never gets stale. 

Make very sure to get a release letter from your current employer.

Your severance pay depends on how long you've worked there.  If it's been 1 year, a month would be correct.

If they were taking our social insurance, the probably also took out unemployent insurance.

For both of the above, consult with your local labor bureau.

You need to get a new job lined up ASAP.  When your contract ends, so does your work permit.  When your work permit ends, your residence permit will get cancelled very quickly (even if the res permit has a longer duration, the cancellation will make it invalid).  You can apply for a Stay visa to remain longer, but that would be limited.  No matter what, make 100% sure you are not in China without an active Res permit or visa of some sort.  Even a 1 day overstay comes with penalties and will make any new visas difficult (or even impossible) to get.

If you can't find a new job that will give you a work permit and arrange for a new res permit, one option would be to head to HK for a few days.  Then you can come back in on a tourist visa to continue your job hunt or if a new employer is already lined up, they should provide paperwork to you for a Z visa.

There are some possible new visa types in the pipeline, but I don't think those will be available in time to cover you.

A neighbor twice saw Mango with dead rats.  Either or both may be overlaps of the two prior confirmed kills, or they may be separate.  Street sweepers come by several times per day, so there may be additional kills that were not reported.

And Mango doesn't appear to be killing all by himself. 

My lovely wife spotted Mango and Pear playing around her scooter and running under its cover and out again.  A bit later, we went out and there were fresh blood stains and a rat corpse next to the scooter.  Closer inspection revealed multiple blood stains inside the scooter's cover.  It looked like a scene from a Quentin Tarantino movie scaled down to rat size.

Rats are much more rare in the village as they were when I first moved in.  If these two little bundles of rodent-murding cuteness keep up their killing spree, my section of the village will run out of rats pretty soon.

Stripy Emperor and Bronze Cat spent some time consulting before giving Mango and Pear a commendation for their action and also granting them both the additional title of "Slayer of Rats."