next »

[Raoul F. Duke]

Here's the ad...

Dear Could Be You:
here is the details of the job,if you feel okey,we wish you could arrive the early OCT.  We are A leader training center in china ,now we are looking for teachers for CHONGQING center. and your students will be adults, small group.
Our contract includes:
l Number of vacancies: one person / A valid passport holder under the age 55 from the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand / Bachelor's degree preferred *
l Length of contract: 1 year *
l Start Date: ASAP *
l Salary: RMB7000 monthly based on 18 hours per week, Overtime teaching at the rate of RMB100 per class
l Duties: Teach students English, textbook provided but teachers are encouraged to be creative in their lessons and activities.
l Housing: covered Single room in a furnished apartment with cooking facilities, toilet and major electronics; air conditioner, television, microwave, etc. The apartment is nice and clean. And if you want to find house by yourself,we can give you 1200RMB monthly for housing allowance,*
l Other benefits: Round trip airfare reimbursed. (Up to maximum of 8000RMB) / Comprehensive medical insurance. / Free Internet access (at the school) /
l HOW TO APPLY: E-mail your resume and a recent color photo to dontwriteme@gmail.com If you're already in China call me at 12345678901

What's Dodgy About It?

The worst offense here is the description of the housing: "Housing: covered Single room in a furnished apartment..."

The translation of this phrase is "you'll get your own bedroom in a shared apartment." It's extreme soft-soaping to avoid using the words "shared apartment".
Not catching this could find you roommates with, well, someone you don't want to spend much time with. (I gotta find that photo of George in his qi pao... )

I'm also a little concerned that this ad doesn't mention a visa and residence permit at all. You'd definitely want to ask.

This job might be fine. But ya gotta read these things carefully...

[Mr Nobody]

Internet is also only At the school.

[Raoul F. Duke]

Internet access isn't generally a deal-breaker for me.

It's not the kind of benefit I'd normally expect from an employer...with overtones to another thread elsewhere, my leisure time is not the school's business- or responsibility.

It's also pretty easy and cheap, in most places, to find your own internet access.

[Pashley]

l Housing: covered Single room in a furnished apartment with cooking facilities, toilet and major electronics; air conditioner, television, microwave, etc. The apartment is nice and clean. And if you want to find house by yourself,we can give you 1200RMB monthly for housing allowance,* ...

What's Dodgy About It?

The worst offense here is the description of the housing: "Housing: covered Single room in a furnished apartment..."

The translation of this phrase is "you'll get your own bedroom in a shared apartment."

That would be OK, maybe; they're being cheap but the salary is decent, so that might be tolerable. What bothers me is "if you want to find house by yourself,we can give you
1200RMB monthly". Aren't they going to help find a place? Is 1200 enough in Chongqing?
I know people getting 1700 in Fuzhou; should it be more in a bigger city?

[Raoul F. Duke]

Shared housing is fine for those who will accept it and clearly know that they're getting it. My problem here is simply in not being clear that you're getting shared housing...

Of course I don't know the particulars on how they do housing. They may be happy to help you find something, but they won't pay for more than 1200 a month towards it.
But they don't tell you something else...if you rent the apartment on your own, you'll have to cough up a deposit and most likely at least 3 months' rent and God knows what kind of agent fee, just to move in. They're giving the choice of paying up a big wad of money up front, or taking shared school housing.

Chongqing isn't terribly rich, at least not compared to the towns on the other end of the river. 1200 per seems awfully low but I don't know current market prices there...

[contemporarydog]

Internet access isn't generally a deal-breaker for me.

It's not the kind of benefit I'd normally expect from an employer...with overtones to another thread elsewhere, my leisure time is not the school's business- or responsibility.

It's also pretty easy and cheap, in most places, to find your own internet access.

Depends whether the accommodation is on or off campus though doesn't it?  I mean if you're on campus then you don't have much choice but to depend on what the school provides.  I nearly went crazy with this issue at my old school. )Pathetic chinese school LAN Servers: 

[solongtinik]

call him at 12345678901? does this exist in china?

dontwriteme@gmail.com?!?!?!?!?

dodgy enough!

[cheekygal]

Solong, the actual number and e-mail address were... replaced here 

[Raoul F. Duke]

Uh....yes, indeed.
All names/addresses/etc. are changed in the Dodgy Ad samples.
I do this for two reasons:

1) I want to conceal the identity of the school so as to not get sued or have my kneecaps shot off.

2) Some of the elite cognoscenti who grace these pages with their readership might be goofy enough to actually try and contact one of the dirtbag schools depicted herein.

[solongtinik]

  i was mislead!!!!!!!!!!! wahahahahahahahahhaHA!

[George]

Easy to mislead cute, young Filipinas!!

[Raoul F. Duke]

Ahem.

[NateM]

Chongqing isn't terribly rich, at least not compared to the towns on the other end of the river. 1200 per seems awfully low but I don't know current market prices there...

1200 a month for a housing allowance doesn't sound that terribly bad to me. In Tianjin, you can definately find a decent, (but not extravagant), 50 or 60 sq m, 1 bedroom for that price, and if you had a roommate, you could find a decent 2 bedroom for probably around 1600. From what I've heard, Chongqing is a bit cheaper than Tianjin, so I don't think it would be terribly difficult to find a place for that much there, either.

[Con ate dog]

You can't find a stretch of rooftop for 1,200 a month in Suzhou.  I'd get a small palace for that in the first town I lived in.  Size matters.