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The Champagne Cabana / Re: Wow ... this forum is still here!
« Last post by zero on Today at 07:25:32 AM »
Sadly, we've got very few active members.  If we could just get a few more, this place would look a bit less like an empty shopping mall.

Regarding teaching, the bad news is that demand for FTs is lower than it used to be.  The good news is that there are far fewer candidates running around to compete with you when you're looking for a job.

Could we maybe promote the forum on Reddit or somewhere?
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The Champagne Cabana / Re: Wow ... this forum is still here!
« Last post by Escaped Lunatic on February 07, 2025, 07:59:02 PM »
Was hoping to get in a few years of teaching as a semi-retirement job after age 50. Is there a lot of age discrimination for the jobs? Would mainly be looking to break even on salary.

Fewer competitors for the positions will probably make many employers less picky.  No more crazy qualification lists like "Must have a masters degree, 6-8 years of experience, and be no more than 24 years old."  ahahahahah
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Just a pretty uninformed point, although Japan is famous for having 20 years of 0% growth or whatever, when you go there it's still a great place, like when I went I spent time just walking around the suburbs because it's so clean and relaxed. China will never be Japan just because it's a really different place, but even with the apparent slowing economy, it's still a safe place and the infrastructure is getting better and better.
I think that the decline of the USA is going to make China rich as well, never lived there but from the news the US seems to be commiting suicide
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The Bar (ON-TOPIC) / Re: Best Places in China for Travel; Nothing Else?
« Last post by kitano on February 07, 2025, 04:01:47 PM »
For a boilerplate list Dongfeng, and Luoyang should go on your list. Both next to each other, DongFeng has some amazing mountains and buddhist stuff carved into the rock, nice town as well with a well done tourist district.
Luoyang is the ancient capital and has loads of restored historical buildings, museums and so on, also you can get a day trip to the Shaolin temple one of the homes of Chinese Buddhism, but more importantly the 1980s kung fu films and of course the birthplace of hiphop.

If you were doing a 'must see' list those two are worth it. Agree with EL though, although China is developed now, you really need a decent amount of information except the location because it's not geared towards tourists in the same way as those parts of Thailand are where you have a huge choice of English speaking agents to sort you out, you need specifics
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The Champagne Cabana / Re: Wow ... this forum is still here!
« Last post by kitano on February 07, 2025, 03:52:43 PM »
I pop in once every few months, it would be nice if it was still active. People used to write a lot of content, I think that Raoul (RIP) used to write loads of guides and that is what brought people in. But also Google doesn't work anymore so I don't know how people would find the place.

There are still jobs in China, it's not recovered fro COVID fully and it's never going back to when they paid you for being a laowai, but there are still a lot of jobs bfbfbfbfbf
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The Champagne Cabana / Re: Wow ... this forum is still here!
« Last post by zero on February 07, 2025, 07:58:29 AM »
Was hoping to get in a few years of teaching as a semi-retirement job after age 50. Is there a lot of age discrimination for the jobs? Would mainly be looking to break even on salary.
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China has a few issues, but none are insurmountable.

1.  Yes, it sucks for those who own a lot of properties, but lower real-estate prices are making life easier for those who need to buy a place.  Personally, I think real estate is still overpriced, but it's definitely not as overpriced.  Now we wait and see.  Does it:

A.  Have a second correction to bring prices even more in line with people's salaries.
B.  Stay fairly flat as salaries increase enough to make it more affordable.
C.  Enter the cyclic boom/bust cycle common in a number of other countries.

The outcome will be hard to predict, since government policies will have a massive influence and there are competing priorities over which priorities get the biggest share of attention.

My personal advice - if you find your dream home and can afford it, get it now so you don't have to worry about what happens to housing prices years or decades from now.

2.  The population has begun to shrink.  If we believe the western press, China would already be 25 years into a "The Last of Us" scenario.  In reality, Chinese people are still having children, but there are more childless people and fewer of thoe who do reproduce opt for a 2nd or 3rd child.  This is NOT uncharted territory.  Numerous countries have population declines, with some having population declines that have continued for decades.  Since China wasn't the first country to face this issue, it can avoid wasting time on some of the "If we do A and B, birthrates will increase" plans that already have failed miserably elsewhere.  The good news is that some of the areas in China with the best incentives for having children are showing noticable improvements in fertility rates, so there's no reason to belive that China can't at least bring fertility numbers up closer to replacement levels.

Add in the progress on humanoid robots and the "how will we care for a growing senior population?" conundrum can be resolved.

3. Economic slowdowns.  This is two-fold.

A.  There's a major trading partner with a bad habit of slapping tariffs and sanctions on any Chinese company that is catching up (or getting into the lead) in various technologies.  Unfortunately, that country has a habit of forcing other countries into following its unilateral sanctions.  Oddly, it now has a president who changes his mind on major issues every 2 to 4 days.

President Xi was VP when that other country almost collapse its entire banking systen during the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008.  If that ship had sunk then, China (and Europe) would have gone down too.  Expanding Chinese markets overseas needed to be done, but so much of the rest of the world was very poor.  This is why one of the first initiatives Xi took when he became president was to create the Belt and Road initiative to help other countries (mostly developing countries) improve their economic capacity.  So far, it's working.  Trade with developing countries has HUGELY increased, so issues with that other country affect a much smaller percentage of China's imports and exports than they used to.

B.  Chinese consumers are still a bit too good at saving money.  This is mostly lingering worries about needing financial reserves in case of another crisis like Covid or from trade issues.  In this case, there are already signs of a turn around.  Consumer spending is growing, but the increase is slower than desirable.  The good news is that each month that things keep showing signs of even very modest improvement provides more confidence for the next month.  Some spending incentives like trade-ins for various household goods are also helping.  I believe we'll see some other types of incentives tried here and there to find the best way to get consumer spending growing in a faster and more self-sustaining way.
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The Bar (ON-TOPIC) / Re: What About Mail Forwarding from USA to China?
« Last post by Escaped Lunatic on February 06, 2025, 08:23:04 PM »
And he tried to flip that switch so hard that the recoil reversed the whole thing.  The suspension cancelled, but customs duties will supposedly be collected where applicable.  I doubt either side will care about the occasional envelope full of forwarded mail.

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The Champagne Cabana / Re: Wow ... this forum is still here!
« Last post by Escaped Lunatic on February 06, 2025, 08:19:57 PM »
Sadly, we've got very few active members.  If we could just get a few more, this place would look a bit less like an empty shopping mall.

Regarding teaching, the bad news is that demand for FTs is lower than it used to be.  The good news is that there are far fewer candidates running around to compete with you when you're looking for a job.
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The Champagne Cabana / Re: Wow ... this forum is still here!
« Last post by zero on February 06, 2025, 11:32:44 AM »
What's up with the place?

How many active posters do we still have?

Is China still a decent place to teach English?
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