Employment Conditions
The teachers work under a contract which starts first of September and ends thirtieth of June. The teachers work ten months and get paid for ten months.

According to the contract, the teachers are expected to teach about 24 classes a week. Each class is about 50 minutes. The teachers are also expected to work five 8-hour days per week - teaching classes and/or guiding students in their extracurricular activities.

The pay is in RMB - the money used in China. One U.S. dollar is equivalent to about RMB 6.3 during the summer of 2011. The regular monthly salary is RMB 3500. Besides the regular pay, the teachers get an allowance of RMB 500 for food and RMB 500 for utilities (including phone calls). If a teacher stays over for a second year, there may be a small increase of salary. The increase is negotiable.

The school in Huadu can supply simple meals to the teachers. However, no teacher had in the past taken the option of receiving meals from the school. They all had chosen to take the RMB 500 allowance and buy their own meals and/or cook for themselves.  The school in Guangzhou and Nanning are in downtown so getting food in a restaurant is not a problem.  It is not very likely that the school in Pingguo will have school operated mess hall but there will be many eating places outside the school fence.  

The salary of RMB 3500 ( approximately US$ 550 ) sounds like very little money. However, considering the low cost of living in China, the money can go very far. Most teachers can not spend all the RMB 1000 allowance for their daily living. The salary of approximately US$ 550 can all be saved for their holiday need. This kind of saving can not be achieved by most of the graduates in U.S. on their first job.

With the saving, most of the teachers in the past managed to take one to two long trips in China plus one trip to South East Asia touring countries like Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia or India.

The school will be responsible for a round trip economy air ticket from most major cities in North America, Europe or Australia to Hong Kong or Guangzhou. Most cities served by United Airline are acceptable to the school as the starting point. The school will also be responsible for the transportation from Hong Kong to the school. There are many limitations and details concerning the air tickets written in the employment contract. The prospective teachers are advised to read the employment contract very carefully.

The cost of the visa will be born by the school. However, starting September 1997, China will not issue work visa to any teacher without a bachelor's degree. The school can apply the work visa for the teacher if he/she can get a letter from his/her university certifying that he/she will be graduating in June and will have a bachelor's degree in September when employment starts.

Any religious activity is forbidden by law and teachers will definitely get into trouble if they try to organize anything religion related.

Although the teachers are expected to work a 40 hour week conducting up to 24 sections of classes, nobody in the past managed to squeeze in that many sections because they will run into conflict with other classes. Regardless what the contract says, most of the teachers have a lot of free time of their own and they always enjoy spending their time with the students.

If there is any difference between this information sheet and the employment contract, the conditions in the contract will apply.