Chinese Painting
Originally uploaded by clarkalastair

A friend of mine from England lives and works in India, and was asking me my opinion about working in Bejing. Here is part of the email I wrote him.

I’ve been living in a second tier level city, which generally means fewer foreigners and associated companies doing business here, familiar brands, etc. Beijing, as you’ll understand, will I think be more amenable, with more things to do by way of touristy and cultural activities. The lack of these things in Dalian is a little frustrating having lived in London for 5 years (at least having them available).

The Chinese people are very kind and lovely. I’ve been welcomed by lots and lots of Chinese here, Miao’s family has just been amazing at accepting me, being quite an unusual situation for China. I don’t think you’ll have any problems in that area. There’s alot of expat communities, (I imagine similar things in India), with websites, coffee mornings, bar nights, cooking classes, foreign schools etc etc. In Beijing, there are lots more foreigners, when I went back home a year ago, to get my work visa, I felt as if there were tonnes of foreigners. There is of course, what the Chinese call “English Corner”, which is for the Chinese to speak English to others, and hopefully a few foreigners.

Dalian’s attempting to set itself as an IT BPO outsourcing capital in China, and is doing very successfully in Japan, Korea, and in Asia generally, so I’ve made a couple friends who work in those sorts of companies, though the offices here are more likely to speak Japanese than be an English speaking job, it’s quite difficult. In Beijing there’s more regular jobs available but more competition of course. Setting up a company here, if that’s your plan in the future, is probably not as straight forward as you’re used to. There are lots of funny laws, and officials to take out for an expensive meal.

There are some cultural issues to contend with, but you’ve been living in Pune for ages, so it’s not going to be a big deal. Squat toilets everywhere that isn’t your home… Work, University, Macdonalds, the gym… whatever, it’ll be a squat toilet. They never have any toilet paper in their toilets, so you need to carry tissues with you everywhere. A big mac costs 1 pound 25p a big mac meal costs 2 pounds 70 p. Chinese build high, not wide. They like ice cream, but don’t like drinking cold water/beer/drinks. They’ll try to take your money in some silly ways if you let them. There’re sellers that Miao has talked to who have different prices for foreigners (x3 the price). The street food is cheap, cheerful, tasty and bad for your health, and maybe give you some trouble the next day.

I think probably the main reason I’m not overly enthusiastic is related to me being me. If i was being rational, for myself, I probably wouldn’t choose to do this. It’s a little out of character for me, and a combination of lack of being active seeking work opportunities for myself, teaching, being crap at learning language, little cultural activity, and the process of saving money to return to the UK gets me down. Life seems to hold little in the way of change or diversity. But that’s a problem of attitude, not of situation. But I like being different from others, haha, so that’s good. I’ll bet that there aren’t that many people from my home that’ve move so far abroad for a girl, and some of the problems come from accepting the change of life between being single and being together, from being self centered and selfish.

On the whole, standard of life here is quite good. Things are cheap, pay for foreigners is quite high. Don’t get caught by some language schools (if you go into teaching), there are some chains here who will work you 50-60hrs a week, and with planning lessons and everything else, the money isn’t worth the hassle for making you so worn out.