So it’s that time of year again when I get to accept another one-year offer for employment here in China. This will be the sixth contract I’ve signed in this country (three at a university and three with the current company) and make it just about five years in Beijing. And each time this happens, I always wonder if I’m going to get to keep my job. Why? Because contracts aren’t always renewed or offered again and can be cancelled for any number of reasons. And given the current political climate, I think we’re all being watched a little bit more these days. That being the case, if you don’t talk about politics, you’ll be fine. On the other hand, there’s always “operational needs” that may already be filled and, well, there goes your job because the company doesn’t need you any more.
Why all the pessimism?
I don’t see it so much as pessimism so much as the reality of the life I’ve chosen. Many people my age that I know have “proper contracts” that guarantee them employment or, if they were let go, they’d get some sort of severance package. Not here, certainly not in the ESL industry. To be fair, the teachers I know, both abroad and in Canada, pretty much live semester to semester but at least some of them have a union behind them. Any talk of a union here and your contract doesn’t get renewed.
Heading into my fifth year here doesn’t seem like it’s been all that long. If I had met someone who had been here for five years I would expect them to be good if not fluent in Chinese. Considering my progress over the last year, however, I’m happy enough with it. To date I’ve completed HSK 2 and 3 books and now about a third of the way through the HSK 4 books. Furthermore, I’m not able to read basic Chinese books, which is an improvement from a year ago when I first tried to sit down with a book.
I’ve also been able to make quite a bit of money and save some up, which has been nice. I read an article on a finance blog some time ago about the “truth” of saving money. The simple fact was that the best way to be able to save more money was to make more of it in the first place. That is to say, you can penny pinch all you like but the thing that will make you the most money is simply getting a job that pays more. Simple enough, right? In any event, it’s nice to have been able to make bank here.
(Hey, Steve, do you pay taxes in China? Yes. Between 25 and 35%, depending on my monthly income. Unlike in Canada, the taxes are deducted at source so I don’t have to file a tax return every year. This happens to everybody, foreigner and Chinese alike.)
Now, if you were wondering if I have any qualms of working over here in China I’d say I’m becoming increasingly more uneasy given the current climate. I understand there are issues that pertain to the country and people themselves but there may be a point when it stops being a nation-specific issue and, well, a broader issue for the world. That being the case, although I don’t buy this “you don’t understand what’s going on” idea, I also can’t say I have any more solutions than the next person.
That brings me to what I’d like to accomplish within the next year and contract (provided it goes the full extent). I’ll keep studying Mandarin Chinese and aim to take the HSK 5 test next summer. In addition to my HSK studies, however, this fall and winter I’ll be looking to add a speaking component. That is, either hiring a teacher or finding a language exchange partner (the one with the company didn’t really work out very well as we were all too busy) and sitting down for half an hour or so and going through speaking exercises.
Next, I’ll be scaling down how much I work. I’m lucky that my schedule is pretty flexible so I can untick a few days when I want. The flip side of the coin, of course, is that the less I work the less I earn, so this does have to be done strategically.
However, with less time at work, I hope to buffer my income via other means, notably through trading. I’ve started to dabble in trading Chinese commodities (gold and silver) mainly because it’s easy to do on my phone and trades around the clock. This is a bit more risky than simply working more and can bring its own kind of stress, but at least the only person affected by it is me, not my clients, colleagues or others. I’m not saying I’m going full-on day trading, I’m just saying I’ll be looking to trade here in China in an attempt to cover both the unticked days and the difference in currency exchange between the RMB and Canadian dollar. (Currently it’s 1 CAD for 5.35 RMB, which is up from the 4.99 it was in the middle of 2018. It also means I make less as the CAD goes up.)
The next thing I’d like to work on is, and maybe this should come as no surprise, an exit plan. Given the work load we’ve had, most people I see leaving have been doing this job for 3-5 years. That means I’m roughly at the half way point of how long I could reasonably stay in this job and, possibly, in Beijing and China itself. It would be neat to see the 2022 Beijing Olympics but, at the same time, it can be difficult to plan that far out.
What about travel plans?
Not at the moment. I just came back from a two-week blitzkrieg of a trip through Taiwan and have no further travel plans. I have said before that in my third contract, as I scale back on my workload, I’ll be staying over and lingering a little bit longer in the cities we travel to, and I intend to do just that, possibly some times in the winter, but most likely next Spring and Summer. Other than that, nothing really is planned and I don’t even have a ticket back to Canada yet.
I see Winnipeg is getting snow already, hope everyone is staying warm! Our heat doesn’t turn on until November 15th!
So those are a few of the things I’ll be concentrating on over the next twelve months.