What's it like teaching and living in Beijing, China?
By Hannu Berghäll

Location: Beijing, China
Date: December 23, 2000

Yes, some of you might be wondering, and I'll try to describe what's happening in my life here...

Since about a month and a half I have been teaching English here in Beijing. My intention was initially to go from China to Korea, to do the teaching there (making more money), but things and opportunities change quickly when you're on the road......

Suddenly I had this phone number in my hand, given to me by someone who got it from somewhere, and it was to this school that was looking for English teachers. Someone else said "come on, why not try instead of going to Korea and found out there?", and so I phoned. I told the guy in the phone I am not a native English speaker, but he said "well, I can't hear the difference", and so we arranged for a meeting...

The next few days I got an introduction to this particular school's curriculum and teachers' books and general layout and methods. I was supposed to be teaching 3 hours every evening, Sunday to Thursday, and I calculated that this would be enough to sustain my life here, but not to get rich on. But what the heck, I'd do it for the experience, I thought...

I extended my 3-month tourist visa with another month, paying 13$ for this, and then I waited a couple of weeks more for the new term and my teaching to start. Terms run 6 times 35 days a year, going from level 1 to 6, with about a week's break in between terms, and also breaks for Christmas/New Year's, for Chinese New Year coming up at the end of January, and various other holidays of about 8-10 days length... Anyway, I was eagerly awaiting what was to come, meanwhile forking out money from my own pocket on punk/rock concerts and beer and spending time with friends Neal and Joe; fellow travellers that had ended up in Beijing after long travels as well, and who were supposed to start teaching here too, although at other schools than mine...

Comes the 13th of November and my boss tells me I can only teach 2 hours every afternoon, and that it is in a public school for 16-year olds. Only 160 Yuan a day (20$), and I start wonder what the f*** this was? Turns out enrollment has been low for the winter term, and I start to feel pissed off. Now I will have to pay 100-200$ from my own pocket every month just for the benefit of staying and teaching...

First week with the 16-year olds is great, I like them and they seem to like me. The books and curriculum we have to follow is dead boring, with me reading out sentences for them and they repeating either in chorus or individually, but hey, that's apparently the way kids are taught here in China. And I can't change the curriculum, or I'd be sacked. So I do my job but boredom quickly comes into it. The kids hate the books as well, they repeat after me but clearly take advantage of me not being (able to be) as strict as their Chinese teachers. Instead of using their brains to figure out from the cues given by me how to reply, they read out loud from their books although I tell them after a few examples of an exercise that they should now close their books. They also talk in class, eat snacks and therefore aren't able to answer pronouncing the words properly. Some of them understand what it's all about, others don't even understand what I say to them even when I speak very slowly word by word, and clearly find the lessons boring and totally uninteresting... I feel more and more pissed of with the job, and since my visa would run out on the 11th of December I thought "that's it, I'm gonna leave for god knows where. I'm a traveller, not a teacher, and, ah... f*** it - just do it! Get back on the road Hannu!"...

Then one day my boss calls me to my hotel where I am staying, and says that from that day on I can start teaching adults at their own school, 3 hours every evening Sundau to Thursday. OK, a bit of more income and I still had the opportunity to say "Hey, I'm outta here!" after a week of trial what it would be like teaching adults - people that are motivated, that have chosen themselves to come and learn English.

And it turns out I love it! The adult classes are all great, they try hard to struggle through the boring books (outdated since the 70s if not before then, with words like "phonograph" and "record cabinet" and American expressions such as "Boy am I hungry!" to be learnt by new beginners!), and if there is time left after that we talk about various things for the remaining time. China, travel, relationships, Christmas traditions in the west, Sweden - these are some subjects that have come up. It took me only a week to decide that I wanted to stay in Beijing teaching, and so on slightly dubious ways I arranged for a 6 month visa to be put into my passport. It's a guy that charges you 300$ for this, he takes your passport for 2 weeks, and when you get it back the visa is there. There are no files on you at the police office, but the stamp is real, and so now I have a flashy business visa until the 11th of June next year in my passport. Everything is possible in entrepreneuring China...

It took less than 2 weeks of teaching adults before they invited me out for a dinner. Very nice restaurant, great food, we sat in a private room with a karaoke TV and so I was forced to sing ABBA's "Dancing Queen". Well, anything for a laugh... It was a great evening, and the students all want me to teach them up until level 6 (they are now on level 1). I can't promise it, but if it continues this well and life in Beijing is this great in a few more months...? Who knows where I might end up?

My greatest sorrow is the 16-year olds in the afternoons, students and classes no other teacher wants to touch. I'm having a hard time, but over the last week or so I have become VERY strict when it comes to actually closing the books, and also the exercises - no matter how boring they are - now demands them to think more and more by themselves how the cues are to be put together into sentences that make sense. These students had an exam just 2 weeks into me teaching them (they had started with another teacher first, but he had given up on them). Out of 47 students 17 failed - the exam was to hold a 5 minute conversation with a friend, the dialogue containing certain words and grammatic things. Then politics came into it all: turns out I have failed too many; I had followed the scoring sheet and according to that these 17 had failed, but in order for "my" language institute to keep the contract with the public school where I go Monday to Friday, I could only allow 5 to fail. OK, so they had re-exams a few weeks later. They had all borrowed the exam dialogues from their friends that had passed a few weeks before, and learnt them by heart, and so everyone passed according to getting minimum 60 points out of 100. What I did then is that I gathered all 17 that made the exams again in the classroom a week after the exams, told each and every one what their specific problem is - "pronunciation but I understand you are really trying", "Skipping class going playing pool instead", "talking in class", "skipping the listening lab so you don't know how to pronounce the words in the exercises", "Not studying exercises at home the evening before so that when you come to class you have no idea of how to do them and class drags on for over 50 minutes" - etc., etc... THEN, after 10-15 minutes of preaching, I told them that they had all passed... Passing exams is the only thing they care about in China; to actually learn is not that important. BUT: They have also all been told that exams for level 2 (as they all now study) comes in just 2 more weeks of studying, and those exams require them to speak English already. They are all but 1-2 in every class gonna fail that test...

Ah well, now I don't have to teach them again until February. They get a long break over Christmas, New Year's and Chinese New Year... What happens with the poor bastards after that I don't give a s*** about. Someone else will have to take over if they are supposed to be allowed to pass on to level 3; my morals just can't take that...

The adults will start again on 2nd of January, though, and that I am looking forward to. This last week they have been flooding me with gifts, and I have given them various things as well, such as Swedish ginger biscuits that my mother sent to me, or showing them a chocolate Advent calendar a friend in the States sent me, thus explaining what an Advent calendar is and being able to offer them a piece of chocolate each, or offering them Swedish hard rye-bread that was also sent to me by my parents, and giving them a booklet each that I got from the Swedish embassy; a booklet in Chinese about Sweden and Swedish culture. They like me, I like them, each lesson takes 60 minutes instead of stipulated 50 with a 10 minute break for me in between, and the last evening lesson usually drags on until 21.40 or 21.50; thus being 20-30 minutes longer then I'm paid for. But what the heck; I like to talk with them and they like to talk with me!

Thursday I was paid and I had done better then I expected myself. After taxes (I work illegally but pay tax!), I got 8407 Yuan; about 1000$ or 10.000 Swedish krona. This, plus 1000Yuan/125$/1200 SEK that I have made already and been paid for already for some free talks I have hold for 17-year olds in another public school for 4 Saturdays now, makes the pay here very good. But January will be less though, with thi\s term finishing around 10th of January, and then having a week's break, before the new term barely starts and is then halted for 10 days because of Chinese New Year coming up 24th of January... Ah well, I will survive, as the song goes...

These free talks on Saturdays, by the way, have been quite fun. I come for 2 times 55 minutes to talk with fairly well speaking 17-year olds about anything they and me want to talk about. Great. So far we have discussed what they want to be, what do you need to do back home before you go travelling (i.e. what kind of bag, money passport, what items to bring along...), and about music. It's fun. I brought my Chinese punk-CDs and tapes and asked them to translate the lyrics for me. I brought photos from my travels and showed them...

But now it's Christmas break for me. I have a ticket to Shanghai for the 18 o'clock train tonight, 4 hours from now, and I will go there to meet a friend who also arrives there tomorrow morning. Then I'm back here in Beijing for new years. Firecrackers have been forbidden here for New Year's, in an attempt to clean up the air for Beijing's bid for the 2008 Olympics. Still, there will be a party somewhere in town...

Parties, yeah... Maybe a bit about that scene here too. Beijing is actually not a bad scene at all when it comes to going out and enjoying a drink or two, for concerts and all kinds of events. It's expensive though; a beer in a kiosk costing 2 Yuan but a pint in a western oriented bar costing 35, but... There is quite a few expats here, and also quite a few nuevo riche Chinese.

I still live in a dorm in a hotel in southern part of Beijing, but since it's low season now and very few tourists come here, I'm alone in it quite often. And who minds the company of travellers that cane tell you about what life is like out on the road? There is not always privacy, I have my stuff in an ever bigger messy heap on the floor - the dorm is BIG - but I prefer to stay there anyway. My language institute could offer me an apartment to share with another teacher colleague (and thereby being able to cut down my salary?) , but after having met some of my colleagues I have decided to stay away from many of them as much as possible. One guy is DEAD boring, another one is religious, another one that I haven't actually met but was told about by my evening students (who had him for their first week) is apparently teaching as a robot, never smiling and strictly holding 50 minutes exactly lessons - "You have a question? Sorry, time's up - take it up tomorrow". So many people/teachers that I wonder about why they are here? To survive themselves only, or because they also like teaching? Or have they no opportunity to go back to their respective home countries? God knows. For me this is just temporarily, be it for a few more weeks or for a few more years... But at the moment life is good, money is plenty, nightlife shakes, beer tastes well, Beijing rocks with concerts and punk, my very good traveller friend Joe is here in Beijing too lighting up my social life; in general - Life is wonderful and I try to live it fully!!!

Hannu

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