I couldn't (be bothered to look for, ahem) find the thread, but there was one recently where the poster was asking about salary levels for teachers here.
This link gives a lot of useful information, as well as other further links to other stuff ( A guide to getting married in China, anyone?)
Knowledge is power etc., etc!
I strongly question the cost of living being 1/10th to 1/4th of what it is in Australia. It depends on your city and your expectations in life. If you don't mind living in poverty in a very rural setting it can be very cheap. However, if you want to live a Western lifestyle, it can actually cost more than in Australia.
I live in a 3rd tier city in east China. I have some Western comforts in my life, but I am very frugal. I would say that the cost of living is no better than half that of Canada (similar to Australia).
Agree with Anonymous Coward, it is difficult to live here that cheaply. I like my home comforts a few times a week and they are considerably more expensive here. £7 for a box of cereal anyone?
Buying an apartment here is more expensive than buying an apartment in the west.
amjec, don't listen to them. You can live very cheaply here (in Kunming especially), and still live well. You can easily spend less than 20 RMB per day, and eat two full, big meals if you cook food from the market. Get an electric scooter, and your transportation costs are minimal. Rent a flat for relatively cheap. Live like a local. And I am not sure what Anonymous Coward means by "living in poverty," but I am living much better than I did in the USA, and spending about 20% of what I did there, even less.
Do not buy into the expat bubble world where you pay 50 kuai for Corn Flakes and Jiffy Peanut Butter at Carrefour, and where you spend 100-200 RMB per meal at Western restaurants every, and several hundred every night on the finest imported scotch at the Moondog. Do not eat Burger King and McDonald's and blow hundreds daily. You can live a very, very good life here for very, very cheap, IF you are willing to try to fit into China and experience the local life, instead of insisting on importing Europe or the Americas into China.
LOL, I should have stated:
''it is difficult to live here that cheaply, unless you are mmkunmingteacher'' :P
more appropriately, live like a particular tier of the locals... Moondog, Wenlin, BK, McDs, Starbucks, are filled with Chinese dropping more cash than many foreigners will ever earn. Nothing wrong with it, but its non-sensical to say that absurd spending and high-cost living is driven by the foreigners when its actually well-to-do locals who easily outnumber foreigners 10:1 and don't mind tossing away 300 Kuai on a 4 USD bottle of wine.
Articles with no published on date annoy me. They will just run the same article year after year.
atwillden, you have a good point.
mmkunmingteacher is basically right - what he says you can do, you can. But it's not necessary to go to extremes - and I don't think mmkunming is stating extremes - to live well. As for 'live like a Chinese', I don't think you have to make big distinctions between 'Chinese lifestyle' and '(nonspecific) 'western' lifestyle' - just realize that anybody can live on the local food, anybody can easily get a flat for under, say, US$200/month or less, and anybody can get used to this and be satisfied with it - if you can't, you're going to have to haul your own country over here lock stock and barrel before you are satisfied, and then you won't be. If you don't want to adapt or are really too weak, helpless, arrogant and/or stupid to do so, why come at all?
So f*cking take advantage of opportunities to GROW UP and don't be spoiled latter-day cultural colonialists whose efforts are all directed towards padding their cells and 'getting ahead (of other people)' in whatever direction you & they, everywhere, have been indoctrinated into thinking is 'ahead'.
