Disney in Hangzhou got cleared out cos they didn't have correct visas for their teachers. Beware the mouse.

To make you guys feel better:

In the UK my teacher salary was £1791 per month (add a 0 for a rough conversion to RMB). After tax it was about £1500. I would normally work about 60 hours a week, many of which at home in my 'time off' so I had hardly any life outside work, which was miserable. That's £6.25 per hour (if we take a month as 4 weeks, of course its slightly longer). 63rmb per hour for an incredibly stressful and tiring job. Here at my training school I get paid about £1000 per month with no deductions, and get small quarterly bonuses and large yearly bonuses. I work about 20 hours a week, with a bit of extra time before and between classes, but its no more than 30 hours total in work. The job itself can be quite fun, and is not particularly stressful. It works out about 124rmb per hour of actual work not including bonuses. So, almost double the hourly pay, and my rent costs only 30% of what it did in England for an apartment twice as big and twice as nice. So, I feel better off mentally, physically, and financially. Of course, the school makes way more money out of me than I do them, but that is capitalism. The Chinese staff at our school is another story, they work longer hours for much less pay and have their pay docked at every opportunity. Not coincidentally, they have a high turnover rate and some of their English is pretty bad considering they are English teachers. The ones with good English leave fast once they realise how bad their deal is.

good point nnoble, China has more adults than kids, they just need to hire more teachers. I'm sure there would be takers - its a stable ish job and quite well respected, and though not highly paid officially, the hong baos must add up. If they say they don't have enough money, I would point them in the direction of the many HUGELY expensive infrastructure projects they are doing. Cancel just one, and that will pay for the extra teachers. There's no better investment than children's education.

Really? Iraq invasion was 2003! They were planning it before they even did Afghanistan? If what you say is true, no wonder you quit!

what's the difference between riding a domesticated horse and a domesticated elephant? If anything, the elephant is so much bigger and stronger than a horse so riding it is less of an issue, they probably barely feel a couple of medium sized humans