"And SO many other countries where english is an officiel language !!
And all the rest, so many europeens speak a stunning english !!
Do chinese schools understand that the world is not America !
No offence for the States, but is it really such a great model to follow !"

I think if you're going to start a thread about English competency, you should definitely run it through spell and grammar check before you press "Post"...especially if you're a non-native speaker. Or maybe I'm falling into a troll trap...

I'm an American who's been teaching in China for almost 5 years and I definitely think British English is easier for my students to grasp for two reasons: 1) The phonetics in BE are more similar to Chinese (for example, the final "r"), and 2) Most university students have been fed a steady diet of bastardized, yet British, English from their local middle school teachers on. UK education got here first, I'm guessing via Hong Kong in the early days of the grand opening.

I have no problem with job postings that are honest about who and what they want. If a school wants Brits, as an American, I'm not offended. I'd love to work in the EU, but I ain't got me no UK passport. But I am patient with love...

Sounds like you need to focus a bit before you start. What area of culture are you interested in? What hypotheses do you want to test? I say get very specific with a couple of questions you'd like answered, choose a cultural group in the area that's of greatest interest to you, find a translator, and head to a village. Because you're doing your first bit of field work and its for, I'm guessing, an undergraduate project, you won't raise too many hackles by walking around and acting like a tourist for a week if you're clever about data collection. If you seem too official and start asking the wrong folks a bunch of inappropriate questions, you'll find trouble. Being an anthropologist is learning to be savvy about what you can't and can get away with when dropping out of the sky and setting up camp with an obvious research paradigm tattooed on your forehead. Sorry if that sounded pejorative. Good luck!

Hi, David from Lost Garden here. AlexKMG said it best. If you look at the map on our website, you should be able to find it. From the Green Lake Hotel, if you leave from the main entrance, go left and then take the first alley to your left. Follow it as it veers right. Take a left at the next street (HuangGongDongJie). Walk up the hill and take your first left into a small alley. Right in front of you is a sign that says lost garden with a red arrow. Follow the arrow by veering left at the first small alley you come to. Walk 50 meters and you're there. If you miss that sign, you'll just walk around a small circle alley and come upon us anyway. Yes, we're a bit hard to find, but as the crow flies we're super close to Green Lake Park. Brunch starts at 11:30. See you there.

...just joking, of course.

My two cents... I love our little corner of free speech. Its my own fault for being irresistibly drawn to click on provocative forum posts, only to be sucked into the spiral of inane flaming and trolling. I think the level of moderation used now is perfectly OK. For me, the anonymous nature of this whole business is the biggest problem. Its too easy to just flame and troll without face to face accountability. So I think GK should only allow members to register if they submit copies of their passports and local residency permits. They should publish these documents on their personal profile, so we know exactly where to find them if they irk us with an opposing opinion.