Another Update,

Where to start, a lot has happened: some good and some bad.

Firstly our little kitten Mao Mao died last Saturday. He had been sick for a while, but he wasn’t in any pain as far as we could tell. We gave him a good home and it was much better than the life that he would have had living in the adoption home. I miss him and occasionally I see something that reminds me of him, a particular place he would sit, or something he would play with. He was our little boy.

So that was the bad news, now for the good news…we have a cat. Our Ayi (maid) saw how sad we were and got us a new cat. She has white fur (just like my old cat back home, Mindy) but it’s short. She has yellow/greenish eyes and her name is Mi Mi. Ayi got her from a breeder friend that she has. But I haven’t even got to the good bit yet. She cooks for us on Thursday so she brought the cat over on Thursday. She put him of the couch, went about her cooking and cleaning, then when she went to give him some food, she couldn’t find him. When I got home she was frantic speaking really quickly in Chinese (which I don’t understand) and looking really worried. It turns out that the cat had gone missing. She didn’t know where the cat was – I helped her look everywhere, but I couldn’t find the cat anywhere either.

So to cut a long story short, the following day (24hrs later) when I got home from school – we found out that the cat was stuck in part of the wall. We had to literally pull the fake fireplace (it’s a one piece and just plastered to the wall after building) away from the wall to rescue the cat. She had been stuck in a space about 20cm x 30cm x 1m high for about 24 hours. It was tall, but not even wide enough for her to lay down. She came out very scared and timid, and also grey from the dust. She’s settled in okay now though. It’s nice to have a cat in the house again.

Okay in other news…We’ve made some new friends, 3 Canadian girls who live in YiZhuang also. They teach at the local kindergarten. They’re cool girls, and our ageish, which we love because we have really been lacking contact with people our age. They have been coming to church with us and last week we started up our own cell group in YiZhuang. We have it on Wednesday night. First we go out for dinner together, then we join together (either their place or ours) for Bible study, Worship and Prayer. It’s awesome getting to fellowship together and grow in God. So far we have about 5 to 10 attendees.

Church is good. We have regularly been attending BICF every Sunday morning. It’s cool being apart of a Multicultural congregation, however it’s not like Citipointe. I miss COC, it was my home for sooooooo long. I had, and still have, many friends their. But I especially miss Citikids. To all my Citikids people reading this…I love you and I hope everything is going GREAT!!! We have been asked to join the children’s church program over here, but Nat and I have decided to have a break for a while-besides the cell group is enough for now.

The weather is getting heaps colder now, the wind is icy but the sky is blue. It’s deceiving when you look out the window after a shower – you think wow it’s gonna be a beautiful day, but then you see the trees shaking violently and you know otherwise. Today Nat and I bought hooded Billabong jackets, we paid $27 AUD in total for both. I also got a pair of Louis Viton Sunglasses for $4.50 AUD.

It’s Autumn over here something that I’m not used to living in Brisbane (The Summer State). The leaves have been changing colour; from green to yellow, now red and brown. But with the windy weather over the weekend, I think all of the leaves will be on the ground tomorrow. We have been wearing our jackets (double lined) with gloves and beanies (especially at night). I have become a fan of my scarf collection even more and occasionally been adding to it.

So what else to tell you??? Oh I saw the strangest thing on the way to school the other morning. If I was the woman who did this, I’d be hard-pressed to come up with an excuse to tell my husband. Somehow a lady had managed to drive her car up onto the centre guard rail. She must have been going really fast because she hadn’t really done much damage to the front end, just somehow got it airborne and ended up in a 45 degree angle form the road. I managed to get an AWESOME photo from my camera phone…It’s one of those times when you think ‘Only in China’.

And lastly (mainly for the guys) there was A1 car racing in Beijing over the weekend – but not just in Beijing in YiZhuang about 3 blocks from our apartment. It was amazing when we found out. A1 is similar to F1 but they race in countries, not in car makes and models. We didn’t hear them much though as we weren’t home much over the weekend.

Well that’s all from me for now. Praying for you all regularly, and I hope that everything is fine in the land down under.

Lots and lots of Love from Sheree, Nat and Mi Mi xxx

Introduction

So you want to learn Mandarin, teach English and live China? Well I’ve only been in China for two months and I’m definitely not an expert but before I moved to China I had six months to kill so I spent that time surfing the internet and finding everything I could about China. It still didn’t prepare me for what it’s really like over here but it was better than nothing. So I figured I’d add to the growing body of knowledge and add my two cents.

The rest of this document is divided into three main sections.

• The program I am using to learn Mandarin and how I developed it.
• Some questions you really need to answer before you move over to China.
• Some resources I found while I was in Australia.

I hope you enjoy reading this document and get something out of it.

Nathaniel’s Mandarin Program

Now before I take too much credit for the method I’m using to learn Mandarin I have to give credit to Bill Handley’s book Fast Easy Way to Learn a Language which is the basis for how I am learning Mandarin. I don’t think I can recommend his book highly enough. For those of you that can’t get access to it here are the main points I got out of it.

• Use multiple resources / techniques.
• Learn in two stages.
  • Passive – Just try to learn stuff as quickly as possible. It doesn’t matter if you fully understand it or not.
  • Active – This should be roughly a week to a month behind the passive stage. Now go over the material again and make sure you really understand what’s going on.

If you read his book the first thing you’ll probably notice is that I’m not using all of the techniques that he recommended. The ones I’ve listed are the ones that work for me. Everyone learns differently so try all of them and see which ones work for you.

At the moment there are four main things that I am doing to learn Mandarin:

1. A Mandarin course.
2. Pimsleur’s Mandarin Chinese course.
3. Living Language’s “Ultimate Mandarin Chinese Beginner-Intermediate” text book.
4. Pleco Dict on my PDA and ZDT on my computer.

The Mandarin course is keeping me motivated and at the moment they are doing a great job at teaching me new concepts at a fairly fast pace. Before I started the course I was learning Mandarin by myself and it was really too easy to procrastinate. The fact that I can’t procrastinate anymore is worth the price of the course but to be honest I’ve been really impressed with them so far.

Pimsleur’s is an audio only course which means you can do it virtually anywhere. The whole course is broken up into half hour lessons which are fairly easy to digest. The thing that really makes this course stand out and makes learning Mandarin easy is that each lesson only introduces one or two concepts so I’ve never felt lost or out of my depth. I’ve down a couple of lessons twice just to make sure I knew I understood everything but I always felt that I was in control and learning something. The problem with an audio course like this is that if you only use it and nothing else you’ll end up with a fairly small vocabulary.

It took me about a month to pick a textbook. The textbook I ended up picking was the Ultimate Mandarin Chinese Beginner-Intermediate by Living Language. Lots of other people online recommended it and it also comes with audio CDs to help with pronunciation. The textbook is easy to read and is well laid out but if you are planning on doing classes or having a private tutor then the audio CDs became a bit of a mute point and you may as well save some money and buy one of the cheap Chinese textbooks.

Pleoc Dict and ZDT are very similar. Here are the features they will have in common once Pleco Dict version 2 comes out:

• Chinese -> English dictionary
• English -> Chinese dictionary
• Display the stroke order of the Chinese characters
• Teach Chinese using Flash cards.
• Say the Chinese word

While they both do the same basic functions there are a couple of major differences.

• Pleco Dict is on Pocket PC and Palm (PDAs – which you can carry around)
• Pleco Dict is commercial and costs money.
• Pleco Dict has access to commercial dictionaries which are much better than the free ones.
• Pleco Dict has character recognition.
• ZDT runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X (Computers – which you can’t carry around)
• ZDT is Open Source and Free.
• ZDT only has access to free dictionaries which are mainly designed for Chinese -> English not English -> Chinese.

I personally use both of them. ZDT on my computer and Pleco Dict on my Treo 650 which is a PDA phone. If you have the money buy Pleco Dict. If you don’t ZDT is the next best thing.

Moving to China

Do you really want China?

First of all what you need to figure out is do you really want to go to China? If you just want to teach English and travel then the Middle East is an option that pays really well at the moment. If the Middle East sends shivers up your spine then you might prefer Japan which isn’t a developing country. I know people who have taught in both of these countries and they both loved it. If you look around you will be able to find lots of countries that are looking for English teachers so don’t think that China is the only country where you can teach English.

So why did I choose China? Well, the thing that attracted me to China was the fact that China is an amazing country with a fairly low cost of living. The clincher for me was that I want to learn Mandarin so that made China a fairly obvious choice.

Do you really want to learn Mandarin?

Do you really want to put in the time and effort that is required to learn Mandarin or do you just want to experience China and have a good time? Why is this an issue? Well there are lots of different dialects in China and while all schools are taught in Mandarin it doesn’t mean that it is the default language for that town or city. A general rule of thumb is that the further away you go from Beijing the higher the chances are that you’ll get a city / town where the dialect differs significantly from Mandarin. So if your serious about learning standard Mandarin then you’ll want to limit yourself to towns and cities as close to Beijing as possible. If Mandarin isn’t your top priority then it doesn’t matter where you decide to live. You can still learn Mandarin you’ll just need to adapt it to the local dialect which you will probably learn better than standard Mandarin.

Let’s take a short break and talk about dialects. The Chinese written language is the same across the whole country but almost every single city seems to have a slightly different dialect. Some of the dialects are very similar. Think of the difference between the British accent and the American accent. That being said the two main dialects are Mandarin and Cantonese which are more like different languages. In theory all kids are now taught in Mandarin and learn English so as time goes on everyone will be able to speak Mandarin. If you decide to live in a town that has a dialect that is different from Mandarin you’ll have to choose what is more important. Speaking to the people around you now and correcting your Mandarin later on or learning standard Mandarin now and get frustrated with the people around you.

Do you want a city or a town?

So do you want cheaper living expenses and a more authentic Chinese experience or all the luxuries of home? If you decided to living in a city or town that isn’t very touristy then you’ll find it very hard to find western goods like cheese, custard, spray on deodorant etc. That being said it will generally be a lot cheaper simply because it isn’t touristy so you’ll get local prices. In a large city like Beijing they have import stores all over the place which carry goods from Europe, America, Australia and virtually everywhere else as well. That means that there is a fairly good chance that you’ll actually have more choice in Beijing than you did back home. The down side is that it’s a lot more expensive that the smaller cities and towns but it is still probably be cheaper than what you are use to. It really comes down to a personal choice and what you get offered.

What’s the deal with Visas?

I wasn’t sure if I should talk about visas because the information is slightly different for every country and it’s likely to change. If you need reliable information please go to a Chinese consulate or travel agent in your country. The reason why I finally decided to include this section was because it was really hard to find any information about visas at all. If the information gets to out of date I’ll probably cut this section out.

Most people really only care about four of the visas.

• F – Tourist visa. A three month visa that doesn’t let you work but does let you study. You can apply for an extension while you are in China that will last for another three months. If you just want to visit China then this is the visa to get.
• L – Long Tourist visa. To get this visa you generally need to have a letter from someone in China inviting you. This visa seems to be designed for people that have come to China for a specific reason that isn’t working or studying. I have heard of spouses getting this visa when they want to live in China but not work in China or become a Chinese resident. Unless you’re a special case you’ll generally want to avoid this visa because it’s a lot of effort.
• X – A student visa. You need to have an invitation from a school that can legally invite students. The visa lasts as long as you are a student but you can’t get a job with this visa.
• Z – A working visa. You need to have an invitation from company that can legally employ foreigners. You are also suppose to have a degree but this requirement isn’t always enforced. If you can get this visa then it’s the one to get. You can work, study and do virtually anything with it. Your spouse automatically gets a Z visa so they can work in China as well if they want to.

The Chinese government is very bureaucratic and will often give you conflicting information. If your local Chinese consulate tells you one thing and the Chinese people tell you something else listen to the consulate in your country. They seem to know more about Chinese policies than the Chinese people in China do.

It sometimes seems like the entire country is one big government department and if everything was done the correct way then nothing would ever get done. That means that people often have to work around the system. So people often come to China on an F visa and then get it turned into an X visa or a Z visa after they’ve arrived which is perfectly legal. The problem is lots of Chinese people are desperate and will make promises that they can’t keep so if you can get a Z visa or X visa before you leave your country it will make your life a lot easier. If you can’t get a Z visa or X visa before you leave make sure you talk to some current or previous employees to make sure you’re not being taken for a ride and that the employer can actually get you the correct visa after you’ve arrived. If you look on some of the Chinese forums you will find lots of horror stories from people that went over based on false promises.

Preparation

The amount of preparation you have to do before you move to China depends upon what your goals are in China. If you only want to visit it for a couple of months like an extended holiday then you could just jump on a plane and fly over once you have a job lined up. If you are planning on staying for any serious period of time then I’d recommend that you do either a TESOL or TEFL course. While they aren’t entirely required it will make it a lot easier for you to teach English and you’ll generally get paid better as well. The course is fairly cheap and it comes in many different shapes and sizes. I’d recommend doing either the four week intensive or the three month part time course. I haven’t heard anything good about the weekend courses that let you do the work at home so I can’t recommend them. A good course will give you lots of practical experience so try to have a look at the course outline before you sign up. Refuge and immigrant centers are a good place to start because they generally teach English so they’ll generally have first hand experience with the TESOL or TEFL courses around.

You’ll also want to bring over some spending money as most schools only pay monthly after you’ve already done the work. If (your) you’re planning on staying for a while then you might want to bring over a little extra to setup your new home.

Which Job?

Before you even start looking for a job you need to decide if you want to work for a private school or a public school. Private schools promise a lot more than public schools but don’t always live up to their promises and they often use people whereas public pays less but has a lot less demands. If you look online you can find lots of horror stories from people who have accepted jobs with private schools without doing their homework first. My recommendation is apply for a number of jobs but before you accept any of them talk to a current or previous foreign employee and find out what they’re like as an employer. If they won’t let you talk to a current or previous foreign employee then that’s a really bad sign and proceed with caution.

It’s generally easier to get a job in the country than it is in one of the major cities so if you’re not having much luck try looking a little further out. Be aware that China really blows everything out of proportion. Generally towns that are looking for English teachers are fairly large but that doesn’t really mean that much. In China you can have a small town with between a couple of million residents but no city center, no night life, no malls and no import stores because it’s too small to be a city. Basically don’t just go by the population of the city and assume it will be like a western city.

Resources

Websites

• Chinese Forums
  • Best of Chinese Study Tools
  • The Story of my Learning Chinese (Someone else)
• That’s Beijing
• Popjisyo
• Dave’s ESL Cafe
• Foreign Service Institute Language Courses
  
• Guide to learn languages
• Language Learning Advisor
  

Books

• Bill Handley: Fast Easy Way to Learn a Language
• Living Language: Ultimate Mandarin Chinese Beginner-Intermediate

Software

• ZDT
• Pleco Dict

Schools

• Sea English Academy
• Bridge School

Recommendations

First of all I’m impressed that you got this far. Congratulations! I left my recommendations till last because I don’t know anything about you and I personally don’t feel that I’m qualified to give you life changing advice. That being said people always want advice so here’s my advice to the people that want to move to China, learn Mandarin and teach English while you’re there/here:

1. Read “Fast Easy Way to Learn a Language” and start creating your own language program.
2. If you’re not in China and don’t have access to Chinese lessons then get a copy of Pimsleur’s Chinese Mandarin course and work through all 90 lessons.
3. If you want to learn Characters and build up your vocabulary then either get some some Chinese flash cards or if you can afford it get a PDA (second hand is ok) and buy Pleco Dict. Also download ZDT and install it on your computer along with the extra dictionary and audio plugin.
4. Do a TESOL/TEFL course. It’s should only be a four week intensive. Don’t do a weekend course, you will be cheating yourself.
5. Check out some of the forums and find out where you’d like to go.
6. Apply for a number of jobs and make sure you contact current employees. Find out if the company will sponsor you to get a Z visa.
7. If possible it’s nice to have a bit of extra spending money since it really goes a long way in China.
8. Have fun. Remember: It’s an adventure!!

Hi everyone,

We have more or less settled in now. There haven’t been any major changes since the last update but we are slowly starting to notice more subtle difference between China and Australia. One of the things that I have noticed is how quickly things change over here. In Australia you expect change but lots of the change is just superficial like the displays at the end of aisles but when change eventually happens they try to make all the changes at once. When we arrived I noticed that there was a lot of renovation going on but I assumed it was just that time of year. Well it’s been almost two months and  the changes are still happening. For example our local supermarket has had three major renevations since we got here. They use to have live fish, now have a fresh roast meat section instead. The entrance has been opened up to make it easier to navigate and the and wine section has been moved to make it more prominate. As well as changing the layout of the store they rearanged half good on the selves. Another good example is the area around Bridge School (where I learn Mandarin). From that building we can see about 10 different construction sites. From what I’ve seen it looks like the entire city is being rebuilt. In Australia the change always felt controlled things so that people wouldn’t notice it whereas over here things seem to be chaning so fast that you never know what’s going to change next. We’re still getting use to how quickly things change over here and how quickly people adjust to it as if that’s the way it always was.

The last couple of days have been sad because our cat got a chest infection and almost died on Saturday. Fortunately the medicine worked and he is recovering slowly. When we went to the vet we realised how much of a blessing it was that our next door neighbour spoke Chinese. She came with us and was able to tell the vet what was wrong and answer the questions he asked. I don’t know what we would have done without her. On a slightly more humours note Mao’s fur has finally grown back. When we bought him they had trimmed his fur so he looked like a short haired cat. His face is now super chuby. He looks so cute.

We’re still trying to get our finances under control. Last week we had some expenses that we hadn’t accounted for so we went over budget. We made the most of our first pay and bought some DVDs because we heard that they were cracking down on the DVD stores. We also end up going in with the other teachers and getting Satelite TV which has been nice. There is an Australian channel which has Neighbours, Get Away and a whole bunch of other Australian shows which is nice when we get a bit home sick. We should be fine once our next pay check arrives.

I’ve been going to Mandarin classes at Bridge School for a little while now. It’s going well so fay and I’m starting to pick up a a few Mandarin words in general conversation. The best thing about going to classes is getting to meet new people and getting out of the house. I was starting to get a bit lonely staying at home by myself everyday. I’ve also started tutoring after school at Yew Chung to earn a little bit of pocket money. I’m enjoying the tutoring and I’m also enjoying being able to ride the bus home with Sheree afterwards.

We got an Ayi (cleaner/maid) last week and so far she is doing a really good job. The house looks great and she is a really good cook. We asked her to cook for 4 so we could freeze the left overs for lunches and so far we’ve liked everything she’s made except for one of the cold dishes – it seemed like pickled cabbage with chilly.

We’ve been trying new food ocassionally and the best thing we’ve found so far has to be peanut butter milkshakes. I never would have thought of it but they taste great. I’ve found almost of my favorite foods over here although some of them taste slightly different. The only thing I haven’t been able to find so far is a custard tarts. One of the students at Bridge School said she’d seen one somewhere so my quest may soon be over.

One of the things that confused us initally was the used by dates on food. Over here they put the manufactured date on the food instead of the expiration date. Can you imagine looking on the shelf and finding out that that all the food was expired. We were frantically looking for food that hadn’t been manufactured yet and then we figured it out.

We have had been trying all the fast food joints that exist in Australia and China and here what we think of them so far. I’ve also included a rough rating.

• Subway (F) just isn’t the same, the food just doesn’t taste the same, the cheese slices are smaller and it tastes like they’ve cut too many corners.
• KFC (B+) is good but they have fries instead of chips which was one of the best things about it in Australia. They also server corn as a health alternative instead of fries. The menu is also a bit smaller than Australia.
• Pizza Hut (A) is impressive because overhere they are still a restaurant and not fast food. The menu was large and the pizza was great even if it was the most expensive fast food we’ve had.
• Dominos (A) is much more like an Australian dominos compaired to Pizza Hut. The pizzas are actually better than the Australian ones but they don’t have the same varity.
• MacDonalds (A) is just as good as Australia. Probably one of the cheapest fast food outlets over here and they are always busy. They don’t have McCafe or the same selection of coffee.

Some other quick points.

• Sheree hurt her back last week and we had to go to the hospital. Fortunately it was 100% covered by her health insurance which was a relief.
• There are a lot less bugs in China than Australia and all the ones we have seen have been fairly small.
• Sheree has found Avon and Tupperware over here. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad yet
• Sheree also found an art store and has been doing lots of paintings to give as gifts to brighten up the dull walls of the apartments.

We’d really like to hear what’s going on in your lives so if you have a moment it would be great if you could send us a letter or email.

Nathaniel, Sheree and Mao.