I met the woman who hired me today. At least, I met the person who emailed me a few months back offering me jobs and pestering me to sign the contract that will keep me here at Dalian Fisheries University until July 2007. I didn’t know anything about her until recently, except for the bland communiques we exchanged in trans-Pacific email.

The picture I had in my head was always some soulless bureaucrat, a Chinese version of a DMV worker, pecking Chinglish into an outdated computer and deciding on a whim who comes to Liaoning and who keeps looking.

I was a bit off. So, who is she?

She’s a kid, a student, 22 years old and going to school here in Dalian. Thin as a rail with a mouth full of braces, she hardly seems to resemble those emails I used to get telling me about the pitiful pay and odd hours I’d put up with for the chance to live and work in China. Really, she’s pretty nice. I might even stay with a relative of hers in Shenyang over the holiday next week (still haven’t officially decided where I’m going). She even helped me find the English training center where I might pick up a second job.

Which brings me to Part 2 of a strange day.

I found this brand new private English school on the recommendation of a guy I met at a bar last weekend. I’ve been passing the word around that I could use some extra work, since teaching right now takes up about 12 hours a week, and some extra cash wouldn’t hurt, either. I took along Will, the other foreign teacher here.

We walked into one of the nicest office buildings I’ve ever seen. Not in China, mind you. Anywhere. This place holds its own. I asked for the HR director–again, going off what the guy in the bar told me–and without a word she led us into her office.

She asked where we were from, and how we had heard about the place and how much time we wanted to work. She never asked if we had teaching experience, didn’t mention resumes or references (we had none with us; I expected only to check the place out) and there was no mention of teaching styles or philosophy. We had more questions than she did.

The HR director also said it wasn’t that important how much teachers talked, “mostly, we want teachers who are attractive.” I think that was a joke. Maybe it was a joke. Is that a joke? We laughed and hoped it was a joke.

It looks like I might pick up a few classes after the holiday. If I do two hours a day five days a week it will more than double my salary.

There’s no place like China.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 at 5:54 am and is filed under the Dalian life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.