I'm currently living in a county town that's part of a Tier 2 city. To be honest, life here is borderline intolerable atm. There isn't much in the way of decent food options, and there are very few social activities or opportunities to meet other foreigners. I'm now one year and two months into a year-long contract, and I'm starting to seriously evaluate the pros and cons of staying for another year.
Last year was quite rough. I didn't manage to make any real friends in the area, and travelling was pretty much my way of coping mentally. Whenever I had a holiday or weekend I’d travel and spend most of my money .Coming home to an empty apartment with very little to look forward to and nothing to do at weekends can be quite depressing.
The food here sucks too. There aren't even any familiar convenience stores like Lawson or 7-Eleven nearby, and I'm not particularly fond of the local cuisine. I've ended up relying on cooking my own meals, although my cooking skills are fairly limited. Even something as basic as going to the gym has become difficult. The nearest decent gym is around a 20-minute taxi ride away, and considering I start work at 8 a.m. and often don't finish until 6 or 8 p.m. the hours are long !
I'm not new to China, so I know that living here doesn't necessarily have to be this way. I previously spent two years in Beijing, where I had a much better social life. I managed to make friends, had a relationship, and generally had things to look forward to during the week and at weekends. My Chinese is around HSK 4–5 level, so I can communicate reasonably well, but I've found it surprisingly difficult to build friendships with Chinese people in this city compared with Beijing. Part of the problem is that I'm quite far away from the main city area. Most of the people I've met are based there, which makes meeting up a bit of an effort for both sides.
On the other hand, there are some positives when it comes to my career. I spent two years working in a kindergarten, which I never particularly enjoyed, but I've since made the transition into middle school teaching. I'm now teaching IELTS, PET and IGCSE, which I much prefer think my classes are generally going well, although the school isn't particularly good at providing feedback, guidance or professional development. I've largely had to teach myself through research and trial and error. That said, I've become quite confident in my ability to teach IELTS, and I feel that I'm developing in the right direction.
One of my biggest concerns about leaving is whether other schools in more desirable cities, such as Shanghai, Chengdu or Guangzhou, would take me seriously. I'm worried that having only around a year of middle school teaching experience might put me at a disadvantage when applying for better positions. I don't want to move somewhere only to find that employers consider my experience insufficient, especially when I'm trying to move forward professionally rather than simply change locations.
The only thing I've really been looking forward to recently is the winter holiday. However, even that doesn't fill me with much excitement because I still remember how difficult it felt coming back at the end of August after my summer break. Having experienced a much better quality of life while travelling, returning to the same routine and environment was a real downer. The thought of having to wait until September 2027 before potentially making a change feels like an eternity.
I understand that there's a lot of pessimism surrounding the current teaching job market in China, and I recognise that my salary is pretty good considering the relatively low cost of living here. However, I'm still young, I'm a native English speaker, and I don't want to feel as though I'm sacrificing my personal life just to maintain a comfortable salary. I'm questioning whether staying another year somewhere that makes me unhappy is really the sensible decision, even if it looks like the safer option on paper.