So true, fortunately the public transportation in Guangzhou is convenient, most of the time I don't have to deal with taxi

Well if you wanna live in the city center, I lived in a neighborhood near yangji metro station called yangji cun. It’s a good neighborhood with my foreigners and it’s close to all the cool city center bars. Places there range from 4000-7000 rmb per month depending how many bedrooms. If you go outside the city like panyu (south) or huadu (north) you can get a much bigger place for around 2000 or 3000. But the commute is longer. I started in panyu and eventually moved to the city when I got more money.

@@StupendousHillis Thanks for the information I’m also working on my Masters degree do you recommend any VPN to use . Hope you don’t mind me bothering you as I get closer oh and adapters for the apartments ?

@@kourtneywade4599 if you’re american, they use the same plugs as we do for electrical sockets but the voltage is higher or just unregulated sometimes so you may want an adapter with a surge protector (but I just used a regular one and it was mostly fine). They only have the two prongs tho so they don’t have the bottom third prong like some plugs in the US need. Those are easy to buy in China. As for the VPN, Astrill is the best but you have to pay for it. It’s about 120 a year which is pretty expensive but in my experience it is by FAR the best one and totally worth it. You can use Netflix and other stuff that doesn’t work on some VPNs. The other thing is you need a VPN to go on their site if you’re in China already so I recommend getting it before you go. Express is also good and a bit cheaper, like 70 USD a year but it was kinda hit and miss sometimes which can be super annoying when it’s not working when u need it to. Astrill is super reliable. Also there’s some people in China that sell vpn routers which are also really nice. You just log into that wifi and it make a vpn for everything connected to it and you don’t have to turn it on and off. It costs about 100 bucks for a year plus a little more for the router itself

@@StupendousHillis Thank you so much for the information definitely will look into the VPN and the router . Thank you again

dat sounds a lot like instagram and facebook haha

haha thank you! yes i agree about the spitting thing. China has changed from mostly a rural community to one of the most cutting edge technological countries in the world in the span of people's lifetimes. And there are still lots of small towns that are like "third world" countries in some ways. The taxi thing still happened before Covid, but thank god for Didi! That made the problem so much better haha. And I used to live in Panyu but worked in the city so a lot of times it was just that the driver didnt want to go that far, and I know many Chinese people probably got the same treatment for that reason.

yeah, i understand that the country is advancing and developing faster than the people can catch up with. But I certainly agree that the kids of today will grow up with a better understanding of the modern society they live in

HAHA i agree! It is kinda nice to not have to worry about people being super up tight about social rules like that. I smoke, so I spit from time to time too. I just try to do it in the bushes or somewhere where people arent walking. It was super shocking when I first got there and hearing someone hawk a huge loogie, and spit it right on the sidewalk in front of them haha but i got used to it

I have not, but there's tons of schools big and small

Of course! Ask away

@@StupendousHillis I have some offers from both teaching centers and schools. The schools are M-F and have partially paid summer/winter but pay less than the teaching centers, which have no summer/winter vacation and I work on weekends. What's your advice for choosing?

@@Guysterbro well I guess it depends on the school. I worked at a training center most of my time there. It was weekday evenings and all day Saturday Sunday. With Monday and Tuesday as a day off. We had about two weeks for summer and two weeks for spring festival (winter) these were paid but we had to do special summer and winter classes for two weeks straight right before each break so those days off that we should have had were added to the break time. I would say, if the money is just a little bit less, you might like the regular Monday - Friday schedule better and then you’re free to pick up part time shifts at training centers around the city in the evenings and weekends if you want to make more money. There’s ALWAYS schools that need part time teachers so you can easily find that to make up the difference in pay if you choose to. Those part time jobs are also more flexible if you want to take time off from them because all they can do is just not pay you your hourly for that day, where if you try to take off work from your contracted job, sometimes they’ll take more money than the hourly rate as a way to deter you from taking extra days off. Because of the pandemic, schools really need teachers so you should be able to get a good job and a good salary. In conclusion, I think having better holidays and the weekends off is worth getting a bit less base pay, and you can always do more part time classes to make up the difference.

@@StupendousHillis Thank you so much for helping out! A video idea for you is to go over the cost of living in China, I would definitely watch.

some of them! but idk if i can send them all

Hhah yeah I agree. Overall it’s an awesome place. I miss it a ton now that I’m back home in America

I barely know a few phrases in Cantonese. I learned more mandarin because it’s useable all over China. But Cantonese is more fun to speak! Lol

什么?

hahahah idk! but ive seen some like that in some places in the countryside

Good question! Yes and no. Sadly non native speakers cannot get a work visa to teach English in Guangzhou. So it’s not strictly legal, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Some companies need teachers so badly they will still hire a non native speaker if their English is good enough and they look the part. But the risk is that the police sometimes raid schools and will check teachers passports and could deport someone if they don’t have a work visa. Bigger companies might be able to pay off the police to leave them alone, but it really just depends. I know someone who’s an amazing English teacher with a masters degree in teaching English, but they can’t get the work visa in GZ because they aren’t a native speaker. That being said, in the smaller cities around guangzhou, I’ve heard it’s ok to get the work visa without being a native speaker. Like in foshan or dongguan. Which are both super close and are cool cities in their own right. Mainly, getting to China is the most important thing for getting a job there. Once you’re there, you can always find teaching jobs. There’s so much demand and simply not enough supply of foreign teachers. But companies hiring from outside China will ALWAYS try to get people who can get a work visa. PS I’m not advocating for breaking the law. Just stating what I know. Best bet would shoot for a smaller city that doesn’t care as much about native speakers. I’m pretty sure the visa rules are based on region cities.

I think it’s because it’s kinda the international language and is great for business or any dealings with non Chinese people.