What It’s Like to Teach in China (Beyond the Job Description)

Teaching in China is often described in practical terms and for good reason, there is lots of practical things to arrange!

People talk about salaries, contracts, class sizes, working hours, and visa requirements. Those things absolutely matter, and they shape the experience in real ways. However, they don’t explain how teaching in China actually feels once you arrive and begin living inside it. Especially how with how unique of an experience China is, in both fantastic and unsettling ways.

What most people underestimate is not the workload or the bureaucracy, but the scale of difference and how long that difference stays present. Teaching in China can be extremely rewarding but familiarity takes much longer than people sometimes expect. Instead, it asks you to operate for an extended period in a context that does not quietly adapt itself around you.

That is neither good nor bad in itself. But it does shape the experience in ways that are worth understanding before you go.

China tends to magnify expectations

China has a way of intensifying whatever assumptions people bring with them.

If you arrive expecting things to make sense quickly, the experience can feel disorienting. If you expect confusion, adjustment, and moments of friction to last longer than you would like, it often feels more manageable.

This isn’t because China is uniquely difficult. It’s because many systems in China are not designed with foreign legibility in mind. The systems are the systems and they won’t be changing to accommodate you. Things work, really well often, but they work on their own terms.

For some people, that feels energising. For others, it feels exhausting. Often, it feels like both.

The scale of everyday life

One of the first things that tends to register is scale.

Cities are huge. Schools are larger. Classes are larger. Systems feel less provisional and more embedded. Even small tasks can feel like they exist within something vast and ongoing. This can be especially true early on when you are in the stages of organising bank cards, phones, visas etc.

This scale can be and is impressive, but it can also make you feel like you lack agency compared to being back home. It’s not always clear who makes decisions, how flexible rules are, or where responsibility sits. Over time, this can create a background sense of operating within something much bigger than you.

Language as constant background friction

Language is another area where expectations often misfire.

Most people know they won’t speak Mandarin fluently when they arrive. What’s harder to anticipate is what it feels like to function daily without linguistic access to the environment around you.

You can function with little to no Chinese. I want to make that clear here, it is doable. But is it fun? I think it is worth asking yourself that question often in your first few months.

Signs, background conversations, meetings, casual interactions, and institutional processes often unfold without translation. You can manage, but you are rarely fully inside what’s happening. I certainly learned this when I went to get my first bank card! I just had to sit there and let life happen to me.

This doesn’t usually present as crisis. It presents as effort.

For many people, that effort becomes tiring over time, even when they are otherwise settled.

Being visibly foreign

Teaching in China also involves being visibly foreign in a way that doesn’t fade into the background.

Attention, curiosity, and distance are part of everyday life. This is rarely hostile, but it is persistent. You are noticed, commented on, and positioned as different in ways that are sometimes benign and sometimes awkward.

For some people, this feels affirming. For others, it creates a sense of never quite disappearing into normality.

Neither reaction is wrong. But it’s something people often underestimate before they arrive.

Work culture and expectations

Within schools, expectations are often less explicit than people expect.

Flexibility tends to matter more than clarity. Things will just happen last minute often schools are reactive as opposed to proactive. I found this really difficult at times but learned that cultural differences were the cause of the friction. Effort and attitude are often valued more than technical perfection, especially early on. Formal structures exist, but they are frequently supplemented by informal understandings that take time to read.

This can be confusing at first, particularly for teachers used to clear procedural norms. Over time, many people learn to operate comfortably within this ambiguity. Others continue to find it frustrating.

Again, this is less about competence and more about fit.

Why some people thrive and others struggle

People often try to explain success or difficulty in China in terms of resilience or attitude.

In reality, it’s usually about expectation fit.

People who do well tend to accept that things will remain partially unfamiliar. They don’t require full understanding to feel okay. They allow routines to form slowly and don’t interpret every moment of friction as a problem to solve.

People who struggle often expect the experience to stabilise into something recognisable more quickly. When that doesn’t happen, frustration accumulates.

Neither response is a moral failing. They are different ways of relating to uncertainty.

China as a context, not a test

Teaching in China is sometimes framed as a test of adaptability or toughness.

That framing misses the point.

China is not a challenge to overcome. It is a beautiful place with lots of great people, but it can be a difficult context to live and work within. For some people, that context becomes deeply meaningful. For others, it remains misaligned, even if they perform well professionally.

If the experience works for you, it often does so in a sustained and grounding way. If it doesn’t, that doesn’t mean you failed. It means the fit wasn’t right.

Understanding that distinction early can prevent a lot of unnecessary self-judgement.

If you read this and feel a sense of recognition rather than reassurance, that’s a good sign. Teaching in China is not about finding certainty. It’s about learning how to operate with difference still present.

That is the part that rarely appears in the job description, but shapes the experience most.