Salaries & Cost of Living

Salaries...

At the time of writing, not great if you're a fresh graduate. Actually not a problem if you're fairly senior. But to get a job here as a senior person, you'll probably need either very good mandarin, or some rare skills. Rare skills includes... being an ASE facilitator... being an Enterprise Architect... being caucasion as well as speaking chinese.... Actually I'm at a disadvantage because as soon as my mandarin actually gets good enough, at face value people won't know that I'm from England.

If you're thinking of coming over here as a fresh graduate, I wouldn't necessarily let the salary thing put you off. There's still a good experience to be had here, and it's good to be here to watch it happen and prepare for the future. Many young expats here appear to be subsidised by their parents. It's perfectly possible to make ends meet without subsidy mind you, providing you are prepared to accept some cheaper living standards. It's something akin to going on holiday but staying in a hostel or a bed and breakfast instead of a 3* hotel. I think it's easier for fresh grads because you haven't already been spoiled by business class travel and luxuries like having a car. Like I'm still struggling with the dilemma of whether I fork out the dough, or let my golf game slide into oblivion. I've certainly got more opinions on the fresh grad thing. If you're interested let me know and I'll write more.

Others here manage ok on the low graduate salary. Many because they live with family. Others because they live in VERY cheap university accomodation (masters students live for 2000 kuai a year and get their own room). In a way it's fair enough - there's a lot of workforce training that needs to be done, as often graduates are not well prepared for the working world.

Cost of living. Really not as low as many think. China generally can be very cheap. Shanghai has modernised fast, and so there are choices as to lifestyle standards. The higher end of the living standard has an luxury price premium attached to it. The mid to lower end of the living standard may not be acceptable to you. When I say acceptable, I mean western standards of hygiene, personal space, service, odours, that kind of thing. The Mercer cost of living index that my company uses rates Shanghai as just above Paris. Having lived here for a little while, I'm not surprised. Once you've been spoilt by the luxuries of the West and Western salaries, it's hard to settle for less. It's things like being cramped onto the underground train occasionally to find yourself up against someone distinctly unclean or uncouth. Or to get onto a bus only to be joined later by two workers from the fish market. Admittedly this is far from all the time, but it's truly a psychological challenge. The underground is 2 or 3 kuai. Buses are 1 or 2 kuai. Taxis generally could be 15-30 kuai.

At university I have been living at what I understand would be an apartment for a small teacher's family or couple. 1800 rmb/month. Ground floor, 1 double bedroom, kitchen, bathroom (with a shower hose rather than a bath or shower cubicle), and a living room. Heat insulation generally is only good if you search hard - not many places have double glazing or even good double glazing at that, not even new apartments. I'm fortunate here in that my bedroom has double and secondary glazing! But not the other rooms. The kitchen is freezing cold in the wintertime, which is a shame because I have to go through the kitchen to go from room to room.

For 2000 rmb, you can get a flatshare room downtown in a nice / modern apartment. For 4000 rmb, I think you can get a reasonably nice one bedroom apartment (50sqm). For 5-6000, you're doing well and can get a good two bedroom apartment (100sqm). I still don't know how much I will earn, so for now I'll probably stay on in my University apartment.

In USD or GBP this is cheap. But once you consider that you might be earning as little as 4-6000 RMB as a graduate, or maybe 15-20000 a few years on, then it's hard to justify splurging on accomodation.

Food can be cheap. My lunch today at a restaurant in University was excellent, and only cost 17 kuai. I did have to wipe the grime off the crockery first though, but the food realy was very good. Going non-chinese costs a lot though. To budget for going to places such as coffee shops (20 kuai for a coffee) or italian food (100 kuai for pizza, 150 for a pasta restaurant), you're beginning to rack up your costs.

Budgeting for an annual trip home added a big whack onto my monthly costs. As does my MBA which I previously thought to be excellent value for money - but it turns out at 5k per month, will probably be more than my rent. I have some good details on cost of living budgeting. Contact me with questions if you would like help. It's a bit sensitive so I won't post it all here.

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It's mostly for work colleagues etc., who aren't really going to regularly be reading my blog, but would be interested to hear how I'm getting on from time to time.

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wanting to start work.... get a local girlfriend?

So I've been spending some time recently with the Shanghai branch of my consulting company Capgemini. It seems they should be happy to take me on, except for some issues around language - given that most/many of their current clients are state owned enterprises (SOEs). Their having SOE clients is good for me in the sense of pure immersion - that's the experience I was hoping to get. I was in a way fearing being assigned to english speaking clients such as Shell, and then actually not getting the real deal. But this means that I have a language problem - 100% chinese.... no english for technical terminology... chinese emails, chinese meetings, chinese faxes.... oh dear! Better learn fast.

I've now dropped out of language classes. I decided that I wanted to prioritise speaking and listening over reading/writing. My speaking/listening is relatively good, compared to other language students. But it's a long way behind what I need as a base to start work in a local company (client). In class, there wasn't much opportunity to practice speaking, and there was a lot of emphasis on learning to read. Which takes a lot of time. Ideally I'd learn to read as well as write... but I'm kinda in a hurry to get back to working (i.e. making money rather than just spending).

By the end of June, I'll have been 6 months away from the office. I will stop taking subsidy from the UK office at this point - I couldn't possibly ask for any more! I'm a little sorry that my mandarin isn't further along though, I feel as if I haven't made as much progress as I wanted to. I think I could have achieved more if I had more focus... I think I have been distracted by travel, socialising, mandarin lesson structure, and classes/homework for my MBA classes. It makes for a busy lifestyle, and so it's hard to spend a considerable amount of time doing what I particularly want to do around the language. This is why I'm not attending classes now - to give me more free time so that I can structure my own study.

The tricky part about self-study is the discipline and motivation. The big plus about attending classes is that you can just do as you are told, and 2 years later hopefully you pop out with a good standard. On your own... you might make more progress, but wouldn't have the grammatical understanding that the classes teach, and it's real hard to march on your own.

And so... how is self-study the most effective? Well as EVERYONE keeps telling me.... by getting a local girlfriend. I have considered the idea up to this point, but each time I shy away from it. Putting the desperates / easy targets aside, there are some definite 'local' girls who I might be interested in here, as well as say mandarin speaking expats. And... I spoke to one friend of mine this week, and she seemed all the more attractive. I couldn't help but think that I was subconsciously more willing to fall into a relationship on the basis of language...

But as my brother more or less taught me with a T shirt of his, albeit crudely ("a dog is for life not just a saturday night"), a girlfriend is more than a short term proposition. Having not yet begun work as a consultant, I'm more than aware that not all girls will be happy with my being away / working overtime on occasions. Being away for extended periods of time, or having to work overtime and cancel on dinner dates etc. I think it safest I wait until I start work before getting into a relationship.

But that's the chicken way to think about it... maybe I should throw caution to the wind and get on enjoying more of today, and let tomorrow look after itself. Who knows.