Ask Headmaster Ken

I recently received this email from a potential recruiter in China:

Hi Arthur,

I have spoke with a visa agent and he told me because of your age you will need to have a healthcheck when you apply for the visa and the possibility of failing to get the visa is very high.

He said it was best that you come on the L visa and we change it once you are here. However you will still need to take the healthcheck if you apply in China too, but again, you may not get the visa, so it's risky. The visa agent said it is very hard for people over 60 to get an F or even a Z visa.

I would'nt really recommend that you come here on an L visa just in case you don't pass the healthcheck here and then you have to go back to the U.K.

Even if your health is good like you say it is, they still may not grant you the visa just because of your age.

I'm not sure whether there is any other way to help you at this point.

Im so sorry, I did'nt realise this was going to be such a big problem. I'm sorry to have to tell you the bad news.

Natalie.

CAN ANYBODY SEE A WAY ROUND THIS OR IS THIS INFO CORRECT?

Regards,

Arthur

Hello Arthur,

If a school sends you an Invitation Letter, it means the local officials are fully aware of your age and have already determined that you are eligible for employment.

You may or may not need a medical exam prior to getting your Z visa to enter China. The local Chinese Embassy/consulate in your country will determine that.

Once you arrive, you may or may not need yet another medical exam. I have never heard of a medical exam in China that wasn't more than a cursory check.

Finally, you may want to try to contact schools directly without the use of a recruiter so there are no misunderstandings.

Hi, I would like to elaborate on my experiences relative to the point that Headmaster Ken made about recruiters.

I tried for quite some time to find a teaching job in China through recruiters without any success. The response that I got from the majority of the recruiters that I contacted was no response at all. Most of them never bothered to answer me.

I am not that old, 59 when I started this project, 60 now. And I have a relatively recent MA. I have no TESL certificate or anything, but I was a TA the entire time I was in grad school, teaching essay writing and research methodology to first and second year history majors.

The final straw came after this one recruiter sent me a contract from a university in Jiangsu that she said wanted to hire me. There was a clause in the contract about the ticket home after completing the contract. I asked if there might be any possibility of using that money for me to travel around China instead of going home if there was mutual decision to renew the contract.

The response I got to that question was a blank. She clicked reply, and then sent my email back to me without writing anything. That set me to thinking. It was obvious that somebody renewing their contract would mean no repeat commission for her. That made me realize that the only goal of the recruiter is to get the commission. The needs of schools and teachers are completely irrelevant to these bottom feeders.

So I decided to find a job on my own. I made a post in the other forum here on Middle Kingdom Life about how I did that so I will not repeat that information here, since it can be found at:
http://middlekingdomlife.com/ask-dr-gre ... -t219.html

I have just recently taken a physical here in the US. I was concerned about my blood pressure but I got it down somewhat. I have some minor health issues of course, after all I am 60. The term sinus bradycardia with first degree block written in the space about my ECG caused some anxiety until I got back to my computer, did a Google search and found out it was nothing to worry about. I found out a little later that my father has had that for over 40 years.

No one has said anything about the bradycardia or about the fact that my color blindness seems to have gotten worse, at any rate it is bad enough that I only got 2 out of 19 correct on the test for color vision.

This process could still get derailed by my test results, since the university has only had them about a week, but it seems like I probably made it.

So do not let the bottom feeders discourage you. They want that commission for themselves, and that is all they want. They will go with the candidate most likely to get hired. They do not care about whether they find any particular teacher a job or not, and they do not care about the needs of the schools, either, just sucking up the money and moving on.

Good luck,

Gregory