BEIJING - Having hauled myself all the way over here to Beijing, this weekend I belatedly started to investiage whether or not I am actually employable in this part of the world.
I'm insulated from the job search for the next few months thanks to language classes, but when a friend rang and floated the idea of attending a job fair downtown, I rather quickly decided to take him up on the offer. I wanted to know what kinds jobs might await after the language class holiday ends.
If the Chaoyong Job Fair is a guide, there's a growing demand for English teachers, English instructors, English tutors, English coaches and English mentors. All our professions need not apply.
The job fair was held in a fancy hotel in central Beijing, a place where a night in a standard room would cost more than three months rent. The people in attendance certainly didn't appear to be type of crowd that might fancy a night here, although I did overhear one participant telling a rather raunchy story about the surroundings. "Last summer, on our last night in Beijing, my friend hired a prostitute and brought her here. He said the tub in the room was like a swimming pool."
That might sound a bit distasteful for a job fair, but I am not sure it would have been a fatal blow at this event. Companies were looking for English teachers, and everyone lucky enough to have been born in an English-speaking country qualified. Most of these people came from private schools and companies in major Chinese cities. These cities, places like Chongqing and Harbin, had millions of people and thriving companies, but precious few foreigners to teach the world's lingua franca. So they came to Beijing to try and woo some of the city's 50,000 foreigners away from the cosmopolitan comforts of the capital city.
The farther away the position, the more desperate the recruiter. "Welcome to teach in Foshan City," a private-school teacher from Guangdong said as he thrust a blue flyer in my face. People from Harbin screamed across the aisle for me to sit down.
I don't want to teach English. Or more precisely I don't mind teaching English, but it's not exactly the career I had in mind when I came over here.
There were thankfully a couple media organizations in attendance. Communist Party mouthpiece the China Daily brought a few free copies of that day's paper -- a sign to check out their Web site. I briefly chatted with a woman from the Beijing Review, although things wrapped up pretty quickly when it became apparent she didn't work for the magazine and didn't really know anything about it. She referred me to the group's Web site.
On the way to the exit, I stopped on one final booth, for a Beijing Meteorological association. They wanted English people to read the weather for CCTV-9, the government English language station. A woman at the booth was more than happy to answer my many questions on the job.
"So wait, I can be on TV?"
"Yes."
"Do you need any training?"
"No. Maybe we just show you how to point on the map."
"And this is on CCTV?"
"Yes."
So there you have it. Although the print media market is hopeless, in a couple weeks I could beamed to televisions around the world thanks to China Central Television. Being a bit camer shy, I decided not to leave my name. But a couple of my friends did, and pretty soon a star might just be born.
