Working in China

It's been awhile since I last posted, which is rather unfortunate, but things have been crazy, what with me being an unemployed college graduate and all. My days are filled with countless hours online reading pointless shit (I read two blogs centered on the Kansas City Royals. Yea, you read that right, the fucking Kansas City Royals, who are completely irrelevant to my existance. All it has taught me is I disapprove of their manager, Trey Hillman, I have three Royal pitchers on my fantasy baseball team, even though their team ERA is 4.59, and I have a borderline unhealthy man crush on Billy Butler, culminating in finally getting him via trade, only to have him be demoted the next day.), LSAT studying, Sudoku, and sleeping until noon. The only productive thing I've done since being home is I've started running again. However, even that one backfired when I ran during the heatwave and apparently damaged my lungs in the process thanks to poor air quality. Good times.
Anyway, I promised my next post would be on St. Patrick's Day and that's not happening. Instead, I'm going to talk about my search for employment in China, specifically the past few weeks (there's much more to get into, but it's tiresome and too wordy even for me to elaborate on). So we're going to pick up the search about three weeks ago. I'd been in contact with a recruiter named Jessica since early May. I initially contacted her about a private school job in Hangzhou (as a quick diversion, given the choice between public and private schools, the difference lies in the fact that privates usually pay more, but the hours are crappier and longer and they don't treat you as well. Given the fact that I want to work as little as possible, I'll take less money and less hours if at all possible). I decided if I couldn't be in Beijing, I wanted to be in Hangzhou, because it is the most beautiful city in China. Now, I realize that seems like quite the declarative statement and you're right. It is. However, it is backed up by pretty much every Chinese person who has been there (quick sidenote, every Chinese person I've talked to has been to Hangzhou except one, the guy who owns the Chinese restaurant my family frequents [those of you who go way back will remember it as the site of my high school grad party.] After eating there last week as we were walking out the door, I hung back to ask him about Hangzhou, just to see if he had anything interesting to say. He looked at me for 5 seconds, then said dismissively that he's never been there because "China's a big country." Thanks for making me feel like a racist, dick. It was a legitimate fucking question).
So yea, Hangzhou. The original job was in a private school and I decided to accept it because I was finding nothing in Beijing, which sucked balls. Donkey balls, in fact. I was about to sign the contract and luckily I read it a second time, which isn't normally a strong suit of mine. The job was supposed to be from September 1-June 30. Instead, the contract ran through August 31,2009 which would be impossible for me if I wanted to attend law school in fall 2009 (though the LSAT score may have something to say about that...). That length was unacceptable and not what Id been told, so I told her to shorten the contract. In response, they tried to cut my benefits since I wouldn't work for a full year. It went from full reimbursement for a round trip ticket to only half, which was bullshit. I called her out on it and she claimed the contract had always been for a year (not fucking true, I came across an email last night as I was clearing out my college inbox *tear* and she said Sept-June. That ass). I told her I wouldn't accept the job anymore and thanked her for her time. She responded back that she had a public school opening, which immediately intrigued me and I responded as such.
Here's where things get ridiculous. They ask for my documents i.e. passport, diploma, photo (yea a photo. If you aren't white, you won't get the job. Chinese people are racist), and resume. At this point I hadn't graduated and told her I'd send her the diploma as soon as I received it. She asked for my most recent diploma, so I sent her my high school diploma and my study abroad stuff. No problems, she tells me to send her the college diploma as soon as possible.
After graduation, it takes a bit to get her the diploma, I had to take a pic of it and email it to myself so I could send it to her but it goes through. Problem solved except I get an email the next day (I should point out here that China is 12 hours ahead of Boston. So it's 2am as I write this which means it's 2pm over there. Also, China has one time zone for the whole freaking country. Yea, one timezone. It makes no sense, but these are important facts that I want to give you, the reader) which said the school couldn't read the diploma. She asked if it was in Spanish. It's in Latin. So I told her the school gave us an English translation and I could send that to her if the school wanted to know what it meant, but the English copy didn't have my name and didn't have the school seal on it. It wasn't my diploma. It was a TRANSLATION. After two days worth of shenanigans in getting her the copy (seriously, my computer blows sometimes), I'm finally able to fax it to her, but not before she picks up the phone in the middle of the transmission even though I emailed her to tell her I was sending her the fax, forcing me to send it again. Two days later I get an email telling me the school has rejected me for the job because I didn't graduate from a school in an English speaking country (USA, Canada, England, Australia, and New Zealand are the qualifiers) and I didn't have a B.A. Now there is something wrong with that for three reasons:
1) HC is in fact located in America. I know this because I live in America and I don't need my passport to get there, just the toll fare on the Pike
2) I got a B.A. BECAUSE IT FUCKING SAYS SO ON THE ORIGINAL DIPLOMA. Bachelor of Arts. Pretty easy to understand but they don't get it.
3) After the recived my diploma but before they got the English copy, I SIGNED A CONTRACT. Now I realize in China, contract's aren't like they are in America, but seriously, they had my diploma for 10 days before they raised an objection over it, including 5 full days before I signed a contract, yet they stil ltried to void the job. I wanted to pull my becautiful beautiful hair out. I'm 90% certain she ignored my warnings and just gave the school the English copy, which is retarded. So I got angry and told her HC is in America and I did graduate with a B.A. and asked her if she wanted me to send her my transcript, or maybe I could ask my Chinese teacher to explain the situation. She asked for the Chinese explanation. So my Chinese teacher sent her a really nice email, telling her about HC and recomending her to hire me. Two days later I reecive an email from her, they want my Chinese teacher to translate the diploma into Chinese, which seems ridiculous but whatever. Luckily, he's a noble fellow and had no problems helping me out. At this point, they finally accepted all my documents and are applying for a work visa. We'll see what happens with that. Anyway, I'm getting hanf cramps from typing so much, but I'll provide periodic updates throughout the summer about preparations for leaving and some old stories that I haven't gone into yet.