Aussieoverseas

Hello - I am new to this Far East forum.

I am currently living in the Middle East and looking at (maybe) a move to Shanghai. My husband has had an interview - promising but not yet offered. If offered there are still options in the ME so we just have a few questions to ask about Shanghai should the offer be made and we consider a move.

Firstly - I would also be seeking work at Director/Manager level in HR, Training and Development, Vocational Education, Community Development, Government, Social Services. Are there prospects for expats to be employed in these areas in Shanghai after arrival?

And - my husband noticed that the pollution in Shanghai was pretty obvious on the weekend he was there for the interview. What is the source of the pollution and is it a known cause of allergic reaction/sinusitis/etc. I have really struggled living in the desert and hope to move to a more sinus friendly environment!

Lastly - is there a regular meeting of expat women/ networking within the expat community etc. This has been a great feature of our expat life in Al Ain and has provided us with excellent friendships and much needed support when times have been tough. We have also been able to hold others up when they have needed it. It is nice to be 'linked in' to like minded people - even though my primary purpose is to envelope myself in the local culture and society.

Looking forward to some informative posts from Shanghai

Mipik

Work in HR/training for an international company in Shanghai is a possibility, forget the rest.

Source of pollution?
Industry and traffic same as everywhere in the world, just on much larger scale. Affects everybody in a different way so impossible to say what will happen. BTW there are much worse polluted cities in China than Shanghai.

There is a organization for expat woman proffesionals.
Please remember that there are probably more than a hundred thousands of expats in Shanghai so it is a bit different.

Have a look online as there are some sites specifically for Shanghai like this:
http://shanghai.asiaxpat.com/

Aussieoverseas

Thanks for your reply. We will know by the end of the month if we are moving to Shanghai. Thanks also for the link.

backtoblighty

Shanghai's very own expat website can be found at: shanghaiexpat.com where you can find forums and job opportunities.

Best if you can learn a little bit of chinese whilst there

Dont live in the downtown if you wish to stay away from the pollution, i lived in peoples square and noticed it quite a bit during the summer as i've mild asthma. Hongqiao is quite nice i've heard, aswell as a few areas in pudong.

Shanghai is a great place, and i'm sure you'll enjoy it as i did

Aussieoverseas

Still waiting for news - they said the job would be announced on the 15th - just a couple of days away. Keeping fingers crossed as we are really looking forward to another adventure in another new country.

Thanks to you both for your help

Umpatan

The food there is awful, especially when loaded with MSG. You need to learn to say wo buyao weijin, which means no MSG. Often they cant understand our bad prounciation or the pinyin, so you have to get someone to write the characters for you. If you try to write it yourself, it will again be copied so poorly that they won't be able to recognize what you wrote. This was the case with me, so I had a Chinese-American girl make me Q cards to show people, phrases like "Take me to the Shanghai Central Railway Station" or "I don't want to buy the soft sleeper or the hard sleeper but give me the hard seat, the cheapest ticket to Chengdu from Shanghai." That was a nightmare as I had to stand half of the time for 2 nights 3 days.

Aussieoverseas

Thanks for the hints - it is all part of the orientation process to hear these things. I am quite used to entering and learning about new cultures and all hints are gratefully appreciated. I think Chinese is going to be even more difficult than Arabic and I struggled with that!

Umpatan

Those chinese characters, forget it! I tried, and I came to realize why Vietnam uses the latin alphabet. They used to use those impossible characters, but the French found it too hard to learn so they brought the latin alphabet to replace the difficult characters. The Chinese simplified their characters, but the average westerner is not going to overcome this barrier with any ease. If I were to put this much energy learning to write these characters, I would rather be going to law school and charging clients through the roof.

Aussieoverseas

I am beginning to be quite excited about the prospect of moving to Shanghai. My husband was told they would make the announcement tomorrow (15th) but even if it takes a few more days I just hope the outcome will be a good one. He was one of three interviewed so he has at the least a 33.3% chance (LoL) He said the interview went really well so I hope that puts the percentages up a bit! On the off chance I also applied for a job there yesterday - I hope we are both successful!

backtoblighty

I really have no idea what planet this Umpatan is living on, obviously a very racist one

the food is very good, even the local food but obviously you two high salary western company slingers will want to eat at the pish posh top foreign owned restaurants and stay in your fellow foreigner groups.

It makes sense moving to a different country to respect the culture and local population (20 million plus in shanghai, with only 100,000+ foreigners). Please dont be a typical foreign company employee, most of whom like to splash their cash around and act like millionaires in front of the chinese....... which is why a lot of chinese will take offense to your presence, and especially if you do that.

Mandarin is 'not' hard. You just have to be willing to learn, and make some effort. You cant learn mandarin sat in a room full of native english speakers I immersed myself within the culture and made many chinese friends, and picked it up gradually, and with my heavy london accent, i can tell you it wasnt easy, but it just came naturally after being around people for so long...

Characters take a bit longer, so its best to concentrate on oral first, then pinyin, and then characters. It seems a bit strange to the western mind, but it will come to you if your willing to put in the study hours.............

If your only staying for a few months, ignore what i've said above...... but if you intend on staying for few years, then you should wise up and lose any ego (comment aimed at this umpatan guy)

Depending on which district you live in shanghai, i can recommend quite a few decent mandarin schools, where some friends of mine teach at

Aussieoverseas

Hey - how refreshing is that!

Even where we are in the UAE we do not hang out in the international hotels, though we do have a few friends who do not wander far from their cloistered environments - their choice and not one that we apply any judgement to (each to their own) -but certainly not our way of experiencing life in another country. We have local friends and GCC country expats that we spend time with....though I must admit it is very difficult to break into the Emirati family scene as it is very cloistered.

We love hanging around the local restaurants where the food is usually fabulous. You can't get a glass of wine in them (unfortunately) but to eat authentic Egyptian and Lebanese and various other ME cuisines it is well worth the sacrifice and the people who run the restaurants are just wonderful and generous and fabulous hosts. We have eaten from menus we couldn't understand and placed our trust in the service people to just deliver something delicious! We have never been let down. Of course we also have some very good Indian places to eat as over 50% of the population in UAE is Indian! So there is no risk that we will be excluding ourselves from the local dining experiences.

I am liking the sound of Shanghai and hoping we will get the opportunity to come and see for ourselves what you are describing. I have learned enough Bislama to get by in Vanuatu (and to correspond since with local people) and enough Arabic to get myself laughed at on a regular basis! I will relish the opportunity of picking up a few key phrases in Shanghai and probably using them to death in an effort to demonstrate my willingness to be accepted.

Keep your fingers crossed for me --- here's hoping!

Aussieoverseas

Unfortunately we received some bad news last night. We won't be coming to Shaghai after all. I am so disappointed. Thanks for your answers to my questions - maybe we will get another opportunity soon.

Desert Dweller

Now that you have wound yourself up to the idea of going there, keep plugging away at finding a job there.
Send emails to some of the companies you are familiar with asking them how recruitment works over there and follow up. Shanghai wouldn't have been my choice but I think it is a great city and depending on how you live there it could be full of opportunities.

darkstaruk said: Please dont be a typical foreign company employee, most of whom like to splash their cash around and act like millionaires in front of the chinese....... which is why a lot of chinese will take offense to your presence, and especially if you do that.

I know the ones you mean but they pale in significance when put next to the locals (mainlanders as we called them) who are very brazen about splashing the cash.

Aussieoverseas

Absolutely.....we will not give in easily! We have done one year in the South West Pacific (Vanuatu) and now 2 years in the Middle East (UAE) - our intention is to work our way around the world over the next 8-10 years. We have visited another 15 countries since we have started on this little jaunt so we are having a wonderful time.

If it is not Shanghai it will be somewhere else.....I must admit though Shanghai was really looking very good in terms of the position and the location.

Just have to start thinking through Plan B now! Thanks for your encouragement.

And just for the record - we are not high flying hotel hoppers. We are a pretty middle class Mum and Dad on a pre-retirement jaunt to see the world, experience some different cultures and interact with them wherever possible. Our kids have left the nest and we are happy that they are now independent and allowing us the opportunity to explore the world because we didn't get the chance to do that when we were younger.

I am sure I will be popping up in another BE forum if China is not going to be our next step.

Umpatan

I am not being racist. I went to Shanghai, and I found the MSG horrible. I ate that noodle next to the Hiker's Youth Hostel (if you know where I am talking about, since I didn't bother learning street names) for 3RMB and I vommitted. You are right that it is best to stick to oral first, then pinyin. I don't have the fortitude to learn the difficult characters, as it is not based on a phonetic system.

I learned to say: Wo buyao weijin (I don't want MSG) Wo de guo chi shu Canada. (I am a Canadian). Wo putong hua pu chi tao. (I don't know Mandarin)

In Tibetan:
Kerang gi tsen la gare sugi you?
What is your name?
Dring sang, Vancouver gi nam shee la shida yagpo mindu.
These days, weather in Vancouver is terrible.
Ten ten me yi ne chig chei na, nima chig, na bope tang gyagang dro gi go.
I don't but maybe one day I will go to Tibet and India.

It is not the same thing as learning to write out Hindi or Greek, which with practice you can learn. When I went to Japan, I did learn Hiragana and Katakana but I refrained from learning Kanji.
For Japanese I learned to say by memory:

Watashi wa Shinsaibashi ni ikkitainodesuga, dono densha ni nottara yoroshii no desuka. (I want to go to Shinsaibashi so I like to know which train I need to take to get there?)

Sumimasen, boku wa Canadajin nanode nihongo ga hanasemasen.
(Excuse me, I am Canadian and I cannot speak Japanese)

In Thai:

Sawadee Krup: Hello
Kopuun Ka: Thank you.
Kathoey: Ladyboy.

In Shanghai, I had bought a fake Tissot watch at Nanjing Lu for 10RMB, as well as those roller blading wheels that attach onto one's shoes for 25RMB. Those were things I enjoyed. The dumplings that I ate were filled with MSG that I had bought for 8Jiao. (12 cent for 3). I was amazed that Hagen Daaz was charging 75RMB for icecream when prices around for other things were dirt cheap. Things were even cheaper when I went to Chengdu when I stayed at the Traffic Youth Hostel for 20Yuan.