They'll also help you dance around the visa process. Short-term Chinese visas are valid for only 90 days, and long-term visas are difficult to obtain. Because of my degree, I was lucky to get the long term visa. But other teachers (our math teacher for example) weren't. So every three months they'd get a free round-trip flight to Hong Kong's airport to reset the time they'd been in the country. Meanwhile, American teachers in the U.S. are frowned at for taking too many round-trip walks to the complimentary-coffee machine.
What followed was less "valuable educational experience where I teach English and my Chinese students teach me something about life" and more "Netflix original comedy that gets canceled after one season due to lack of interest." We had "translators," but they often knew about as much English as I knew Chinese. So I employed the time-honored teaching tradition of winging it. If no one knew a word, I just used a mediocre translation app, which essentially means that I was flown across the planet to operate a smartphone. To accomplish anything, I had to go off-book and talk about what the kids were interested in, like movies and sports. Then they became eager to learn more, but being able to rant about the plot holes in Captain America: Civil War wasn't going to help them hit it big unless their parents wanted them to become high-profile comment-section trolls.
Marvel Studios"Your son is using slurs at a college level. I sense big things in his future."