Living in HARBIN (making money while studying)

[Gabrca]

Hi All-

So on my last post I was considering moving back to Shanghai for a year for mandarin studies. Now I'm doing the typical flip-flop and thinking about Harbin, albeit temporarily. I have 4/5 months in the summer in which I want to do full time private language school and am looking at Harbin (either Bincai or 1-1). I will probably transfer to a university for the year, and may head south for that to avoid Harbin's winter months. Still, all tentative.

My main question is (having read a lot of posts on Harbin), is how difficult is it to get tutoring gigs in Harbin? I'm not expecting to make a living while studying, but would at least like to off-set some of the expenses. In Shanghai you can get 200RMB a hour relatively easily, but I am assuming this is much lower in cities outside of the SH/BJ/XN?

What would be the process of finding students, world of mouth? Hoping to get 5-10 hours a week of tutoring work. Can do spoken english/written/SAT...

Decisions, Decisions. Thanks! I feel like I'm in a midlife crisis at 21.

Best,

Gabrca

[kdavid]

200 RMB/hour in Harbin is not difficult for those in the market.

However, you'll need to target an affluent market, which searches mostly via word of mouth and official mediums (e.g. language schools).

Unless you already know someone who knows someone, you'll find it difficult to fill the hours.

[Theodora]

From my experience of Harbin, just rock up at at any school/uni and they will bite your arm off. Not sure about the rates, as I'm a writer, but provided you speak standard-accented English (British or American, not Irish or Australian), they will help.

I can get you the phone number of a girl at an agency that places foreign tutors with language schools and colleges in Harbin if you would like. I don't know about the rates, I'm afraid.

[kdavid]

Foreign language schools can get you one-on-one gigs with their existing clients, but you'll be stretching to make 100/hour in this scenario (though the client is likely paying 200+).