While to many people it may seem that living in China is a wild idea, there are a huge number of foreigners here in various occupations – lawyers, brokers, students, journalists, and, of course, English teachers. While most of the more glamorous or well-paying jobs generally land people in the major cities – Shanghai, Beijing, etc. – teachers often go wherever they can get a job, to whatever third, fourth or fifth tier town is willing to hire a foreigner with (often) negligible experience. We foreign teachers (waijiao) are a varied group. Some are retired, some straight out of college. Some work hard and some come with little intention of doing any work. I must say that a great deal of the discomfort and frustrations we’ve experienced in China has been due to other foreigners, not to cultural confusion or language barriers. In this episode, I explain a bit more about who we are and how we got here.