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Is Dulwich College Beijing good at welcoming expat students and offering them a smooth transition? I heard most students at the school are Chinese heritage students. My 5 year-old son does not speak any Chinese yet. I wonder if he will have a good number of English speaking friends at Dulwich or if this will be a problem. Does anyone know the percentage of Chinese heritage students and other foreign students at Dulwich? Thank you.
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It used to be about 10%, now it's flipped, especially after Covid. In one class you probably have one or two non Chinese.
This is true of lots of Expat Dependent Schools. Most are now Chinese w/ Foreign Passports. They should speak English fairly well, as most come from privileged backgrounds.
At five he'll still young enough to pick it up easily. Give it a year and he'll be conversant.
Have sent you a PM
There will be a small number of english speaking students, likely the children of staff and a few others. The numbers have gone right down. Yes others will speak english, but they’ll all be the ‘chinese heritage’ (just say locals!) students. Whether that’s an issue with making friends can be a bit of a lottery, culturally. No, it’s not easy, if you want the truth, local sentiment, attitude to foreigners etc. Beijing is also not an easy place to live, both generally and more so in recent years, despite claims to the contrary. If it was, there wouldn’t have been the massive influx outwards that occurred during and post-covid, and even last year, which schools are still stating that it was purely as a result of the pandemic, which isn’t entirely true. Personally, China wouldn’t make it into the top 5 choices if I was doing it all over again with my young children. And even if China was the only option, then Beijing still wouldn’t be in top 5 locations within. Great city to visit, but to live. No. With young children. NO. Take care.
For one person who doesn't like it, there's plenty who do. I know of many families in Beijing whose kids have grown up there and done so quite happily, as well as singles who didn't last a year. I left during COVID, as I hadn't seen my family in two years - others stayed. Had COVID not happened, I'd probably still be in China.
For me, with a family, Beijing was a relatively easy place to live. It had what we needed, and plenty of different outlets for that. Local sentiment wasn't a problem generally where I lived (NOT Shunyi) and certainly it was no worse than other places I have lived - I was more aware of hostility to foreigners in my home country than in Beijing. Chinese are generally suspicious of outsiders, but given that many of the families you come across in places like DCB are in many respects 'outsiders' themselves. Straight away, I can think of at least one family who started with me who, had they been given a return ticket home any time in the first month, would have taken it without a second thought, but are now probably more settled in Beijing than anyone else I know there!
I do find it odd that someone would be quite so disparaging of nationals in any country. To me, that's not really the attitude I expect from someone teaching internationally. While I accept that your family may not settle - and that is a perfectly good reason for leaving - to essentially blame that on the 'locals' is not OK.
I'm not saying China or Beijing is for everyone; and I'm not saying it doesn't have it's problems (at the low level end, we all had 'China days.') But if one of your main objectives as an international teacher, kids or not, is to find a city or school where you're only teaching students of your own race and not mixing with others, then IMO you're missing out on one of the massive benefits of living abroad and should ask yourself - might you be better off going home?
I think most teachers' ideal class would be a very diverse class, with local kids, Western kids, and kids from all other parts of the world, with no majority of any of those groups. Ideally those students also wouldn't have rich parents, but that's unfortunately an almost unavoidable part of the international school game - someone has to pay those salaries and facilities.
What makes Beijing so difficult to live?
Just dogshit pollution and weather. Either boiling or freezing weather. People not friendly and most people living in the expat area are miles from downtown. Beijing people generally money orientated and unfriendly to outsiders.