8000 rmb a month you'd be living pretty good by Chinese standards, from what I know its a solid middle-class wage over there. As an intern in Shanghai i pulled in 4000 rmb a month, it wouldn't have been that bad had my apartment not been in the most expensive part of town (French Concession).

It's pretty good.
Food and transport are fine, but the living cost is a little expensive.

You'll be fine with 8,000 rmb. More than fine. If you are working with an international company, you will (and should) probably receive more. If it's a predominately Chinese firm, you should expect anything from 4,000 - 8,000 rmb.

Also, if you are working with an international firm, try to work out a benefit package. Most expat benefit packages include partial or full compensation for housing and one yearly plane roundtrip plane ticket home.

hmmm... but i just realized student is going to be a huge problem. that salary may be fine in china, but when I have to pay loans back in dollars, it'll take roughly half my salary. Has this been a problem for anyone else?

sorry - student loans

You'll be fine as long as you work for an international company. You can't make much money working for a Chinese firm but you can make a huge salary (relatively speaking) if you work for an international company.

I had two friends whom worked at a firm in NYC and were relocated to their satellite offices in China. They were both a year out of pre-professional degree programs. Their employeer paid them their NYC salary plus he paid for their housing expenses while there. They were making roughly $46,000 a year in a country were you could comfortably live off $500 a month. They lived very well in China but saved the majority of their money. They both did this to pay off their students loans in a short time. One stuck around for another 2.5 years to save money for graduate school and the other returned in one year after his undergrad loans were paid off. They were paid in US dollars so they didn't have a problem.

I was paid in yuan at my firm. I had plenty of friends whom were paid in US dollars so I could easily exchange my yuan for their US dollars. There was a Bank of America near my apartment so I was able to deposit my US dollars into my US bank account. It was easier to do that than wire money to my US account.

dillup., the question if 8000rmb will do or not is not simple to answer.
considering you are going alone (no spouse and childern to support), and you have a modest lifestyle, you will do fine with 8000rmb.
i personally had some difficulty making ends meet with a much higher sum, but i was in a different situation.
in my view the real problem in the chinese architecture market is not the salaries. the problem is that the experience you will get might not turn out to be very valuable in the long run.
architecture is practiced in a very fast and superficial way over there, mainly due to the poor way most firms respond to the challenges of the local market. being a foreigner in china has its charm, but be ready to be asked to attend meetings just so that your bosses can show off your foreign face. you wont be asked to talk and wont be expected to understand the conversation in such meetings. to some clients it means alot to have a foreigner sitting and smiling in front of them. even international firms do this. it's their way of showing the clients they have real overseas people in their office working on their project.
i kinda got tired from going to those stupid meetings, and from flying around china (some actually enjoy this at first) to have pointless meetings with clients. this will not really teach you how to design, and actually not how to market either. it disturbed my personal life, as well as interrupted my design work (which was hectic by definition) at the office.
i am actually sorry i worked for an international firm, and didnt go for a local firm. some small avant-garde offices seem to be doing the most interesting work over there. unfortunately, i couldnt afford to work for the salaries they offer. if you can, that would be a very interesting experience, and i would be very jealous of you.

hello all, just a quick question, i see on a lot of the job vacancies advertised that they want you to give a salary expectation- and i have no idea what that should be. I have just finished my diploma, and have about two years work experience? if its for an international firm i guess it should be a lot more than the 8000 mentioned above, but how much more should that be?

also i haven't found many websites that list some of the companies working there, so if anyone knows of a great resource to find out who is looking i would be extremely grateful.

I am planning on shanghai, so i would also be very interested if anyone knows roughly how much something in the french concession would set me back- nothing fancy - just pleasant...

thanks

My studio in the concession set me back about 2000 rmb a month, which is about $285 given the xchange rate last I checked. That was half my pay every month, but I was working on a chinese wage.

Xray is very spot-on though, your work xp will not translate well or at all into other markets. I found that architects were much more concerned with Schematic Design and Design Development over there than CDs, con admin work, and all the bureaucratic bullshit that accompanies practice in the U.S. It was a really nice refresher from working in the U.S. but my xp gained over there did not translate back into the U.S. job market at all.

Thanks Apurimac, that was something i was looking forward to in a way- i have had very little construction experience and i was hoping for the kind of job with a strong attitude to design but the ability to just get on and build without the endless legislative bits...

Any particular firms to definitely avoid? or some to really look for?

I've heard of no horror stories coming out of there, I interned with Tom Pen Architect while I was over there and I had a pretty good time.

I just came back from interviews with 5 chinese architecture studios in Beijing.some info that might be useful:

keep in mind this is beijing (probably shanghai is more expensive) and these were chinese studios not international.
salary: during 2 months trial 8,000RMB than up to 10,000 RMB and then rising according to performance

consider that a big flat with 3 bedrooms and living room costs 2,000RMB per person. beijing can be very cheap but it is also really easy to do a "foreigner life" and spend almost like western countries.

Jakob

Where did you interview?

In terms of stating a salary expectation on an application, is it better to overstate, ie ask for higher, or will that put them off? i guess starting lower means it is then much harder to negotiate up?
For financial reasons i probably need to find an international office at least to start with...

Also i've never used autocad, but know vectorworks and microstation, and i'm assuming it should be quite easy to crosstrain- will this be the case?

Thanks in advance for your help

well if you get a job in a chinese steel mill you might bring in ten bucks a day!

Yes, the transition from Microstation/Vectorworks to AutoCAD will be simple.

Are you required to state your salary expectation on the application? If not, I wouldn't go there. I'd leave that for post-interview conversation.

Thanks n_,

and yes that is the issue that they are requesting a salary expectation as you apply with cv, and i'm not really sure what to put...

I don't know if conventional US salary negotiating rules apply in China, but typically you never want to be the one to state salary first (the conundrum SpringFresh describes above is the reason why).

Instead of giving an actual number you could state your expectations in more qualitative or comparative terms. This way you can be helpful but still firm that you want them to give a number first.

"well if you get a job in a chinese steel mill you might bring in ten bucks a day!"

vado, sadly, if you get a job in a US steel mill, you might out of job soon!