I am currently working in China. I graduated with a B. Arch and 5 summers of internships (2 international), and also 3 semesters abroad. I would say that the cultural conflicts that came up during those times did prepare me for even greater conflicts upon moving to China. I did not expect to come to this part of the world, and think Mandarin would have been a useful educational endeavor. Many prospective employers asked me my level of Mandarin when i was hired, you will be of greater value if you have mandarin. There is a lot of foreigner turnover here, and therefore there will always be a job. However, the downturn has also affected China---the foreigners are the first to be laid off as there are few labor laws to protect us and we are the most expensive. There have been many architectural layoffs in Shanghai in the past 2 months---especially after a big project is finished.

Expect an enormous pay difference from the US if you intend to find a graduate level position in China. (I was offered 50K in LA, but 23K in China) (employers tried to talk me out of moving here left and right as well...)

Also it will be difficult to get an 'expat package' as a recent grad, or even to get hired if you're emailing them from the US.

If you are dead set on the Asia pathway, I would suggest doing your first 2 years at home, then transferring overseas. (but then again, you'll be young and restless and who can wait to go abroad? I know I wasn't ready to wait. and young experience in China may result in later more profitable transfers to the region.--if you would still want to return.)

Wow, sounds like you're in exactly the position I'm envisioning.

So it sounds like a job would be easy to find, but hard to keep? Is most of the business focused in Hong Kong and Shanghai? Is it possible to land a job there without speaking any Mandarin?

Why did you move to China, despite the pay difference? Is the cost of living in China proportional to your reduced pay?

China will be using the Birdsnest to detain protestors after their economy collapses due to lack of consumer purchases by the new and improved thrifty american.

Not with their 2 trillion dollar surplus.

the chinese economy depends on exports and exports have declined.

Everything's declining, vado. Fact is, China's value as an exporter isn't going to diminish considering how cheap its labor is.

If you're looking for civil unrest, I'd keep looking at the EU!

I lived in Beijing for a year after studying Mandarin in college (art major). While I was in China I continued taking full time language classes. It was hard.

The best thing you can do is to enroll in a course while you are still in school, and go to all of the language club and language exchange things while you have the chance. As long as this doesn't interfere with your ability to complete your studies.

Going to China without Mandarin would be horrible, horrible.

I managed to live in China for 2.5 years after graduating. Without knowing any Chinese (besides what lonely planet told me) I made it from Hong Kong to Wuhan and then via slow boat up the Yangse river to Chongqing. Getting around China without knowing the language is difficult but can be done.

If you are looking to move there, here is some things to keep in mind. First; you will not make nearly as much as you could in the US. Most architecture grads in China start at about $750 a month. That is enough for a comfortable living there. I made $400/month with no housing costs and lived well. As a foreigner you can expect to make more but if you have a lot of debt it could be difficult to get that paid off. Second; life as a foreigner can be hard there. The everyday things that we accomplish with ease here become much more difficult when dealing in a strange, symbolic language. Traveling in Europe, at least one can attempt the pronunciation of an unknown word but without knowing Chinese, those words are just meaningless symbols. Many foreigners get burned out and leave after a year. Third; working as an architect in China will not get you licensed in the US. It is possible but most foreign architects do design and not as much construction admin. This also can hurt your chances of getting hired by a firm when (if) you come back.

Given all of this, I suggest you do it. Now after being back for a couple of years, I’m looking to go back to China. While there I got to travel from Shanghai all the way to the Pakistani border, meet awesome people and generally lived life to its fullest. I highly recommend it.

You will learn what habits are socially constructed, thats for sure.

try ALL of them (socially constructed habits, that is)

i been expat for the past 17 years, in japan and in UK. when i leave japan now i find western countries odd. reverse culture shock is very strange.


anyway, much of above rings bell for me too. wages are higher in japan. comparable to the west really, but hours are long and visa is very very hard to get, so probably china is better choice. malaysia was number one choice for lots of my classmates in mid 90's. a few were careful to work with RIBA licensed offices so they could transfer some of the experience to London when they later moved on.

professionally be warned that experience overseas is not generally useful in north america. it likely will not count for IDP, and some offices even write it off as not applicable or relevant and will try to hire you as though you have never worked anywhere ever (I could tell some stories).

as far as language goes, i have not worked in China but i imagine it is similar to Japan. Yes you can work in english but getting by and really living in any country is best done in the native tongue. me, i speak and read/write Japanese and i really have to say the difference is like 6000% difference. entire worlds are closed to those who cannot communicate or read. so do yourslef a favor and learn. same goes for other countries, but i feel especially so in asia...

why not go to singapore. english is the official language there and its illegal to spit. which is almost why i went there.

you could take pictures with captions like "Me; not spitting in singapore."

thats the name of my blog, actually.

Ha ha, thanks for the replies, that's pretty awesome about Singapore.

I can definitely back up Jump's remark about Japanese experience 'not counting' upon return to the States. I was in Japan for a year and employers here think it's cool that I went to Japan, but really don't value the work experience at all. I just started a temp to hire job at a small local firm (4 people total) and the amount of organization, standards, templates and just overall streamlining of the office is like nothing I saw in Japan at my fairly famous, 50 person firm. I've already learned a lot, literally in two days.

I also agree on the language. I had a lot of friends and had a great time, but I could feel that invisible barrier between those who can speak and those who can't. I could read some, speak enough to get by etc. But I went to Japan with a 1-2 year time line in mind. I worked at the language for a few months before and after I got there, but realized that without formal education, I wasn't going to pick it up. It's not like say, Spanish, where if you know some, you can learn more through context, or via the similar Spanish-English words. I mean, I can ride a subway in Boston and read the Spanish sign, combine what I know from High School, pick out the Latin roots and get an idea what the sign says. After a year in Japan, I could sometimes do the same thing with signs. Like you might she the character for food/eating, the one for don't and then a bunch of other scribbles and figure "Oh, I guess I'm not supposed to eat in here." Our work was in 90% English, so I didn't really learn at work and I didn't want to spend all my free hours studying, so I learned what I needed and accepted that it would be slightly limiting. It was also difficult to learn because there are so many levels of politeness in Japanese (not sure how it is in Chinese). But how they teach you in books is not how people talk. Shortcuts, sayings, expressions. The books were almost useless. They gave me some background with grammar and vocabulary, so I could understand "blah blah blah eat fish blah blah blah." It was useful as I could ask for things, answer simple questions and things like that. It's really amazing though what kind of language mastery you need to do simple stuff. I tried to get a hair cut and said "same style" "shorter." I sat in the chair for 20 minutes while they pretended to cut my hair and I walked out almost the same. Later I just started to take a picture of Anderson Cooper and they guy told me "Looks good. You cool guy." He gave me a mix CD when I moved haha.

Jump, I actually find both places really weird now. There are things in both places that I just think, wow that is stupid. Like in Japan, I have never heard so many young people in the US say they wish they were dead. Hands down that is one of the weirdest things I've ever heard. How every social gathering feels like a junior high dance filled with really horny 16 year old guys... that's weird. How common it was to see well dressed business men passing out in puddles of puke on the train on Tuesday. Weird. Companies shutting down to force employees to go home and procreate, that's weird. But we have Sarah Palin, that's weird. SUV's that stupid. Fat people drinking Coke and eating Big Macs all day wondering why they are fat with the 'beetus. Lots of dumb people. Both places are odd.

Living in Asia. Cool. Do it if you want to and can get in (I actually had a super easy time getting a visa). It's not a cake walk, it's an awesome experience that I'm 100% glad I did. I'm sure I will visit again, but it wasn't the place where I wanted to hang my hat. If I had a ton of money and didn't have to work and could live in a place bigger than 200sf I would consider living there. One of the major negative aspects of my job was 13 hour days doing work that didn't really need 13 hour days, but took 13 hour days because of general office inefficiency + clients having 24 hour access to our buttholes. Additionally, my team leader was a hack American who thought she was this bomb although I suspected she knew nothing and it has been confirmed by the guy that supervises me at my new place and is of the same age and experience level. Literally I have never met anyone with such a toxic personality that it has actually affected me the way she did. Despite my rants, I'm a pretty easy going guy. Hard to believe on here, but "it's an act" haha. So when you are working a long time on work that you don't care about with the worst person you've ever met, it's hard to keep that up. When she was away (she would save her vacations and go away for like 2-3 weeks at a time) I could really handle it as there were some awesome people in the office. Not sure where any of this is going.

Haha, So many true things here. First of all the lack of language ability will make you depressed and feel isolated. Also, true about the inefficiency of China. In the same amount of time , I do the work of 5 people. Then it ended up i was doing all the work. Then i started to get more difficult tasks, and then i started to review everyone's work and delegate, and (warning: the following is only based on my limited interactions with Chinese workplace) then the entire foreigner versus chinese battle emerged, where the CHinese hate to have people in charge of them who aren't a part of the normal hierarchy or even their country....which is entirely limiting my growth in the company...and I started to burn out and now i seriously am leaving here ASAP when this contract is over. I probably am in the best situation you have here abroad in CHina--a global architecture firm's office doing relatively creative/exciting/environmental work, but the creative and hardworking mentality is not valued as it is in the US--And i find that this will be the one and final conflict that I won't be able to get around. So much of the attitude I find here is 'if i just do what is required of me, then i will have an easy life' and then beyond that they want routine and bureacracy to direct everything. The scope of life is so different.

This whole China experience would would have been so much more positive if i just was traveling and language learning.

Wow, that's kind of shocking - I think most people have the preconception that asians are really motivated and hard working, etc.

same thing in japan. head down follow the crowd, no reward for working hard only for aging (ie, you get a raise for turning 30, or having a kid, not for being productive). not really, but close enough to be annoying.

hasselhoff's experience of tokyo is more odd than mine, i believe because he hung out with a younger crowd (none of my japanese friends would drink til they puked). the offices i have worked at here have always been japanese language only (which is why i can work in japanese). we worked very long hours but efficiency was pretty good in hindsight. my mentor ran (and still runs) a very tight ship and the training i had from him stood me quite well when i went to work in london. oddly i found london to be rather slow-paced compared to japan.

In Japan I worked on every phase of project, from design to dd to cd to site suprevision. not so much client contact, which i regret, but the rest was golden, and undertaken in an educational manner. my boss wanted ALL of the staff to know how to do the whole job, from structural engineering calcs and dwgs, to detailing and making dwg sets for building permits...and luckily there was no hierarchy so i was put in charge of design as often as not. that was great experience, but only possible because i spoke japanese. if i did not then i might have been stuck on making models or just rendering shit (neither one a position i have never held, thankfully).

which is to say if you don't speak the language don't be surprised if you don't get to do very much with an educational value. also don't be surprised if you misinterpret much of what you see. Not speaking the language can leave you with the ability of a child to understand what is going on.

I remember reading some of the NCARB rules for US.. you can get IDP hours if the office has a licensed professional from US. If not, you can get up to a certain amount, i think 260 which accounts for maybe 1 year of full-time work.