My name is Lewis and I’m a new teacher in Wuxi this year. I’m from Manchester, UK and have lived there all my life. Before JESIE, I had very little experience in being in front of a classroom. Obviously, the first few weeks were quite a shock to the system. My background is in history, which generally manifests itself in reading large, boring books, which isn’t exactly closely linked to teaching Chinese students how to speak English. However, I have found the staff at JESIE to be quite supportive in both the academic parts of the job and the more mundane aspects involving housing or medical checks.

I chose to apply for a job with JESIE after reading many of the positive testimonials and speaking to a few other foreign teachers, who only had positive things to say. I was drawn to Jiangsu (and Wuxi in particular) because of my interest in the Taiping and my desire to see some of the distant places I’d only heard of in books. While it was a hard adjustment, I would encourage other people who want to work in China to do as I did.