The Rise and Fall of Americans’ China Dreams

In 2014 I and roughly 150 others arrived to work for The Center for Teaching and Learning in China (CTLC), a company that since 1996 had brought a new cohort of teachers each year, mostly from the United States, and deployed them across Shenzhen to teach English in public schools. We were almost all recent college graduates with varying degrees of Chinese language and teaching experience, many of us eager to find opportunities to work in the world’s fastest growing economy.

China was in the midst of blistering economic growth and the impressive spectacle of the 2008 Beijing Olympics was fresh in people’s minds. China was seen as the place to be, a country swiftly rising on the world stage. One young British writer went so far as to compare Beijing to Paris in the 1920s.

It felt like we had arrived in a land of opportunity at just the right time to join in the boom. Before our eyes skyscrapers shot up, subway lines expanded at an unprecedented pace, and technology advanced at a speed that seemed to even outrun the Western countries we had all hailed from.

While not everyone in the group intended to embark on a China-related career, most at least arrived with an openness to the exciting opportunities we had all heard of. Everyone was eager to learn and see more. For some, their trip to China was their first outside of their home country. Yet now only a few of that group remain in China, and even fewer outside the country have jobs that make use of Chinese language skills or relate to China in any way.

2014 turned out to be the final year that CTLC hired any new teachers, and what we thought was the beginning of an exciting new era in China was actually the end. What could have been the next generation of bridge builders between the two countries now mostly only remains connected to China though some happy memories and a continued appreciation for Chinese food.

To understand how this came to pass, I spoke with more than a dozen of my former colleagues. A few major themes stood out: the difficulty in navigating cultural and language barriers, lack of opportunities for foreigners outside of teaching English, an increasingly repressive atmosphere, worsening relations with the outside world, and a change in U.S. perceptions of China. For many, COVID-19 disruptions were the final nails in the coffin of their China dreams.

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While members of our cohort arrived in China with varying levels of previous interest in the country, many of us had been studying Chinese since high school, often in the hopes of securing career opportunities. In the years leading up to our arrival, Chinese language enrollment had been on the rise, and parents were eager to get their kids into classes. Even Donald Trump’s granddaughter, Arabella, studied the language and would later famously sing in Chinese.

Brielle O’Brien, currently a human resources professional in New Jersey, started studying Chinese before arriving in China. Her experience is emblematic of many in the program who started learning before college: “They started offering Chinese as a class at my high school when I was a junior and I ended up really liking it… then when I was applying to college I decided to major in Chinese.” While she personally enjoyed learning the language, she mentioned that her study “was definitely career-driven…The main goal for me going over there was to use my Chinese and practice, improve, and get to the point where it could lead me to a career where I could use it.”

Peter Sorrell, now a translation services manager, who started at CTLC two years before I arrived, had a similar experience, “It was hyped up a lot with people I would talk to… [people would say] ‘oh Chinese and business, that’s really smart that you’re studying that, that’s gonna be useful.’”

Our first impressions of China seemed to track with these high expectations of dynamic excitement and opportunity. John Angarola, a teacher from skyscraperless Washington, D.C. marveled at Shenzhen’s glittering towers. Almost everyone I interviewed mentioned being impressed by the scale and sense of progress with rapid construction, clean gleaming subway stations, and more advanced technology every time they returned.

But as time went on the problems and obstacles became more apparent. The Chinese language was difficult, even for those who had started in high school. The Chinese people we met were friendly but guarded, and closer friendships were hard to forge. Adopting and understanding the local social norms and fitting in as a foreigner could be tricky. English teaching was a way into the country but for many, seemingly a dead end.

Troy King, one of the few to remain in China for the past 10 years, said he “came in with really high expectations with how quickly I would feel out the language… that didn’t happen.” Even those who began in high school expressed frustration. “My language skills plateaued at a certain point,” said O’Brien, “at the end of [two years in China] I still don’t think my Chinese language ability was at the level…for positions that required full fluency.”

Brian Drout, one of the other few remaining in China from the program, found that the challenge of Chinese and adapting culturally was “the experience of [feeling like a] total idiot… the learning curve was very humbling.”

English teaching also wasn’t a position that lent itself toward Chinese fluency. Kirby Imholte noted that “a lot of people were eager to practice their English… it became the default.” When we gathered, our conversations would turn toward what was next for us in China and we often shared the same feeling: “I think the English teacher track is kind of a dead end for a lot of people,” Sorrell expressed. Teaching was a way in, but beyond making slightly more money at a more prestigious teaching position, there didn’t seem to be any way up.

Due to these difficulties and more, the CTLC program had long had a high turnover, with most teachers only lasting a year or two before being replaced by a fresh crop of bright-eyed graduates. However, in 2014, 18 years into the program, that all changed.