Have they returned post-covid? I'm still not sure what you mean by people you'd want to get away from though. What's wrong with vaccinating dogs? I know someone who knows someone living in Vietnam with an actual business doing something like that
Some returned post covid but they aren't there now. In 2022 the industry was pretty much banned. Even before that though, since around 2018, it had been getting much tougher to open bank accounts and pay electronically. Since I'd first come in 2011 you could open a bank account as a foreigner on a tourist visa living in a hotel but in 2018 I had to jump through hoops to convince a bank in Shanghai to let me open an account. I had a tourist visa and was living in an apartment having just returned to China after 3 and a half months in USA and the seven previous months in SE Asia.
I never opened another bank account after that. Even after getting married to a Chinese and accidentally getting 2 year residency in China because of a lucky clerical mistake. It was just to difficult to open an account as a foreigner in China after that.
Wait, actually I did open a joint account through ICBC with my wife one time, solely for the purpose of showing proof of really marriage to the US embassy for a greencard. We had to make an appointment and they had the whole bank closed down just for us, and a special manager come just to teach the staff how to do it. People don't really do joint accounts in China. Anyways, we never used that account. Just pumped and dumped it for the paperwork to show the consulate in GZ. After getting married I just used my wife's bank accounts and cards. All the money I made teaching illegally was put into her accounts and withdrawn.
Then I remember in early 2019 most of the foreigners I knew got a notice from their banks that they had 30 days to withdraw all their money because their accounts were going to be shut down. Back then 60% of us were working on tourist or fake student visas. The odd time I would end up working for a company with really good connections and they could send me to HK with fake paperwork and come back with a legit work visa but the company had to be really good, otherwise I'd be in trouble if I wanted to change jobs. I'd be tied to that company.
Covid took a toll on teachers like that in China because it happened right at the beginning of Chinese New year. A lot of teachers were out of China vacationing in places like Thailand and Bali and were told by their schools to just stay on vacation because they wouldn't be able to open again for another month or two. Then before most of them came back China suddenly closed the borders to foreigners. The school I had been working at during that time had 9 foreign teachers. All of them were locked out of the country except for me and one other guy from Egypt. Him and I were the only foreigners at that school who were married to Chinese, and we had been enjoying Chinese New Year in the villages with our wife's family. We came back to school in April I think. The pay was increased because we were the only two foreigners but crack downs began to pick up in China. Our school had a pretty good relationship with local authorities but in July of that year the both of us got arrested and spent fourteen hours in a jail. I guess there was a new police Chief or something with a new initiative and all our school's guanxi didn't matter. We both thought we were gonna get deported but fortunately our boss was able to come to an agreement with the police and we were let go. A few months later I applied for another 2 year Q visa just fine but my Egyptian friend was denied a visa in May 2021 after returning to Egypt to visit family. His wife was 5 months pregnant at the time and he even tried to get a humanitarian visa to be able to come back to China before the kid was born but he was informed he had been blacklisted. He ended up meeting his son for the first time in 2023 after he was already a year old. I think he's been back to China since. Anyways, I might have been blacklisted. Now I guess I can only apply in person for a Chinese visa for the rest of my life.
China really squashed the world that existed there in 2022 when Mr. Xi blanket banned supplementary education in China. Only legit foreigners could work in China anymore. Unless you went completely online, tutored a handful of pretty wealthy people, or incurred extreme risk at an underground school you were going home.
The expat life in China that was before is completely gone with the wind now. You gotta be tied to one School. I lived in 13 different cities in my time in China. It was a blast. Now it's not gonna be so much fun. You could get lucky and stuck in a nice place but something's missing.
