Worldtour in China

Feng Shui, Fact of Fiction?

Perhaps some of you have heard of Feng Shui. It is a Chinese system of organizing your home into a harmonious situation. Since I am here in China I thought I would check it out. One of the newsletters I subscribe to is about that subject. You can find it here. The picture on the left is in my office and that is my schedule. On the left you see three coins tied with a red string. This is suppose to bring you money. I put it up about 10 days ago, my girlfriend incorporated them into the knotted red string that you see. I picked up the coins outside the school where I teach once a week, they don't have any foreign teachers. An elderly man had about twenty of these old coins. You see them quite often, they have a square in the middle of the coin. Now, according to the blog listed above you should get them from a prosperous business or they should have belonged to a rich person. Well this man was not rich but he was dress very well for someone who sold odds and ends on the sidewalk. My thinking was that at some point in time they surely were in the possession of a wealthy Chinese person. Here is what happened after I put them up.

A few days later, two mothers arrived at my home enquiring about classes and said they could probably deliver 10 or 11 students. They wanted two classes per week that is 2000 rmb, I'm cheap, 25 rmb for two hours, so 500 per week. A few days later I got a call from one of my former students at another school, my first in Harbin, and she also wanted classes for adults in business English. That would be 1400 per month. I also have had about 5 other mothers show up with their children wanting classes. Pretty amazing! Who knows, coincidence? Or does it really work. If you are interested then check it out, see what happens. I don't do any advertising at all, this is all word of mouth so if these 20 new students materialize, I will have about 90 students. One hundred was a goal I have had for awhile. Six months ago when I moved my apartment and my teaching location I had 40 students. So things are looking good for the future and I probably won't have to do any other teaching outside of my own. It's great to be the boss and as I was told by Dan early on in my teaching, a small school with an owner, teacher was on of the best models for making money. Low overhead, no payroll, just your own efforts. Well, not just me, my girlfriend does the books and is my assistant, she's great. Now all I have to figure out is getting the resident permit renewed in December. I think I can get that done through my first job here, for a price ofcourse.

So I have just about made up for the low salary I gave up at HIT, once I reach 100 students my income will have risen to about 10,000 rmb per month, which is about 1200 dollars, and that my friend in China is a really nice sum, that puts you in the upper middle class.




Larry Rhoe aka worldtour

posted by worldtour @ 7:30 PM