Professor Huang Haijun, a.k.a. Harry
Vice-Director, Foreign Affairs Office
Zhejiang Institute of Science and Technology

If you are teaching in China, and you are not Chinese, your FAO (Foreign Affairs Officer) will be the most important person in your life.

What is the main purpose of education? I mean what you learn in school, but I also mean what you learn outside of school. Before you begin school, and during, and after, what is the main thing your parents want to teach you?

How to live in the world. How to do things for yourself. How to think for yourself. That is the goal of all education.

I was 36 years old. I had a house, a job, plenty of interests. All the things you need to live your own life and claim you are an adult.

Then I moved to China.

I could not read Chinese, I could not write Chinese, I could not speak Chinese, and I could not understand spoken Chinese. So, how I could I do all the things I had been doing all my life? How could I "be an adult" when I couldn't communicate even the simplest thing?

That's where the FAO becomes important.

The FAO gets a foreigner a visa. A job. A place to live. And the list goes on and on. So many things that you don't even think about in your daily life. The foreigner who first arrives in China needs help with every single one of them. In a way, it's like being a child again.

I know one man who can answer every question I have, and that's Harry. His mind is a treasure trove of knowledge, and if I ask some obscure question he's never been asked before, such as how to import a cat, he can find the correct answer quickly and make it happen.

That's not why he's on this website. The above reasons demonstrate his talent and his intelligence, but that's not why he's listed here.

Harry is the first friend I made in Hangzhou, and the best. Not for what he's able to do, but because he's always willing to do it. Happy to do it. He genuinely enjoys helping people, and I need all the help I can get. He's the biggest reason I feel so welcome in Hangzhou.

If you're a Westerner considering teaching in China, your point of contact in the Foreign Affairs Office at your school will be the most important person in your "new life." You will not find a better one than Harry Huang Haijun.

Thank you, Harry. I wish I could repay your kindness with more than just a web page, but I guess it's a start.