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hey im a college freshman who dreams of one day being able to live and work in Asia(probably china, Japan, or possibly even someplace like mongolia, thailand or singapore). What kind of careers would give me an opportunity to live in one of these countries and be financially successful. It seems almost all american expats majored in economics or something business related, would this be a fair generalization? I love anthropology, but it doesn't seem like the type of field of study that could let literally live in asia as opposed to just spending a year or two there doing research. im currently declared as a double major in anthro and international development studies with a minor in east asian studies.
Also ive these countries are biased in favor of degree holders from large research universities(berkely, michigan, cornell etc.). i attend a small private top 20ish lac with students who are roughly of equal caliber with the previously mentioned universities. does attending a lac hurt my future job prospects in these countries. Im not too attached to my school and wouldnt have a problem transferring to a research university if it would help my job prospects.
Check out an internship at the Asian Development Bank (ADB)(Internships - ADB.org (http://www.adb.org/internship/funded.asp - broken link)). ADB works in most of those countries and an internship would give you greater exposure to possible careers. I believe that most interns are graduate students, but didn't see that as criteria on the web site.
Check with the U.S. State Department for the qualifications that they seek for their diplomatic service.
If you are serious about living long-term in a particular country, use your electives to study their national language and then take one semester for a study-abroad option. Being able to use the local language opens up the number of opportunities.
Agreed with the 2nd poster. Look at summer internships while in school. Once you have a heavily built internship list in say Singapore or Tokyo, I don't see why you wouldn't be hired anywhere in industrial asia.
thanks everyone! I'm really interested in the city of Xining and other cities in western china. Does anyone have any experience in xining? is it nice? is it a good place for an expat? Are there other cities in western china which would be a lot more exciting for an expat? Also, my school offers grants of up to 4000 dollars for students to do internships in Asia, so ill be sure to take advantage of that.
Also the furthest east ive ever been is turkey so im not really sure what asian cities are like to be honest. Id like to work in one that has low drug/crime rates and also isnt disgustingly polluted. Ive heard Japan is better than China in this respect, but i find china to be so much more culturally interesting. Could anyone give me a brief synopsis of the differences in culture and lifestyle between major asian cities? (beijing, shanghai, tokyo, hongkong, Bangkok, xian, etc.)
Chinese cities are on the rise, economically and culturally and I think you could find something there. Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Guanghzou... are becoming world metropolises. China is progressing with the speed of light. Right now they're in the phase of learning and this is the time for foreign expats to take the opportunity and make a career there. I don't see what could you do in Japan, they're very advanced and have all the branches covered.
Can you please elaborate on why you find China more interesting than Japan? Of course, the former has more variety- both geographically and linguistically. for example. Remember, there are many dialects in China
its mostly for the diversity of china. It has more ethnic minorities and rural regions, whereas i think of Japan as being more uniform. i realize theres many dialects in china, and that is kind of something i worried about. But at the same time, im pretty sure theres more people who speak standard mandarin than who speak japanese, which would make it the more versatile language to learn even if not all of china speaks mandarin. i may be wrong about that, but thats just what ive heard
Ok, it is as I thought. But quite a number of people would prefer to speak their dialect most of the time,even if they speak Mandarin fluently. It's kind of a Chinese thing. The Shanghainese dialect is similiar to Cantonese, I've been told.
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