From Love Club to Landlord Drama
🛫 From Love Club to Landlord Drama: My ESL Life in China (And Why I Left)
Hey, I’m Gary — aka The ESL Traveling Teacher.
I spent nearly a decade teaching English in China, coaching students, building games, ranking in the top 10 on PalFish (out of 6,500 teachers!) — and collecting more wild stories than I can count.
This one?
It starts with an early morning run, a bacon sandwich…
…and ends with a stranger screaming on my sofa.
Because when you live abroad long enough, it’s not if something weird happens — it’s when.
📓 Thursday – Love Club & The Girl on My Sofa
5am. I’m up early. Again. My body clock's all over the place.
I head out for a run — through Soho, past the usual Tai Chi group, and the sword-fighting pensioners in the park.
Yes, real swords. Yes, nobody ever gets hurt.
Try that in London and you’d have the whole borough calling 999.
After the run, I cook up a proper British breakfast: eggs, bacon, toast, coffee. The works. Then a quick nap before class.
10am. Ethan messages.
“Lunch?”
We meet at a local cafeteria. Nothing fancy — just fast, cheap, and full of the usual banter.
By mid-afternoon, we’re fingerprinted into school.
Nana (my Chinese manager) tells me to “be more active in class.”
Meanwhile, I’m sweating buckets because some classrooms feel like actual microwaves.
💃 Love Club? Don’t Mind If I Do
Evening rolls around.
Someone suggests Love Club — one of the expat nightspots where you go to blow off steam, pretend you’re still 25, and dance until your knees complain.
I say I’ll meet the gang there.
Just need to swing home, shower, change clothes.
I walk back to my apartment…
…and something’s off.
My door is open.
😳 “There’s a Woman Screaming on My Sofa.”
I freeze.
Push it open slowly.
“Hello?”
SCREAM.
A woman — young — is sitting on my sofa, shrieking like she’s seen a ghost.
Which, to be fair, I probably looked like.
A guy pops his head out of a nearby room.
“You okay?” he asks in broken English.
“What the hell’s going on?! Who is she?!”
Turns out… she used to live here.
Still had the key.
Landlord owed her a deposit.
She came back to take what she felt was hers.
She had no idea anyone else had moved in.
Now I’ve got an angry ex-tenant in my broom cupboard of a flat, 45 minutes till I’m meant to be dancing at Love Club… and no idea what to do.
📱“Nana – There’s a Situation…”
I message Nana.
“There’s a woman in my apartment. She says she used to live here.”
Her reply?
“WHAT?! I’ll be there.”
Classic China.
And just another Thursday in my 9-year ESL adventure.
🇨🇳 Why I Eventually Left China
This wasn’t the first drama. Or the last.
There were weird landlords. Visa headaches. Lockdowns.
The kind of daily madness that makes you both laugh and lose your mind — sometimes at the same time.
After almost a decade, I realised it was time to move on.
But I didn’t quit teaching.
I took it with me.
🌏 My Life Now: Still Teaching, Still Traveling
I still teach online.
I still build games, run classes, and help other teachers shake things up with tech and AI.
But now I do it from wherever I choose — one bag, one laptop, and one big espresso at a time.
Whether it’s Cambodia, Vietnam, or wherever the Wi-Fi’s good, I’m living the digital nomad ESL life and loving it (most days).
📍Want to Follow My Journey?
Here’s where you’ll find me:
💬 Final Thought
Teaching abroad changed my life.
It wasn’t always easy, and it definitely wasn’t always glamorous.
But the stories? The people? The chaos?Wouldn’t trade it for anything.
(Except maybe a flat with a working lock.)
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