I was looking into a summer internship in China. I saw one place who offered compensation of Room, Board, ect… plus 2000 RMB a month. It sounded good until I converted the currency and saw that that only it only comes out to roughly 260.oo USD! Does that actually go a long way in China? I know I would blow through 260.00 really quickly in the US.
I think I would look the “deluxe” package. That price might really just be a 3 walls and most of a ceiling.
Keep searching.
Welcome to China! I am a Chinese graduate of Industrial Design. Which cities you will go to for your internship and which companies?
Yes the cheapest rent could be 2000RMB, and food may be even cheaper as well, because of the rate of money.
A while ago Taiwan’s Nova Design was pretty active in looking for foreign interns or “exchange designers”. Maybe you can try that.
a word of caution to designers who were born and raised out of china.
Be careful of these “internships” that mainland companies offer. I am not saying all of them are shady, I am sure there are good companies offering honest programs and such, but chances are you wont get any solid employment after your internship, you’ll just be replaced by the mainland designer who has studied your design skills while you were in their program.
Before any chinese designers here react, I am sure there a re decent and brilliant designers from China, but the majority of the local designers I have met did not think twice about running my designs on a light box and passing it off as their own.
This is the truth and you must face up to it.
and 2,000 rmb for a foreign designer ( make no mistake that during your internship, you will be doing fulltime design work) is way too low. I beleive that the minimum salary for a foreigner is at 5,000 rmb.
Not to brag but I am getting 14,000 rmb a month, but consider this, I am still going to resign because I cannot stand other people plagiarizing my work so blatantly and studying it, preparing for the day they will kick me out when they know what I know.