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My wife is working as a Chinese teacher at a private school here in California, and my cousin's wife is finishing her California teaching credential and doing student teaching. 1.How can i become a chinese teacher in public or private school? what are the requirements? To work in a public school you will need a teaching credential (license) for the state where you live. The process is different for every state, but you can almost always find information online. In California we looked on the website of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Then we looked at public school jobs listed on Edjoin, which lists positions across the US. The requirements for private schools depend on the school. Most want a college degree and teaching experience, but Chinese teachers are in demand so the requirements may be lower. To find a job, you can register with a recruitment agency like Carney Sandoe or search by yourself; in California, we found many private school teaching jobs listed on the website of the California Association of Independent Schools. 2. How can i get a teacher license? Every state has its own credentialing process; some are easier than others. In California, getting a teaching credential involves taking college classes for several years and doing many hours of unpaid student teaching. This was not feasible for my wife because her English is not good enough, and not feasible for me because I am the primary wage-earner in our family. So we only applied to private schools. 3.is chinese a desirable language to learn? How will the private tutoring go? Chinese is in demand in California, where a lot of our economy depends on trade with Asia, and Chinese immigrants are plentiful. In some areas it is replacing French/Japanese/German as the foreign language of choice after Spanish. We have no experience with private tutoring, but another option you can explore is teaching at Chinese Saturday schools for children of local Chinese and Chinese-Americans. We found a few hourly position around Southern California at this kind of school, but some schools were more professional than others. If you end up having to design curriculum, my wife and I recommend the "Zhongwen" textbook/workbooks. 4. What else can i work as when my only skill is speaking chinese? Medical/court translator? Chinese restaurant cook or waiter? Otherwise I'm not sure... Having observed my wife and cousin's wife enter the world of teaching in America, I would like to answer one more question: 5. What is the hardest thing about being a Chinese teacher in the US? The most difficult thing that we have run into is the differences in workplace and educational cultures between China and the US. In China the workplace is a pretty relaxed place where people can have comfortable relationships and personal conversations with co-workers, but in the US you are expected to be professional and careful about what you say to other people, to show how hard you work all the time and never complain or talk about how busy you might be. Attitudes toward classroom education are very different in the US. In China, students are generally quiet in class and respectful of the teacher, and pushed by their parents to do well academically; in the US, we've found students need to be entertained and constantly reined back in, and will openly question the teacher during classtime. It has taken time for my wife to adjust to this type of workplace and classroom, as much as she loves being with students and supporting them in learning Chinese. Also, I would recommend that you try to find work tutoring the children of foreigners in Shenyang. This will give you some experience teaching Chinese, and also expose you to the kind of student you will be teaching in the US. Hope this helps.