Mandarin-speaking nanny

Mon, 2007-03-05 12:56 — Anonymous

Thanks as always to the very helpful folks who run and provide content for this site!

My wife and kids will be joining me here in HK in another couple of months, and I am trying to get a jump start on the nanny situation. Our requirements are a bit different than most. I speak and read Chinese (Mandarin only), and both my wife and I are keen for the kids (age 2 and 6 years, neither of whom know much Chinese yet) to learn as well. As part of this, we would like to hire a Mandarin-speaking nanny. I work 2-3 days/week in the Mainland, and thought this would be a relatively simple matter to arrange, but now I am told by several friends that people from the PRC cannot work as nannies in HK. The few on-line nanny services I've found offer only nannies from the Phillipines and Indonesia, and seem to take a "cookie cutter" approach to matching nannies and employers. A Mandarin-speaker from Indonesia would be fine, but I imagine that the folks coming from Malaysia, Indonesia, etc., to work as nannies in HK are not likely to be ethnically Chinese. My questions:

1. Can you recommend a good nanny service that is more than just a website, and can help to accommodate somewhat unusual requests such as this one? (Don't mind paying a bit more for this service).

2. Any other thoughts on how to approach this problem? Is it true that PRC citizens cannot work as nannies in HK?

Thanks very much for your thoughts!

Nathan

General

Mon, 2007-03-05 13:59 — skmama

Mandarin speaking helper

Hi Nathan,

Yes, they are right. It is hard to directly hire a woman living in the PRC to be a nanny or domestic helper in HK.

I think your best bet would be to try to hire a local domestic helper who is originally from the mainland, or who speaks Mandarin.

If you go here:
http://www.jobs.gov.hk/eng/domestic/employer/employer.aspx and register, you can search people (mostly women) who have signed up to be domestic helpers through the Govt. service.

I did that once (just for information's sake) and there are some who claim "good" Putonghua (maybe grew up in China).

To find one that also speaks English (to communicate w/ your wife) would be very hard. But, that might be good for "immersion".

You can select by where they live, and salary. But, local domestic workers are more expensive than those from overseas. The asking salaries for Mandarin speaking ones are mostly over 4K per month, with some of the more experienced asking between 5K and 6K.

Mon, 2007-03-05 21:04 — Nathan (not verified)