monkey er.. ‘modeling’ jobs are cash n go, I’ve never heard of a foreigner being contracted and given a visa for one of those gigs, it’s sorta like – you get hooked up with something, do your prancing around with a smile, *hopefully* get your full fee, and that’s it.
You can’t come to China without a work visa and easily change to a working visa either, if you were here on a travel visa and got a job, you’d have to do another exit/entry – minimum to HK, possibly to your home country.
Your best bet is to get a working visa before you come. You could also get a travel visa and pay the cost of changing to a work visa if you are willing to eat the cost (it will take a bite of whatever teaching gig you land, which typically wont net a whole lot per month relative to cost of exit/entry unless they cover it…) but as WoodWERD mentioned above, there are tougher restrictions on nationals from countries that don’t speak English natively than those that do.
If you’re not hurtin’ for cash, another point to make, is that you can typically get better jobs while you’re here than when you’re searching from abroad – so if your goal is to live here, rather than earn money, maybe it’s better to physically be here while searching 😀 Just depends on your situation.