Justin-
The problem is that you don’t have a bachelors, which is a necessity to get you a working visa, which is necessary for you to teach legally and the school to legally employ you. While, if a school really wanted you, could either 关系 their way around it or just photoshop some lame facsimile of a diploma to give the PSB, this is becoming less and less worth the effort for schools. This summer new legislation was passed making the fines and risks for employing illegal foreigners much more severe. There was also a pretty big crackdown in and around Beijing, Shanghai and even a bit in Chongqing and Chengdu… and as a result a lot of schools that used to hire illegally are not doing so any more.
I would say it’s still completely possible for you to find a job, but you would probably have to come here first. Most schools that deal in illegal hiring and the like don’t do a lot of overseas recruitment because it’s simply too much trouble. Schools that would hire you overseas are doing so because they are generally above board and you technically have to hire people from outside of China due to the whole rigamarole surrounding the Z-Visa. This is a huge gamble on the schools part (They will spend a lot of time and money and 关系 on a new FT before they even get over here, so if the teacher flakes out or fails at getting a visa the school gets burned), so a school just hiring any schmuck with a white face is definitely not going to go to all that trouble.
If you come here you’ll be able to find a job under the table very easily. I know plenty of students and people from Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia who have teaching gigs when they should technically not be able to hold any English teaching job legally, so it’s not hard. I used to be a teacher, now I’m a grad student, and I get job offers almost every day just walking around downtown.
That said, if you legitimately have a passion for teaching, I wholeheartedly recommend NOT coming to China to teach ESL. Stay in Canada, get a degree in education, and if you want to come to China or Chengdu use those actual teaching credentials (Knowing French will make this much easier, as non-English foreign language teachers are harder to come by) to find a job at one of the many international schools there are around. You’ll get paid something between 10x and 20x the salary of your average 补习班 teacher, have far more vacation time, more benefits, be treated more fairly, and above all else given respect and actually treated as a teacher.
Any ESL job you get, especially if you’re teaching illegally like you will be doing, will not be anything close to actual teaching. At best you’ll have a few decent 1-to-1 students or teach some adults and high school kids who actually give a damn while being mistreated, underpaid and generally exploited by your school, and at worst you’ll be paid to be a white-face a babysit kids for a couple hours a week.
Sounds harsh, but I’m speaking from experience. I taught in China for over two years in both the public and private sectors, and now I’m getting a graduate degree in education because I’d like to teach at a real school and make a difference at some point. My two years teaching didn’t give me a whole lot of useful experience (Most schools in Europe and NA will sort of glance over teaching ESL in Asia on your resume, by the way) outside of learning and the ins and outs of how poorly run the English education system is in this country.
edit: internet is really weird today!