Ayi vs Nanny vs Housekeeper vs Yuesao — The Shanghai Glossary

Shanghai household labor splits into five recognizable roles. They overlap in practice — one person often does two jobs — but the vocabulary still matters when you brief an agency, write a contract, or compare quotes from friends.

• Ayi (阿姨) — the umbrella Chinese term. Literally "auntie." Used for any female household worker from a part-time cleaner to a live-in caregiver. Polite, common, neutral.
• Nanny — the English term Western families use when they mean an ayi whose primary job is childcare, usually with some English ability and some early-childhood understanding beyond keeping the floor clean.
• Housekeeper / cleaner-only ayi — the role for families who want cleaning, laundry, and meal prep without childcare. In Mandarin she is also called ayi or 家政阿姨 (jiāzhèng ayi).
• Yuesao (月嫂) — the postnatal specialist who lives in for the first 30, 60, or 90 days after a baby is born. A different category entirely from an ayi; different training, different credentials, different price tier.
• Governess — the premium tier most expat families never hire. A live-in caregiver with formal early-childhood-education credentials, often Western-trained, who runs the child's day on a structured curriculum.

A note on a word you will not hear: 工人 (gōngrén). It means "worker" in a generic, industrial sense and is considered impolite when applied to a household worker in 2026 Shanghai. Even if you are translating mentally from a Western context where "domestic worker" is the neutral legal term, the local equivalent is 家政员 (jiāzhèngyuán) on a contract or simply ayi in conversation. Using gōngrén will read as either old-fashioned or condescending depending on who hears it.

The traditional ayi role — the version most middle-class Shanghainese households have used for decades — covers domestic work and light childcare bundled together. She is typically a woman in her forties or fifties from a nearby province, often Anhui, Jiangsu, or Sichuan, with her own grown children, who has worked in Shanghai households for 5–15 years.

A traditional ayi will:

• Cook two meals a day, in a Chinese household idiom — stir-fry, soups, rice, simple meat-and-vegetable plates. Western breakfast and Western dinners are negotiable but not the default.
• Clean a 2–3 bedroom apartment to a daily-tidy standard. Deep cleaning is sometimes extra.
• Handle laundry, ironing, and basic mending.
• Do groceries — either physically at the wet market or via app delivery, depending on the household.
• Provide childcare in the sense of supervision, pickup, snacks, and feeding. She is not expected to run structured play, English conversation, or homework support.
• Speak Shanghainese or Mandarin. English ability varies from zero to "can order a Didi."

The typical 2026 Shanghai full-time live-out ayi in this profile is ¥ 7,000–11,000/month for 45 hours a week. A live-in equivalent runs ¥ 8,000–13,000/month plus room and board. These numbers are citywide medians; Former French Concession and high-end Xintiandi addresses pay 18–22% above.

What the traditional ayi role is not designed for: an expat family who wants English spoken to a toddler all day, a Mandarin-immersion routine on a structured curriculum, or a household where the adults don't cook Chinese food at all. Those are different roles with different price tiers — covered below.

When a Western expat family says "nanny," they usually mean an ayi whose primary job is the child, not the house. The expectation set is closer to a London or New York nanny than to a traditional Shanghai ayi — but the candidate pool, the credentials, and the labor-market norms are local. The role is real, but you have to translate it on both sides.

A Shanghai "nanny" in the expat-family sense usually does:

• Childcare-led day with structured time blocks. Outdoor play, snack, nap, story, pickup, dinner, bath. The schedule is the family's, not the candidate's.
• Functional English communication with the parents and basic English exposure for the child if requested. Note: "functional English" is not "native English." A candidate who can hold a 3-minute conversation about the day is functional; a candidate who can read a picture book aloud with comprehension is one tier above and 30–50% more expensive.
• Light cooking — child meals primarily, sometimes a family dinner. Cleaning is reduced to child-related (bottles, toys, child's room, child's laundry).
• A separate housekeeper-only ayi for the rest of the cleaning, usually 2–3 mornings a week.

The role splits roughly into three sub-tiers:

• Standard nanny — functional English, 3–5 years expat-family experience. ¥ 9,000–14,000/month live-out, ¥ 10,000–16,000/month live-in. Most common.
• Bilingual immersion nanny — fluent Mandarin plus functional English, structured Mandarin-default routine. ¥ 12,000–22,000/month. The right hire for returning Chinese-heritage families who want the child to learn Mandarin properly. See bilingual immersion service.
• Tier 4 bilingual / native-English nanny (premium) — high English fluency (often returning ABCs, ex-international-school TAs, Filipino DH-background, or English-major-trained), 5+ years with expat households, sometimes a teaching or early-childhood-ed background. ¥ 15,000–22,000/month and up. Distinct from the Tier 2 kitchen-level English most Shanghai ayi mean when they describe themselves as "English-speaking."

What "Shanghai nanny" almost never means: a nanny on the British / British heritage-college model who is the child's primary developmental figure and runs their education. That role exists here too, but it is the governess tier and is a tenth as common.

Some families don't need childcare — the children are at full-day international school, or there are no children in the home — but they do want the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and grocery side of an ayi role. This is the housekeeper or cleaner-only ayi. Locally she is called 家政阿姨 (jiāzhèng ayi) or simply ayi depending on context.

Typical structure:

• Daily live-out housekeeper. 5–6 days/week, 8 hours/day. Cooks lunch and dinner, cleans, laundry, groceries. ¥ 6,000–9,000/month. Common in retired-expat or DINK households.
• Hourly housekeeper. 4–8 hours, 2–3 days a week. ¥ 50–100/hour, minimum ¥ 100/visit. Common for international-school families who only need cleaning and laundry covered.
• Live-in housekeeper. Less common in expat households because if you have a separate live-in room and you're paying for it, you usually want childcare from the same person. ¥ 7,000–11,000/month plus room and board.

A housekeeper-only ayi is the easiest role to fill in Shanghai. Candidate supply is the highest, the skill bar is the most legible, and the cultural-translation work is minimal because the role doesn't require the candidate to engage with the family's parenting style. Most placements happen in 7–14 days from first conversation; replacement is straightforward if it doesn't work out.

What to be specific about in the contract:

• Whether "cooking" includes the family's adult meals or only child meals.
• Whether deep cleaning (windows, oven, balcony) is monthly-included or extra.
• Whether ironing is included; some ayi will not iron and that's not a defect.
• Whether the role includes any childcare hours (after-school pickup, weekend cover) — and if so, the hourly add-on rate.

Yuesao (月嫂) literally translates as "moon sister-in-law" — a reference to the Chinese postnatal-confinement tradition of 坐月子 (zuò yuèzi), the 30-day period after birth when the new mother traditionally remains at home recovering. The yuesao is the live-in specialist who runs that period: she cares for the newborn around the clock, supports the recovering mother, prepares the specific dietary regimen associated with postnatal recovery, and trains the family in newborn handling before she leaves.

Why yuesao salaries are far higher than ayi salaries:

• The work is 24/7 live-in for 30/60/90 days. She is on call through the night for feeding and settling.
• It requires specialist knowledge — newborn handling, breastfeeding support, postnatal dietary tradition, basic recognition of newborn medical red flags.
• Yuesao supply is constrained. The credential ladder (gold/silver/bronze tiers, plus formal certifications like 母婴护理师) gates the top of the market.

2026 rates:

• Bronze-tier yuesao, basic certification, 1–3 years experience: ¥ 18,000–22,000/month.
• Silver-tier yuesao, 4–7 years, multiple expat-family postings: ¥ 22,000–28,000/month.
• Gold-tier yuesao, 8+ years, formal advanced certification, English ability: ¥ 28,000–35,000/month and up. Some specialist gold yuesao quote ¥ 40,000+ for high-profile placements.

Standard contract length is 30 days, with extensions to 60 or 90 available if booked at signing rather than mid-contract. We do not give medical advice on this site — the role intersects with newborn care in ways that families should discuss with their pediatrician — but on the staffing-and-contracting side, the yuesao service page covers the credential ladder and contract structure in full.

One hard reality: gold-tier yuesao are typically booked 4–6 months ahead for a target delivery month. Families who try to book at 36 weeks of pregnancy almost always end up in the silver tier by availability, not by choice.

The governess tier is the rarest of the five roles, and the one most expat families will never hire. A governess in the Shanghai context is a live-in caregiver with formal early-childhood-education credentials — usually a degree in early-childhood ed, sometimes Western-trained — who runs the child's day on a structured developmental curriculum. She is closer to a live-in private tutor for the under-8 set than to a traditional ayi.

What a governess role typically looks like in Shanghai:

• A single child or two siblings of similar age. The role is not scalable across many children.
• A structured daily curriculum — phonics, math basics, music exposure, second-language exposure beyond English / Mandarin (often French, occasionally Russian).
• Often paired with a separate housekeeper, since the governess does no cleaning.
• A formal contract with reviewed annual goals, professional-development budget, and a 13th-month bonus.
• Live-in housing on a separate floor or in a clearly defined private space.

2026 salary range is ¥ 25,000–55,000/month and up. The top of the band shades into territory occupied by full-time tutors in London and New York. The candidate pool in Shanghai is small — possibly a few dozen genuinely-credentialed governesses across the city, plus a larger pool of candidates who claim the title but are functionally premium bilingual nannies (which is fine if that's what you want, but the salary should be priced as bilingual nanny, not governess).

When a French family in FFC chooses to hire at this tier rather than the bilingual-nanny tier, the calculus is usually one or more of: a child with specific developmental needs, a parental commitment to a non-mainstream pedagogy (Montessori, Reggio Emilia, Waldorf), or a multi-language household where the third language is the priority. Most expat families do not have any of those drivers, and a strong bilingual nanny at ¥ 18,000 is the right hire instead of a governess at ¥ 35,000.

Putting the five roles in one comparison so the price ladder is visible at a glance. All figures are 2026 Shanghai citywide medians; adjust +18–22% for premium neighborhoods and −5–10% for newer expat pockets in the east.

A few patterns to read off the table:

• The cleaner-only role is the cheapest because the skill is the most replaceable and the supply is the highest.
• The bilingual jump from "functional English" to "true bilingual immersion" is the single biggest premium step on the ladder — 30–50% above the standard nanny tier.
• Yuesao look expensive on a per-month basis because they are short-term: a 30-day silver yuesao at ¥ 25,000 is roughly the same as an ongoing standard nanny at ¥ 13,000/month for two months.
• The governess tier is in a different league entirely and most families should not aim for it.

Which role fits which family depends on hours of coverage, primary job, and budget — exactly the variables we scope before any agency is briefed. Start with the hiring process page, the salary bands page for the numbers in detail, or the services overview for the five placement pillars we work on. If you want a candid 20-minute conversation about which role fits your household, request a consult.