nuts to go into a contract job that pays no better

And the timing is as awful as the the idea itself.

Sounds like other than the pay, your current job is not bad (good culture, good boss(?), not too stressful). Like I said, most Chinese are underpaid simply because we are inept at negotiating, we are unfamiliar with how things work in general in Corporate America, and above all, we don't have the bargaining power as most of the time we need immigration sponsorship. Once your starting pay is low, it's difficult to catch up.

What you have here is a step down, not a step up. You let your emotion got the better of you.

If you have been a developer for 10 years and don't have a solid experience in actually doing project management full time, the chance for you to survive a PM consulting job is not good. Yeah most technical people mock PMs but selling snake oil takes talent too.

Unless you are so tired of your current job and life, and are desperate for a change, any change, you are lucky that your manager even try to make you stay.