That this board is racist is an absolutely unqualified statement and not supported by any reasons the poster has given whatsoever. Seems to me that the poster does not know what a (real) "racist" is.

i'll echo KJK's words and the fact that many chinese employers' contractual agreements must be re-written. we shouldn't buy into their "trust" and all other kinda bullsh*t. according to paul, we should just sing the unpro and one-sided contracts just because we are great teachers and the farce clauses in will not apply to us. paul, with all due respect to ya, would you sign your death penalty that'd be based on the opinions and decisions of a bunch of law students??? just imagine there's your ex in that class.:)

paul, no disrespect but i've been offer a sh*tload of contracts in past few days and none of them remotely resembled the actually standard foreign expert contracual agreement in china. not that the SAFEA contract's a real pro one, but at least it has attempted to protect both parties. just imagine you fly 1000s of miles to a country where after a short while you're told you're not good 'casue your eyes aren't blue enough and students want the eyes and the hair of a different color than yours.

cheers and beers to the 20 million blond blue eyed canadians that kiko from chongqing's meten company has been dreaming about :lol

Real ESL teachers needn't worry about contracts. They do an honest day's work for their pay.

I take it 'Paul from Canada' is a real ESL teacher teaching EFL in China, in which case he's doing a job that his qualifications are inappropriate for. As a 'real ESL teacher', he should be teaching English effectively to immigrants who are not native speakers of English in a country whose first language is English.
It is apparent from his username that he feels the fact that he's Canadian is worth stressing to add weight to his casting aside as trivial of what I would call evil and illegal contract clauses that compromise employees' rights. From his words, I suspect he's incahoots with a dishonest boss of a training centre, and hence he is trying to play down the unfair clauses in the teaching contract that were previously posted in this thread. If you listen to his words, you are as screwy as said clauses, in my opinion.
My penultimate point is that China has allowed its students and their parents to have far too much say in how teachers teach and which ones are dismissed. Since when have students and parents en masse become qualified to assume the role of what teaching inspectorates do in the West? Unlike said professionals, they are both ill-qualified and inexperienced in matters of teaching. That's one of the principal reasons why the Chinese education system is in such a mess.
Finally, let me say that Chinese education providers as a whole focus too much on how they can generate increased profits for themselves through providing education. They should focus more on trying to improve the quality of the education they provide through the teachers they employ. Lighting up key middle schools in the state sector with neon lights after dark to advertise their existence is a good example of the missplaced priorities of school principals in China, besides being an energy waste!
To sum up, 'Paul from Canada' would like to justify screwy clause in teaching contracts to us, but he cannot succeed in doing so!

In case you haven't noticed, this board is racist. I hope the enlightened ones can save us!

What Turnoi doesn't get is that the reason such contracts are offered to foreign teachers is to prevent Chinese employers being screwed by wily foreigners who come here to make good money teaching irresponsibly and lazily. Real ESL teachers needn't worry about contracts. They do an honest day's work for their pay. It's the pretenders here that need to worry about their disappointed students' complaints, and rightly so. China needs real foreign teachers, not skivers after easy money!