Good luck, and let us know how it turns out!

> Tong Hu Consulting/Yuzhen Group in Shanghai is a teaching-assignment
> contractor. In other words, you sign a contract with them, and they
> farm you out to middle schools (zhong1 xue2) in Shanghai and its
> suburbs.

> Although instructive, the story is a little complex. But I'll try to
> keep it short.

> Needing a rapid extension of my Z visa, and despite some considerable
> misgivings, I signed on with this outfit on the basis of their
> telling me . . .

> (A) that they could obtain the visa extension with a minimum
> turn-around time, and

> (B) on the basis of my C.V. and some glowing references, they had
> obtained a firm job offer from a so-called "key" middle
> school in Jiading, in the northern suburbs of Shanghai.

> Lest I be accused of somehow misunderstanding, I should note that
> they also said this in Shanghaihua in the presence of my Shanghaiese
> wife.

> So yesterday (Wednesday, 25 August) two representatives of Tong Hu
> drove my wife and me to Jiading for what was billed as an informal
> touching-bases, let's-get-acquainted session with the headmaster and
> some of his people.

> But when I got there, it rapidly became apparent that I had NOT been
> hired and in fact the session was a formal job interview. But I was
> "tried and found wanting"--in short, I didn't get the job.

> On the drive back to Shanghai, the Tong Hu representative kept
> assuring us that there was "no problem" (sound familiar?)
> and we were not to worry. He then added that they had rented an
> apartment for us near the school that didn't want me (a little
> crazy?). But this was after we had already informed Tong Hu that,
> because the beginning of school was so close, that we ourselves had
> already rented (paying a considerable nonrefundable deposit) an
> apartment in Jiading. The lead Tong Hu represntative literally pouted
> all the way back into Shanghai.

> This mornng (Thursday, 26 August), I informed Tong Hu that they had
> unilaterally dissolved the contract because of what might be termed
> in Western law fraudulent misrepresentation. They still insisted that
> both my wife and I had "misunderstood."

> At this writing, I still have not been able to recover my U. S.
> passport, along with my green and red books, from them.

> But one of my aces in the hole is the fact that my brother-in-law is
> a judge in Shanghai. I think I'll be okay.

> But let this serve as a warning to Foreign Experts in China and those
> who think they might want to teach in China.

> Thanks for reading!