I have been at Ef Fuzhou for the past year and plan on renewing my contract. My Dos and I as the senior teacher try our best to look after the interests of the foreign teacher as well as recognizing that this is a money making endeavour. I went to EF Fuzhou because the university that I worked at tried their best to have me evicted from this country. They broke many of their contractual obligations and instead of making good on their mistakes they pulled my work visa. Not only did they pull my visa but they refused to give EF the letter of termination making it extremely difficult to apply for a new work visa. After reading through many of the posts I really have to question why it is that people are not recognizing the fact that there will be bad experiences as well as good. Working with the chinese management is difficult many times for they have a different mindset. It is the DOSes and senior teachers responsibility to act as buffer between the teachers and the chinese staff. Many foreigners who have been here awhile begin to think lke the chinese and see the foreigners as an easily replacable commodity which is not true. Foreigners coming here should realize without them there is no school. To be treated poorly and to accept it or to say that all places are exactly the same is not accurate. They pay me well at EF Fuzhou I will not deny it, but they pay me because I fought for what I wanted and remind them often without the foreigners they have nothing. I do not pay lip service to EF International because its my job, really I do not care what they do in Beijing or any of the other cities. I do care though about EF Fuzhou because that is where I work and try to make a difference. I am not a foreign monkey and refuse to teach classes where they want one. My CM accepts that but only after many extensive conversations.
I am sure there are many "crappy" centres in China just as there are many crappy DOSes, crappy teachers, crappy apartments, crappy living situations and so on. My experience as well as a few others here has not been the case. If you want to offer your opinion about a place at least do so on the ones you have been at and not claim all of the are the same.