I will try to answer some of your comments now that I have heard from my colleague who is still employed at her CWI Children's Palace in the very large city where she lives.

Re indoctrination, the children come indoctrinated. She tells me that they are good little Marxists to the highest degree. Part of her lessons to the older young children was Chinese geography (look at this map? what country is this?) and she did Asia and she did Taiwan, totally unsuspecting, and they all, these little ones, blurted out to the last one that "Taiwan is a province of China near Fujian". Blah-blah-blah.

Then they did the holidays and of course Easter cropped up and she had to teach that this is the day when little children all over the world go looking for rabbits and colored chicken eggs. She was internally livid.

Christmas the same, etc., etc.

In the singing and games class in Chinese, they are taught the Internationale in Chinese and pictures of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Chairman Mao and the others abound in the building.

It is the Party's Children's Palace and the rhetoric is in tune with the title of it. No one should be naive. It might as well be North Korea for all the originality involved.

But most of the facilities are huge and some are outstanding. Parents can observe the classes as they wish and the teachers are monitored and held to a standard of some kind.

But, as my friend says, in five years she has been paid on time all the time. Her housing is probably the best of a foreign teacher in the city and visas, paperwork, etc., are handled quickly and efficiently. All and any problems are quickly papered over.

Teachers at her CWI have been terminated for being slovenly, for arriving late or not arriving at all, or for wreaking of alcohol around little children. Because its little children, there is an extra level of vetting involved -- just be aware of that.

But there is great camaraderie and the other Chinese teachers are warm, welcoming and helpful. She has gone over the age limit now and in spite of provincial rules, they are still keeping her, basically I think, until she is too old and infirm to work anymore. The parents adore her as do the little ones and her presence has increased traffic -- not too mention that in her province, the government tends to rigidly enforce the five-year rule, which at least in her case, seems to have vanished into thin air.

The OP, if you can cut it, now that you know the modus operandi, I would surely do it. I considered my own misery every day and her great happiness every day and knew and realized that I had been a great fool in taking the uni job.

All the best.