I don't understand, how exactly do they control your visa? Do they have your passport, because that's where your visa is, or should be. Do you mean your residence permit? What exactly are you talking about, be specific?

Now would certainly be a bad time to go, however, if they have broken contract terms you have every right to leave, and get your visa back. The truth is schools like this just want to make it very hard for you to leave. In the end though, if your determined, they will have no choice but to return whatever they are holding that is yours.

Schools do this,(even though in the end they can't win), for the sole purpose of discouraging current, as well as furture teachers from leaving. They can't actually keep your stuff, but if your not man enough to get your things, and make a fuss, than certainly they will. You can easily call the PSB, make a stink, and in the end they will return your things. You can try being loud, or just so persistent as to not leave until they give you what is yours. It works, believe me, but you must put your foot down. Basically your letting them walk all over you.

I have zero sympathy for you though, you said you were well aware that they might be bad, and chose voluntarily not to research them. No offense, but that makes you a fool. Why have a bad time here just because it's close to your father? Wuhan has a lot of schools, many much better than this outfit. You really only have yourself to blame, you say you knew better but did worse anyhow. Blame for ending up there lies with you, blame for being a crappy school lies with them. Case closed.

Sankyou I feel for you, but only a little. There are so many bad things posted online about TDM, it takes a bout 5 seconds to find them. Why you did not do your resaearch is beyond me. What annoys me is when I tell someone this, and they say "I looked".

What that means of course is that they simply typed TDM and maybe China into a search engine. Folks you have to use words like "complaints" and other such to be able to find anything often times. However in regards to TDM I don't even think that's the case. It took little effort on my part to find quite a few bad reviews about them. Bottom line, just do your freaken homework, and search exhaustively for any dirt of the school your going to work for. If you find zip, that could be a very good thing, or it could be they changed their name. Hard to know, this is after all China.

As for TDM specifically, I have also warned folks about this outfit. The big wig Woody Ding lives in Canada and has no first hand knowledge of what goes on there. Even if he did it is questionable whether or not he'd change anything, not likely.

Avoid at all costs.

TDM's biggest problem seems to be organisation. As previous posters have stated, the recruiter/owner of the school, Woody Ding, is in Canada, with no firsthand knowledge of the school's working conditions or problems. The recently revised structure involved hiring a new principal for two branches whose job entails compiling schedules and handling problems and complaints from teachers (the most frequent of which concern living conditions at the Hankou branch). But like Woody, the newly hired principal is removed from the problems at branches, and is therefore ineffective at changing anything. The new organisational structure also creates new problems: scheduling, which used to be done in-house, now must be sent to headquarters for compilation, then sent back to the school and the teachers, which effectively doubles the amount of time a teacher has to wait to receive information about classes taught during the week. Teachers traditionally know their schedules on Monday, the night before the new schedule commences. If there are problems with scheduling then the time needed to address and amend these is compounded by the new channels a teacher needs to go through via the school's headmistress, the principal, and back again.
This disorganisation extends to other matters. The authority responsible for changing visas is also removed from daily events of each branch, and is often unaware of new teachers arriving. Several teachers have attempted to secure proper working visas abroad before coming to TDM but did not have paperwork sent by the school in time, so were forced to enter China with tourist visas. They then needed to make trips to Hong Kong to change these, and the school's policy is to REIMBURSE up to 1,000 yuan any costs associated with securing a "z" visa. Transportation, accomodation for at least one night in one of Asia's most expensive cities, and other expenditures associated with the visa run are the teacher's responsibility. As the costs of visa fees for different nationals varies considerably, this blanket reimbursement of 1,000 quai is unfair in the least, and exploitative at the most. It should also be noted that most schools in China cover all costs associated with securing a working visa, where the teacher is expected to work exclusively.
One often finds staggering examples of incompetence with the administrative staff of TDM. The person responsible for handling visas is never sure of how much visas are for teachers working in the school, is not certain of how tourist visas can be extended or changed, gives incorrect information about a visa trip to Hong Kong, and cannot seem to get working permits in a timely fashion for those who have returned from Hong Kong with a working visa. The person who handles outside contracts and scheduling urges overworked teachers to work on their days off to fulfill contractual obligations weakened by teachers who leave. She miscalculates travel times and distances, and sends teachers all over the sprawling polluted metropolis of Wuhan, and if the occasional late arrival occurs because of traffic she becomes inhumane, screaming and panicking. The owner/recruiter, newly hired principal, and outside contract manager all live and work in cozy conditions far removed from the daily reality that teachers experience.
All of this is in addition to the other frustrations one expects to find while working in China: low pay, long hours, a necessity of travel from one public school to the next, pollution and crowded cities, and incomprehensibly slow Chinese bureaucracy.
Having written all this, I think the branch staff at TDM try very hard to work with its teachers. They know that good teachers are the lifeline of their company and their work, and they want good teachers to be comfortable and to stay. But when the branch staff possess little authority to change anything, and when those who should be effectively solving teacher's problems are in completely distant and remote locations, it's easy to see why TDM is a revolving door.