No, obviously he didn't find the time to do so. He is training centre gave him too much unpaid overtime work, and when he complained they told him to "bang" the hard disk of the company computer.....Hahahaha

I just hope the scrapings of barrel bottoms, or even the skimming of barrel tops, the grabbing of money, the dishonest businesses, and the lack of long term, or even short term planning, will not inhibit me from finding the Chinese wife of my dreams, by all means necessary. Apart from hard cash that is, because I won't have any. It's China in eight days time for me, and I'm so excited.

Oh, HerpityDerp, why don't you just post under your old moniker, SanMigs?

Just can't stay away.

Heh

I just read an article suggesting that more foreigners are leaving china than arriving. This squares with my observations over the last 5 years. If you look at scammers like EASYTALK mentioned in this OP and realize that its become commonplace or even the 'standard operation procedure' to use foreigners, scam them and game them then I can see why.

But at least from my city I've seen a change and I think its positive. My friends in the official gov circles (yes, believe it or not I have a teeny tiny bit of 'guanxi') kept referring me to public school jobs and only those. And its now obvious why because those do actually have to follow reasonably strict guidelines, pay on time and complaints will be taken fairly seriously. they do visas 'by the book' and have a bit of a low tolerance for bad behavior. Which is a great thing if you're a sincere ESL presenter whos there for a purpose. Maybe a bad thing if you're there to spend nights with other foreigners in a laowai bar getting drunk.

So i thought that was interesting the only recommendations they'd give me were the public school and the university. Which pay less. But do they? IF you work for the aforementioned 'Easytalk ETI' type places they will not be paying 8000 (or whatever the promise) but somehow scam it to 5000 a month if you do the math, the deductions, the games, the gaps, then get dismissed or quit because of it.

I'm not sure there is any proper solution but I just know that I've seen about half the foreigners leave China. they've gone back home or a few to Southeast Asia.

The remaining ones who are good people are now avoiding training centers entirely and almost only reorganizing into public schools or the local university OR have started their own private businesses

Whos left?:
- Well sadly still a number of 1st time arrivals who just simply don't know any better and signed with some 'Easytalk' type of place and for a month arrived delighted and enthusiastic because they have no idea. We were all them at one point in our lives here.

- The traitor sell-outs. working for training centers as recruiters or even 'managers'. which means they've kowtowed to some rip-off artists to sellout their own. and to sell out and cheat local working poor chinese too btw.

Its one thing to be a bewildered trustworthy arrival who often doesn't even know the depths of schemes anyways and is just trying their best and learning whats happening (takes some a long time).

But oh how i'd love to post names and photos of the sellout traitorous loawai who willfuly and knowingly helped the cheaters. and let me say it again - these cheater centers scam and cheat and rip-off hard-working local Chinese teachers and TAs and their office workers just as much as foreigners too.