"If you have any plans to have good times in Suzhou, avoid Changshu International School – (CIS so called) at all costs. It’s an uncaring, unprofessional school and a total waste of time for a professional teacher to work there. The mostly untrained staff is composed mostly of egotistical admin, occasional drug users or making a side line in drug dealing. There are a few hardworking teachers who do excellent work under abnormal circumstances and that is a tragedy. Because of their current odious reputation, they have now resorted to hiring unqualified, non-native speakers to fill teaching positions that legally may only be filled by native language speakers and giving them fake business or tourist visas. (This may be cost related, since it is cheaper this way) They constantly have complete turnover of foreign staff throughout the year and are always looking for new naive recruits or dumb victims. Most are recruited through the duplicitous and fraudulent Suzhou Boren HR Consulting Company and are told that Changshu International School is new, with high level of academics and support services. Instead, they find that they are posted to a school that is 8 kilometers from the closest city and based in a rural and filthy farmland area. (Even taxis refuse to go there after 9pm, so good luck going back after you have a late dinner) If you choose to live on campus, you have to listen to the alarms going off at 6am in the morning on your days off and even on holidays you are blasted by constant marching music in the early hours. If you choose to live off campus, you have to take broken e-bikes provided every morning at 7am in heavy smog.

The amount of lies and deception that the school puts out is so much that the teachers’ very quickly just count down the time of their contracts, so they know when they can leave. When you do decide to leave, they can be very vindictive and will usually give you a bad reference, just to make it difficult for you to get a new job. Every qualified teacher that they have ever had has quit after a 1 year contract and those who stay treat the position as a joke. It is well known in the nearby city that this school is a sad parody of a learning institution. It is in the middle of an undeveloped area (mostly farms - use Google map to check), with only one long and uncomfortable single bus route connecting it to the nearby city. The so-called International Department is run by an incompetent, dishonest and totally amoral management team that will lie to your face when they are asked for any help, perfectly represented by a lying two-faced rat called Cory. They have in the past kept a qualified teacher on a tourist visa for a full contract year and made him leave the country every 3 months to get it renewed, at his own expense. They made no attempt to get him a work visa, even though it was a legal contractual requirement. He eventually left, one hopes in utter disgust at their nonchalance and malicious incompetence. They have also in the past promoted a clueless Senior Teacher to a position he was totally unsuited for, causing many problems in the school until he left. The list goes on and on. Just spend time in the city talking to the many ex-teachers to get the full scoop.

Changshu has many other fine schools and it is sad that Changshu International School has cast such blight on their image. I hope that this message can stop just one more person who might be caught by their lies. You have been warned."

Yes, thanks very much for warning us.

I have to say I'm very surprised that the visa illegalities are occurring in Changsu City of Suzhou. It cannot be described as one of China's many "backwater" belts!