See that's what I don't understand about most of the foreigners here. Every (secondary) school has some kind of problem. This is China, not the US or any other country we may be used to living in. Things are done differently here, get over it!

I'm not defending the Chinese way. It sucks, and it's horrible. Probably the only way things would be like "home" would be if a company was ran entirely by highly trained foreigners at every level. Why would someone want to do that here? It's not needed! If there was some kind of benefit to having an elite class of foreign staff, then I'm sure it would have caught on by now. But it's much easier to pay a Chinese person 1/5th of what you'd pay a foreigner, and they have to do twice as much work!

Everyone who gets screwed over here pretty much gets screwed over for one of two reasons. The first one being the school is just total crap and uses the visa as leverage. If that happens, you don't talk to your manager. A foreign manager at an Aston is technically an assistant to the Chinese manager. They're just there to make sure the foreigners are being taken care of. If you have a problem, you need to bring it up with a regional director. They'll get things done quick for the most part. Though I've never heard of an Aston doing something like this (but it happens a lot with other schools in my city).

The other is someone doesn't read their contract fully. Yes, they'll try and take advantage of you, but it's your own fault if you let them. You know you don't have to do stuff. You're adults and you can say no. If you wanted to, you could even sit down and go over the contract with them so that understand they're not going to be able to screw you over. Otherwise, why should they treat you differently than all the other newbies who just wanna come to China and get laid?

Like someone else said... from the sounds of it you guys would wanna close basically every school here. Not gonna happen. Even though these places aren't prefect, they're good at what they were designed for. An opportunity for people to earn a living in China while traveling. With that in mind, Aston does a pretty good job at keeping you happy as long as you're smart and assertive enough to keep people from trying to work you over.