Here's the longer post I promised:

This posting is about the Ruyi English School, or Roy School which is located in Jiagedaqi, Inner Mongolia. Not in Heilongjiang, as its ad says. That is the first of many misrepresentations or deceptions of which the school is guilty. Hmmactually the first lie is that it is even a school at all. In the month I spent in Jiagedaqi I can honestly say I never taught a class at the school or even saw a student pass through its doors. What they do is lure foreigners to their nowhere city and then rent them out to local government schools. This in and of itself is no crime, of course. But I think they should, at the very least, state this fact in their ad.

My experience with the Ruyi folks was not as bad as were those of the two others who have posted warnings here and other sites on the web. I was not tossed out in the cold in January nor was I detained by their police buddies, though I WAS afraid I might be. What happened to me was that about three weeks after arriving there and maybe two weeks after foolishly signing a contract, I discovered I had been deceived and outright lied to and simply didnt want to be around these people as a result. I was also bored silly by their city. I felt as though I couldnt endure even another day in such surroundings and wanted out. Thats when the real problems began.

The deception begins with their ad. Some sections are laughably untrue. There are a few that leap right out at me. The worst is definitely we work hard and play hard. The school is ostensibly operated by a pair of twentysomething sisters who have been given the title of director. In reality their father, a totally classless boor of a man, is in charge. He speaks no English, however, so he only deals with the foreigners when the shit hits the fan, as it often does with these folks. When this happens he mostly blusters and scowls. He is probably the most detestable of this whole crew. Anyway, the younger of the two director sisters is one of the most miserable girls Ive ever met in China. It is very difficult for her to disguise the fact that she cares very little about the school and what goes on there. All she wants is out, preferably to go to America. Which brings in the next performer in this circus: the American consultant for whom the school is named. He doesnt even have the excuse of being Chinese. And if there were certificates granted for being an ass, hed have gotten his with honors. He will outright admit to not wanting to work because, at 58, he feels like he has already worked enough. He relates freely that while in America hes a regular guy, Chinese women find him handsome. He particularly likes teaching the university classes for this reason. He thinks all the young women in the class just plain dig him. (When I told the elder director sister this she burst out laughing and said the guy was more like a grandfather than anything else.) Anyway, my perception is that the miserable younger sister thinks this guy might be her ticket to America somehow and basically follows him around kissing his butt. There is some scheme afoot to get her a corporate transfer visa to facilitate her emigration to the USA. Something about setting up a sister school in America that teaches Chinese and she can eventually transfer to. I cant decide if its pathetic or funny. Of the three of them, the directors and the consultant, two of them worked (at least on school-related business) barely at all rather than hard. The elder sister did most, if not all, school related tasks of which there were quite few because there were no students. While I was there the consultant decided he wanted to be a chicken farmer and actually purchased a chicken farm. (Genius move there, huh? In the middle of a bird-flu scare hes gonna buy a chicken farm. ) Infinitely more time was devoted to that than to anything related to the school. They had stopped bothering to advertise for their school ages ago and even in their tiny city few people had heard of it. As far as playing hard, I dont know how they could even keep a strait face as they wrote that sentence. Except for a few cheesy karaoke places there is absolutely NOTHING to do in Jiagedaqi after about 7:30PM. I do not exaggerate. One cannot play hard in Jiagedaqi even if one wants to. And these folks dont want to. They literally turn the lights out at about 8. (To save money on the electric bill.) Theyre all asleep by 9 to 9:30. Even on the weekends. There were a few attempts at outings while I was there but they were either cancelled or cut short.

Next there is a section that describes how one can either live in a dormitory or have ones own apartment. What is NOT mentioned is that if you choose the apartment you must pay the rent AND a 300 yuan utility charge. In my case that came out to 1000 yuan, fully one fifth of my salary. While the elder director swears this was stated in the contract, I didnt see it and I know I wouldnt have signed the contract if I had. The dormitory was actually their apartment and if you chose that option you had to live with the entire family, which consisted of the classless father, a quite decent Mom (probably the only character in this whole story I still have a positive impression of), the two twentysomething sisters, the consultant and any other foreign teachers who had chosen the dorm option. (When I left there were actually two Canadian couples living at the place.) The apartment was hardly spacious and they actually moved into an even SMALLER one while I was there. But at least it had two bathrooms. The other didnt. Even though it was never verbalized I got the vibe that the family simply didnt get why I didnt want to live with all of them. When I was leaving and during our final discussion, I explained to elder sister that the whole scene was just too weird for me to deal with. Here I am, a 46 year old single guy, expected to share quarters with this whole crew? Where every move I make can be scrutinized by my boss? Where Im not free to traipse around naked or in my underwear if I so desire? What I was told is that they treated their teachers like family. That is until money was factored in, as I discovered. Then family was thrown out the window and business became paramount. (The consultant, I noticed, always locked the door to his room when he wasnt around. Some family, huh?)

So, here I was in the middle of nowhere. Harbin, the nearest decent sized city is 10 hours away by train. It took me exactly ONE half-hour conversation with the consultant to discover what an ass he is. (Ill admit he fooled me on the phone. But our conversations were short and he was playing the role of the salesman. I should have been clued in by the atrocious grammar and spelling displayed in the emails he sent me.) The only other foreigners in sight were a Canadian couple. They are very nice kids. I say kids because they were 19 years old. They were told by the directors to lie and say they were 23. Im sure the schools they were rented to believed they were university grads. Theyre not.
I already felt deceived and trapped. In retrospect it was very foolish of me to sign a contract when I had already seen danger signs. But the prospect of packing my stuff and getting back on that train was too much for me to think about so I just signed it and hoped for the best. HUGE mistake.

There was another incident involving the schools bike getting stolen that also was a portent which I didnt heed. Its too much to get into right now.

My suspicions again were piqued after I gave younger sister my Bachelors Degree diploma. I will regret doing that for the rest of my life. I have never seen it since and got nothing but evasive answers whenever I asked for it. The government has it. Dont worry!

It was when I began my teaching schedule, two weeks after arriving, that I discovered how completely deceived I had been. At this point I became resentful. While being recruited by the girls and the consultant I was sent pictures of classes holding, at most, 10 students, all smiling and looking ecstatic. ( I later put two and two together and figured out that these were the university classes the consultant liked to teach because he enjoys leering at the attractive young women in them.) However, I found out that I had been whored out to a local upper middle school and my entire schedule consisted of 25 classes there. Each held 50-60 students. Anyone with even a little knowledge of Chinese students this age knows that while they are some of the nicest kids youd ever want to meet anywhere, they are little more than exam-taking machines by the time they reach this point in their education. All anyone ever tells them is how life-shaping and important their college entrance exams are and they, as well as their teachers and parents, are obsessed with them. Teachers can lose their jobs if their students perform poorly on the exams. Parents lose a lot of invested time and, often, money, if their child doesnt get into university. However, there is no real Oral English exam. Listening tests exist but they are usually practiced for, and taken with, tapes. My class, therefore, was treated as a break by about 80 to 90% of the students. They were, mostly, not outright uncooperative like some nasty classes I taught at urban high schools in America, but every class was a struggle to get them to talk and at least pretend to be interested. SOME classes actually WERE quite uncooperative. By this I mean I spent more time keeping them quiet rather than teaching. Had I been teaching 16, 18 hours a weeks I maybe could have stood for it. But it was 25 classes, 45 minutes each. I had to speak loudly in all of them and it began to hurt my throat. On Wednesday I actually had 7 classes. Im 46 years old now and it simply isnt as easy as it was when I was younger. Despite all of this, it was the not being told beforehand that I resented the most. Had I known I was going to be doing this I wouldnt have gone.

So, Im stuck in nowheresville with folks I am becoming increasingly unwilling to even look at and teaching classes that, for the most part, Im not enjoying. My diploma has been kidnapped. All I want to do at this point is leave. There was absolutely nothing either director or the consultant could have said to change my mind. (The consultant, however, simply ignored every concern I ever raised with him. He lured me there and then washed his hands of everything. I hope ogling Chinese girls is worth his totally selling his compatriot down the river. ) But they werent about to let that happen. Even though I had not yet been paid, after a month, they insisted I owed THEM 4000 yuan. I still havent quite figured out where that number came from. They said I broke the contract and had to compensate them. I say contract because the school is totally illegal and therefore so is any contract they might try to enforce. (While I was there the Canadian couple needed their visas renewed. Surprise! They were ineligible for a Z visa even though in their ad the Ruyi folks swear they can get them for their teachers.) We had our final meeting literally two hours before my train left. (I had already bought my ticket and was hoping to make a clean break, diploma or no diploma. ) Father and elder sister showed up, unannounced, and again just wanted to talk. I explained that we were WAY beyond talking. They insisted I give them 4000 yuan and I asked if they would have me detained if I didnt. (They had already done something like that at least once.) They swore they wouldnt but I was eying the clock as my train was due to leave shortly. I really didnt know what they would do. (The previous day I had gone to the police and reported to them that my diploma had been hijacked by these folks. The family was pretty stunned when I showed up at their place with the cops. Apparently they didnt realize my Chinese was good enough to communicate my plight to them.. Elder sister stood there, in front of the cops, and swore she didnt have the diploma. I was livid. The cops quickly dropped the whole thing so I KNEW I couldnt count on them for any help.) Anyway, in desperation, I threw open my wallet and showed them all the Chinese money I had, about 1500 or so yuan. I asked them to just allow me to keep 200 yuan to travel with and take the rest. For a fleeting moment I thought I had induced enough guilt feelings in them that they might relent. I should have known better. (Little did they know, and I hope the bastards are reading this, I had a $100 American bill hidden.) They took the money and then instructed me to write out a statement saying I was leaving willingly and still owed them money. I had been up just about all night worrying about this stuff and wasnt even really thinking clearly. The first draft of my little statement apparently displeased Father and he made an angry display of tearing it up. (The whole scene struck me as something right out of the Cultural Revolution where folks were forced to sign statements renouncing themselves.) I told elder sister to just tell me, word for word, what to write and Id write it. At this point the train was due to leave in less than an hour and I just wanted to get out of there. I wrote that I was leaving willingly and that I still owed the school 2700 RMB, or something to that effect. After they had my money and my little statement they suddenly turned nice and even insisted on driving me to the train station and helping me get on the train. I was gone less than a half hour later.

There are a number of lessons to be learned here, some specific to this school and others more general. First, STAY AWAY FROM THIS SCHOOL. If you decide Im just a nasty, bitter American who cant be trusted, keep in mind the others who have been reamed by Ruyi were Canadian and Australian. Their email addresses can be found on the net and at least one of them has already been in contact with me. If you are reading this and are already working at Ruyi, resign yourself to the fact that you will not be able to break their little contract without a lot of trouble. Do NOT be sucked in by their little family act and their we are just two nice little Chinese girls act. I have never seen two nice little girls morph into such evil witches in such a way outside a horror movie.

In general, hold out before signing a contract as long as humanly possible. If you came to China on an L visa and your school tells you to sign quickly so you can be made legal, its total nonsense. Youre ALREADY illegal and the school probably is too and youll remain so even AFTER signing. So it really makes no difference. If you decide youre uncomfortable its much easier to leave if you havent signed a contract. If I had held out a few more weeks before signing, I could have gotten away much easier than I did. Keep in mind, and this is of vital importance, THEY NEED YOU MUCH MORE THAN YOU NEED THEM. Go completely through your teaching schedule for one cycle. See what your accommodations are like. You cant do that in a day or two. Do not be pressured into signing too soon. Many Chinese have a strange ability to instill trust. Perhaps its their gentle exterior. Just keep in mind, no matter what you are told, that there is no logical, or legal, reason to sign quickly. You should also try to get an escape clause built into the contract.

Next, resist the lure of the quiet place with no other foreigners unless someone is going with you and/or your Chinese is good. (And I mean VERY good. I lived in China from 2001 to 2004 and studied Chinese for the last two years I was there. My Chinese is still woefully inadequate.) Its OK to do this if you are at least somewhat close to a moderately sized city. To say China is provincial is the understatement of the millennium. In theory, China has a federal system just like America. Federal law is supposed to trump provincial and local laws. In reality each city is its own little fiefdom. One can ultimately complain to a higher authority but it is difficult and time consuming. (And requires a level of skill in Chinese that few foreigners have. Even if you think you have a Chinese friend, youll discover you dont when it comes to having them help you fight City Hall.) The education laws are theoretically national laws. But they are enforced at the local level. When I brought my concerns about the legality of my school to the local police I got absolutely nowhere and so will you, at least most of the time. My point is that you are totally at the mercy of the local authorities. In a small place local business people often have the local cops and government workers in their pocket or have a relationship with them. (Its an arcane system referred to as guanxi in Chinese.) Most know not to mess with foreigners, but some dont. They are also much more familiar with the reality of Chinese bureaucracy. They know it will be a while before theyre dealt with if they ever are at all.

Finally, dont give your Chinese employer any original documents. I was told, too late of course, to just SHOW them the original but give them a copy. At the very least get a receipt for anything you give them. I swear next time Im going to whip out my camera and take a picture of them with my documents.

To be fair, there are some foreigners who have worked with Ruyi and came through the experience completely unscathed. The Canadian couple who were there when I was swear they liked it. (Though they ultimately decided to leave early.) Its a pretty little place in its own way and the director sisters are capable of being very sweet, until they are crossed. It is very important to know what youre getting into. Consider yourself warned.
Chris
dakelei@yahoo.com