The only way to know if a school is good or not is to go and visit it, have a good look around, ask some possibly uncomfortable questions if need be.

Telephone and e-mail is useless, you will just be told what they want you to hear.

Remember, never trust a Chinese!

If one can afford to do that at least you won't have to worry about whether they actually pay you or not, haha. You might ,however need to spend the weekend hanging around, so you get to see FT's flats and so forth, which may be miles away from the campus.

Telephone and e-mail is far from useless. if you speak with half a dozen FT's, they probably won't all be lackeys for the bosses.