Yes, Michael, your misgivings about the use of personal email addresses in job postings are absolutely correct!

Unfortunately, that symptom only scratches the surface of what lies beneath. These folks often represent schools only in that they learned of an opening at school and just took it upon themselves to snag a teacher on the schools behalf so that they can collect a hefty finders fee. Other times, the school actually asks these people for help in procuring a new teacher. Many times the agent will claim they are employees or administrators of the school, when indeed, this is not true. All sorts of tricks are used in luring teachers from overseas, including endless false promises and misrepresentations of the actual work and living conditions at the school. I could go on and on

Red flags abound in these job postings. One must be extremely cautious when considering their first teaching job (especially) in China. The selected excerpts that I highlighted from these job postings are illustrations of poor turns-of-phrase, amusing misspellings, etc. which can often indicate trouble ahead.

As for the school or companys website, they are often non-existent, or when they do, they are composed only in Chinese (or with laughable English translations), or riddled with inaccurate or false information. Websites are just one more element in the job-search endeavor that usually cannot be trusted. Handsome campus (or area) photos are often used as a substitution for true information. Cosmetics are often the name-of-the-game in China. Its hard to know what (or who) is truly behind the curtain!

Thanks for your comments!