Glenn Fiddles
- 2015-09-02
Maybe I was one of the briefest.
I worked with Hawaiian Bear albeit so briefly.
I arrived at the beginning of the term. Basically everything Yang had told me on the phone was a lie. The apartment was a garbage-disaster. The weather was something like - 30 C. maybe worse. I am a certified teacher for Grade 1. Yang sent me to Grade 6 because all the other teachers refused to go there (it was overflowing with "challenged" children and not manageable). Yang was not cooperative at all.
I lasted all of four days and then returned to the States. Worst of it, I did my due diligence beforehand. Yang did give me telephone numbers of foreign teachers to call to verify the place. They all gave me serious warnings. I refused to believe them. So I returned home to Alabama and never looked back.
Creepy man. Even creepier school. And the city is really poor with bad air pollution. Not inspiring at all.
John O'Shei
- 2015-09-02
'No more blacks' in Huludao? African embassies should try to cause him trouble in Beijing, he's only a relatively low level official in a small town.
Hawaiian Bear 1966
- 2015-09-02
Aloha guys...my two cents Honolulu style.
I wanted to go to China to be with my girlfriend who lived in Jinzhou, near Huludao. I saw Yang's advert. It took Yang almost 4 or 5 months to process all of papers (simple case, white guy, male, certified teacher, TESOL, MA, gob of heenah heenah experience). First time, wrong passport number. Second time, wrong name. Third time, OK! This went on from late May until early October.
I arrived in Huludao on October 8. Yang told me that I had to make up all the classes from September. Something like 100 classes. I worked for three months with the schedule from hell. Yang was rude, unfriendly and uncaring the entire time. Then I got mugged and robbed in my building by a couple of Huludao thugs looking for easy laowai cash. I spent 10 days in the hospital. I had to make up 20 more classes. Another lady wrote that Yang came to school so drunk that he couldn't stand up. I was there on that occasion, or at least a on similar occasion.
The apartment s*cked. I also lived in that filthy seventh-floor walk up that someone else talked about here.
But this was the clincher. At Christmas, a day off under the contract, he told me that I had to dress up like Santa Claus, Andy Warhol style, and parade around the school throwing out candies and then stand in front of the school all day so that the locals could look at me and laugh.
No way. I gave him my bye bye notice that very day. I left a week later. I didn't bother to say good bye to him.
I am glad that he couldn't find anyone. He doesn't deserve to find anyone.
Michael Randie Okimbo
- 2015-09-01
Somebody herein talked about Africans in the Huludao Primary School and Fred Yang.
I worked there from 2007 - 2010 (mid-term), about 3.5 years. I was the longest serving African (I'm from Ghana) in the school. I was think that I was the longest serving foreign teacher.
The deal with the Africans was really corrupt. Yang paid me RMB 4,000 per month for year one. I had to kick back to him RMB 2,000 every month or he would cancel my visa and tear up the contract. The second year he paid me RMB 5,000 per month. I had to kick back to him RMBM 2,500 every month or the same above. Year three, as a result of the parents' compliments and my good student rapport, they upped my salary to RMB 6,500 per month. At least on paper, I had to kick back to him RMB 4,000 every month.
I did. I still managed to live cheaply and save money. I was able to send money back to Ghana to my family. But I became bitter, like someone else here wrote, about the kick back system. I felt like he was a poobah and I was on a plantation.
I told him how I felt. At the end of the term, he fired me because of "student complaints" and gave me 72 hours to leave.
That year, however, something strange happened in Huludao. The Huludao PSB said that one of the other Africans in Huludao was dealing drugs, a guy from Nigeria. So at the same time I was leaving, the Huludao PSB decided that there would be no more "blacks" in Huludao. They cancelled all of the visas for all the Africans in Huludao. So I would have had to leave anyway.
MRO