Thanks for your input. Very interesting indeed from a historical perspective!
I will always have a soft spot for Yuncheng of Shanxi as I had taught there with the aid of reasonably competent teaching assistants for a couple of years.Invariably, we did a fine job together as a team, which I couldn't have done teaching alone.
Companies providing FTs with Chinese teaching assistants to middle schools is certainly not a national practice, but Yuncheng is definitely one of the parts of China where this occurs.In this respect Yuncheng is forward-thinking and deserves high praise for serving its high schoolers so well!
I can forgive the shoddy way my agent treated me, including the obvious lies told me, by visualising the students' happy faces in class whenever I delivered my lessons!
Thanks for sharing. I once met the YEV boss at ielts school. That was shortly before he left there to form YEV. He must be really old now. The guy who replaced him at ielts school didn't stay there long. His English name was Felix and he was from Linfen. He left to set up a similar agency in Linfen, but it didn't last long. I guess his local connections were not good enough to obtain any contracts to supply Linfen schools with foreign faces. He came across as a tad arrogant, and appeared to dislike foreigners somewhat.
It's right next to the lake on XiChengQiang, near a new development that was a very cool old hutong with open air noodle shacks in the dead of winter steam rising...all razed for another cloned Vancouver hi-rise.
Yanhu No. 5 Middle School.
Avoid like weaponised Ebola.
Number 5 Middle School in YC is the worst.Imagine a Chinese version of an inner city school. Kids making out in class in the second row, insolence non stop, and when you try to discipline them, they get in your face and threaten you.
China is messed up on an infinite number of levels.
One of them is that parents with any money, even just middle class, will buy entrance to a branding middle school to make their useless sons look good. Then they buy entrance to a university that does the same. Then they buy their job and sit around and drink and smoke all day.
Schools charge more the lower their ck or gk scores are.
Yikes re number 5! It sounds a dreadful place to teach.
Yanhua was bad enough to have sickened IELTS School's flagship FT, "T" from Canada. He had taught grade 1 there for 2 semesters on the trot, during which time he refused to teach 2 classes, as well as showing many classes kung fu movies every class because they were totally disinterested in English. Funny thing was that "Q" from Ghana proclaimed very proudly that he had discovered how to control the very stubborn boys of grade 2, yet he was shunted from there to a junior middle school in the city. I can't figure that one out. Give the TAs their due though, they did forewarn us all how lousy a school Yanhua was, not that that would have been of much consolation to the unlucky pair of FTs to be placed there, except for "Q", of course! He seemed to thrive there!
Number 5 Middle School in YC is the worst.
Imagine a Chinese version of an inner city school. Kids making out in class in the second row, insolence non stop, and when you try to discipline them, they get in your face and threaten you.
China is messed up on an infinite number of levels.
One of them is that parents with any money, even just middle class, will buy entrance to a branding middle school to make their useless sons look good. Then they buy entrance to a university that does the same. Then they buy their job and sit around and drink and smoke all day.
Schools charge more the lower their ck or gk scores are.
This is the 'call in a foreigner' 5000 RMB reward programme for being on a dodgy visa or
breaking the law, a programme that was always around but given bigger teeth starting in
August of 2014. 5k is a huge sum in Yuncheng, 3+ months pay to many. 2 years to the poor
old timers on a pension of collecting plastic water bottles.
A few words about Yanhua Senior Middle School of Yuncheng City:
It only accepts FTs supplied by local agents and you will hate teaching there.
It is the only Yuncheng City high school that takes so-called FTs on dodgy visas, but no black people.
It is a really rubbish private school. Most of the students are low ability. Many of the boys are lazy and horrible.
The gate is locked 20 minutes before the first class after the major morning break to prevent students playing hookey. So, if you've your first morning class after that break, you've to arrive 20 minutes before class to be allowed through the gate. You'll be regularly descending from the 5th floor of one building to ascend to the 5th floor of another buiLding within the 10 minutes break between classes in order to take your next class.
Also several people at the bus station 'reported' seeing a foreigner get on a bus.
This is the 'call in a foreigner' 5000 RMB reward programme for being on a dodgy visa or breaking the law, a programme that was always around but given bigger teeth starting in August of 2014. 5k is a huge sum in Yuncheng, 3+ months pay to many. 2 years to the poor old timers on a pension of collecting plastic water bottles.
People laughed at me when I told them that beginning in August of 2014 that the locals would flip open their phones to call in my whereabouts and activity to the local PSB:
When eating lunch.
At my favourite noodle shop.
That I had gone to for years.
They did this every time I went there which was sometimes twice a day.
I left soon after this behaviour commenced.
People told me I was making it up. Said I was paranoid, that I did not understand what they were really saying.
What more do you need to experience, see, or read about?
When asked what the hell was going on they 'explained' that there was an international conference with many foreigners coming in and so they were checking for drug smuggling. Also several people at the bus station 'reported' seeing a foreigner get on a bus.
Well, this is new.
I had heard of the separate screening lines at major tourist attractions in Beijing, but *never in my many years of taking local buses* to out of the way small villages, did I *ever* get pulled over and out and forceably inspected. Not once. Not ever. I would walk up to the counter, buy my ticket to nowheresville, and board the bus and wait for it to depart.
Did not I warn you all?
Did not most of you ridicule me?
Well look at what is happening...
What you are describing is xenophobia, racism, and pure and simple hatred.
Why are you there?
What do you think will happen if something bad goes down over the islands, if they do this when you take the bus?
Police questioned me getting on a bus...
Which province or SAR or muni?
Police questioned me getting on a bus and later a small army of police pulled over the bus, removed my bags (believe it nobody asked me) tore into the bag like a great big bust was going down. Of course they discovered my underwear and bags of farmland rice.
When asked what the hell was going on they 'explained' that there was an international conference with many foreigners coming in and so they were checking for drug smuggling. Also several people at the bus station 'reported' seeing a foreigner get on a bus.
Now, I may not be the worlds leading expert on Public Relations, how to hold international conferences but it would seem to me that this is the time you DONT want to be pulling over coach buses to drag the foreigner out and pull all the bags onto the side of the road with a small posse of police all excited about the big action while everyone else watching is taking pictures or getting freaked out/excited etc.
I'm mean maybe in the middle of 'welcoming the world' just a suggestion is y'know.. even IF you think its suspicious to see foreigners arriving during the week foreigner are expected and invited to arrive.... maybe.. y'know maybe wait until the bus arrived and the foreigner was exiting and just super quietly do a 'routine bag check'.
I mean granted I don't know 'Chinese ways' but its seems like maybe my advice is something they could try next time.
Aussie ex-China mate of mine commented about how a "climate of fear and
suspicion" pervades China.
This was always so, but prior to 2012 it was manageable. Now it has gotten much worse, since around a year ago this time.
It has become unbearable.
It's basically pre-1978. Intense paranoia. Separate security screening lines for foreigners at public places, and so on.