Welp, new happenings at Best Learning. To the list above you can add: confiscating passports.

Now they aren't just taking everyone's passport. It's if they give you a loan, they take the passport and you don't get it back until it's paid off. ('Course, that part, the getting it back part, hasn't happened yet, since this is new.) A lot of new arrivals are broke, else they wouldn't have taken the job; so of course they need a loan, or they aren't going to be able to afford to move in anywhere. (Especially bearing in mind you won't get paid for about 6 weeks after you start.) Combine this with people getting paid less than Best Learning advertises, and with the HR folks' real estate agent friends steering idiot noobs into 4000-5000 kuai per month apartments with 6 or 7 months rent up front, and they've basically got you by the balls for, depending on how fast they take back the loan (notice, I didn't say how fast you pay back the loan), at least 2-3 months, maybe a lot longer.

You might say "but they have to make sure people don't just take off with their money!" And sure, that's a big risk, especially in the illegal visa segment. But they deliberately make the risk bigger by steering teachers into shitty apartment deals (probably for kickbacks, just guessing on that, though). And if they just handled the whole apartment thing themselves they could eliminate the risk entirely.

Taking passports is what the worst employers in the world do. It's like the universal number-one "run away now" sign. It's a practice associated with slave-traders more than anything else. Maybe their intent isn't that nefarious; but they don't exactly have the best history of trustworthiness.

NOTHING GOOD EVER HAPPENS AFTER YOU SURRENDER YOUR PASSPORT.