I am writing this as someone who was in the Yuncheng area for quite some time.

Firstly, I can confirm that the posts by thetruth are mostly correct. If I disagree with a few small points it is only because maybe what affects one person may not affect another.

Yin Xing School (Silver Star School, English translation of the pinyin) is a private school situated to the east of Linyi. It is not, nor has ever been connected to Yuncheng English Village, or Yuncheng IELTS. They did co-operate with an agent called Zhonge Education during 2013, simply to find foreign teachers for the school. This co-operation was I believe rather problematic due to their inexperience and the foreigners they brought to the school being lied to, misled and generally messed around. Obviously Yin Xing was becoming very concerned as their reputation was becoming tarnished and ditched them at the end of the year.

They do genuinely have a license to hire three foreign teachers and at the beginning of 2014 chose to do everything independently. This is not to say that they as a school and indeed some of the foreigners who have subsequently been employed have had issues. I am not taking sides, just giving an unbiased opinion. The two FAO’s that are at that school do try their best to mediate but firstly they are teachers, they have families and other tasks to undertake so foreigners may mistake their apparent tardiness for lack of interest. They have to follow a never ending stream of evolving rules and regulations and so they cannot be blamed for everything.

Things do get lost in translation which in turn leads to frustration and inevitable disagreements. Looking at the latest post from Phil88, I would say its a combination of this here. The school do not need original documents to provide an invitation letter for a z visa initially, they need clear legible copies (there is no point blocking your passport number as that is a key thing they need to apply). The original copies will be needed later to present to the PSB in Yuncheng. Some of Martin Hainan’s comments also come into play. What is fact in one province can be fiction in another. If the school you are applying to asks for these things and you are serious in your wish for the job then do what they ask. It just wastes everyone’s time later if the school is back to square one because of some unfounded fear on the foreign teachers part.

Having said that it is right to be careful where you send documents and to who you do. If you think about it, every time you stay in a hotel they take a copy of your passport. Where is that going to end up? You just never know and sometimes have to just trust people.

Yuncheng English Village are an entirely different story. The post by katz was 100% accurate. They are simply an agent that supplies local schools with foreign teachers. The students pay x amount of money each for this, this goes to the agent and probably some to the school, out of this the foreign teachers salary is paid plus other capital costs. I can assure you though that what the foreign teacher gets is less than 25% of the actual money stream involved. The local students are forbidden to tell the foreign teachers how much they pay (of course they do as they all think we are millionaires as they can do simple mathematics).

With EV, ethics and morals are words which do not exist. They constantly lie to you just to get you out of their face. They only care that they have somebody in a classroom to avoid loosing face with the local schools if they don’t and will pull every trick they can to ensure this.

Be extremely careful with any school in the Yuncheng area, especially if you cannot confirm it is a direct hire school. There is a 95% chance it is connected in some way to Yuncheng English Village.

As for Yuncheng itself, there are worse places to be or work, but there are much better too. The transportation is getting much better but the pollution is getting much worse. It depends on you as a person, everyone has their own reasons for doing what they do. If you want the real China experience you will certainly find it in the counties surrounding Yuncheng. People do stare, they do take photographs and there are surveillance cameras everywhere but it is your own ability to deal with this that will come under pressure.

For a new starter wanting this as a one year immersion you will probably either really like it or will be ticking the days off on your calendar until your contract ends or like others have done and will continue to do so abandon ship mid sail!

One last point, the Teaching Assistants that they provide will have been instructed to monitor you and report your movements back to HQ, send photos of your classes, tell them what you do and who you do it with. Don’t trust them at all. Even if you disassociate yourself with them they will still find something to say. I even found one of mine covertly using her phone to record our conversation in a local restaurant one day. They annoyed me more than EV themselves.