Tanya Davis fled Jizhou No. 1 Middle School one winter morning in March before the sun rose over the surrounding cotton fields covered with stubble from last fall's crop.
In the nine months Davis and her boyfriend had taught English at the school in rural north China, they had endured extra work hours, unpaid salaries and frigid temperatures without heating and, on many days, electricity.
Hearts pounding and worried their employer would find a pretext to stop them leaving, the couple lugged their backpacks, suitcase, books and guitar past a sleeping guard and into a taxi.
As they drove away, "the sense of relief was immense," said Davis, a petite, soft-spoken 23-year-old from Wales. "I felt like we had crossed our last hurdle and everything was going to be OK."
It's a new twist on globalization: For decades, Chinese made their way to the West, often illegally, to end up doing dangerous, low-paying jobs in sweatshop conditions. Now some foreigners drawn by China's growth and hunger for English lessons are landing in the schoolhouse version of the sweatshop.
In one case, an American ended up dead. Darren Russell, 35, from Calabasas, California, died under mysterious circumstances days after a dispute caused him to quit his teaching job in the southern city of Guangzhou.
"I'm so scared. I need to get out of here," Russell said in a message left on his father's cellphone hours before his death in what Chinese authorities said was a traffic accident.
As China opens up to the world, public and private English-language schools are proliferating. While most treat their foreign teachers decently, and monthly wages can run to US$1,000 plus board, lodging and even airfare home, complaints about bad experiences in fly-by-night operations are on the rise. The British embassy in Beijing warns on its Web site about breaches of contracts, unpaid wages and broken promises. The US embassy says complaints have increased eightfold since 2004 to two a week on average.
Though foreign teachers in South Korea, Japan and other countries have run into similar problems, the number of allegations in China is much higher because "the rule of law is still not firmly in place," said a US embassy official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"A number of substandard English language teaching mills have sprung up, seeking to maximize profits while minimizing services," the US House of Representatives International Relations Committee said in a recent report on Russell's case. These institutes have become virtual "`sweatshops' where young, often naive Americans are held as virtual indentured servants."
Davis said officials at her school in Hebei Province piled on classes without compensation, dragged their feet on repairing leaks in her apartment and would deduct sums from her US$625 monthly salary for random taxes and phone calls that were never made. These ranged from US$30 to US$85, she said.
She recalled nights without electricity when there was nothing to do but sit in candlelight.
The more "we let them get away with, the more they tried to get away with," said Davis, who now teaches piano in Beijing.
Numbers are hard to track. The Education Ministry said there was no record of how many language schools exist, because local governments administer them. Education bureau officials in Bei-jing, Guangzhou and Shanghai -- China's major metropolises -- did not respond to telephone and fax requests for information.
China is in the midst of a frenzy to learn English, spurred by its emergence as an economic powerhouse and the approach of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The education system and privately run cram schools have ramped up to cater to the explosive demand for native English-speaking teachers.
"The market is huge," said Frank Dong, 38, manager of the American TESOL Institute in Bei-jing, which contracts about 100 teachers a year from outside China. "There is now a tremendous internal need that drives Chinese people to improve their English."
Wages offered range from US$250 to US$1,000 a month for an average of 20 hours per week, with overtime that varies. Housing is usually provided, and many schools promise about US$1,000 in airfare home upon completion of a one-year contract.
Jobs offers teem on the Internet. On Dave's ESL Cafe, one of the most popular sites, more than 340 were posted in three months, ranging from positions in prosperous Zhejiang Province in the east to the poverty-stricken grasslands of Inner Mongolia in the north.
But also on Dave's ESL Cafe is an anonymous warning from a teacher about a school in China's south.
"They will use you, abuse you, cheat you, and disrespect you," it says. "You will hear it all when they want you to sign the contract. Then after it's oh sorry that isn't in your contract or a bunch of excuses that go on and on."
There is no standard rule on contracts -- some are in English, some in Chinese.
John Shaff, a graduate from Florida State University, said everything went according to his English-language contract at Joy Language School in the northeastern city of Harbin -- until a disagreement over his office hours erupted into a shouting match on the telephone with a school official.
A few hours later, several men led by Joy's handyman showed up at his school-provided apartment, physically threatening him and cursing him in Chinese, said Shaff, 25. About 10 minutes later, they left, and soon, so did Shaff.
"They were all men who would have been formidable to fight," Shaff said in a telephone interview from San Francisco, where he now lives. The manager of the Joy chain did not respond to interview requests.
Like Shaff, Darren Russell had a disagreement with the manager of Decai language school in Guangzhou, where he had been promised 20 hours of classes a week. Instead, Decai had him teaching at two schools, where he put in up to 14 hours a day and oversaw 1,200 students, Russell's mother, Maxine Russell, said in a telephone interview from Calabasas.
The school had troubles with foreign teachers. Two had quit by the time Russell showed up, and a former Decai employee, a Chinese woman who spoke on condition of anonymity, said she left because she was asked to recruit foreign teachers by offering attractive contracts that went unfulfilled.
In April last year, sick from bronchitis and exhausted from the work hours, Russell told manager Luo Deyi he wanted her to lighten his work load. An argument ensued, Russell resigned and threatened to tell police Luo was operating illegally, the former employee said.
The school then moved him into a low-budget hotel. A week later he was dead. Police told Decai and Russell's mother that Darren had been killed in a hit-and-run traffic accident. The body was shipped to California.
Maxine Russell, however, said Chinese authorities could not provide consistent witnesses and a time of death. According to the congressional report, which was the outcome of a family request to look into the Russell case, a California mortician who handled Russell's body said he had suffered a blow to his head and his body did not have bruises and fractures consistent with a car accident. The mortician, Jerry Marek, is a former coroner.
While Maxine Russell and the former Decai employee say Russell was a beloved teacher, Luo, the manager, insists he was often absent from class and his "teaching methods failed to meet the requirement of the school and fit the students." She said he had been hired on probation, which he failed partly because of a drinking problem.
"It was very strange and irresponsible for them to blame us for their son's death," Luo said in a telephone interview.
Maxine Russell denies Darren drank while teaching at Decai.
For Davis, coming to China meant an opportunity to see the world outside of Ystradgynlais, her Welsh village of 1,000 people. She said she loved her students, but long hours, foreign food, an ant problem, leaky pipes and a toilet that wouldn't flush became too much.
In the end, the school said Davis and her boyfriend could forgo the last two months of their assignment, as had been verbally agreed after they signed their contracts in June last year, but the principal changed his mind the day before their departure and refused to be reasoned with, Davis said.
Repeated calls to Jizhou school were not answered.
"We were miserable," Davis said. "We'd come all this way and there was this feeling of helplessness."
The couple left behind books, 200 DVDs and most of Davis' winter clothes -- now all too big for her because she had dropped 15kg from her 1.54m frame.
When they left the school that March morning, she said, they went to the railroad station to take a train to Beijing, but were so fearful they would somehow be made to stay that they instead hired a cab for the 320km trip.
On their way from school to the station, their cab driver happened to be playing the theme from The Benny Hill Show on tape.
"We just burst out laughing," Davis said.
They never collected their salary for their last month of work.
also see the reply story for this article:
Letter: Joy founder refutes AP story
In the event of a war with China, Taiwan has some surprisingly tough defenses that could make it as difficult to tackle as a porcupine: A shoreline dotted with swamps, rocks and concrete barriers; conscription for all adult men; highways and airports that are built to double as hardened combat facilities. This porcupine has a soft underbelly, though, and the war in Iran is exposing it: energy. About 39,000 ships dock at Taiwan’s ports each year, more than the 30,000 that transit the Strait of Hormuz. About one-fifth of their inbound tonnage is coal, oil, refined fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG),
On Monday, the day before Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) departed on her visit to China, the party released a promotional video titled “Only with peace can we ‘lie flat’” to highlight its desire to have peace across the Taiwan Strait. However, its use of the expression “lie flat” (tang ping, 躺平) drew sarcastic comments, with critics saying it sounded as if the party was “bowing down” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Amid the controversy over the opposition parties blocking proposed defense budgets, Cheng departed for China after receiving an invitation from the CCP, with a meeting with
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is leading a delegation to China through Sunday. She is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing tomorrow. That date coincides with the anniversary of the signing of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which marked a cornerstone of Taiwan-US relations. Staging their meeting on this date makes it clear that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intends to challenge the US and demonstrate its “authority” over Taiwan. Since the US severed official diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979, it has relied on the TRA as a legal basis for all
To counter the CCP’s escalating threats, Taiwan must build a national consensus and demonstrate the capability and the will to fight. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) often leans on a seductive mantra to soften its threats, such as “Chinese do not kill Chinese.” The slogan is designed to frame territorial conquest (annexation) as a domestic family matter. A look at the historical ledger reveals a different truth. For the CCP, being labeled “family” has never been a guarantee of safety; it has been the primary prerequisite for state-sanctioned slaughter. From the forced starvation of 150,000 civilians at the Siege of Changchun
RSS