Konall Culture Exchange? Shijiazhuang dialect?

[koreth]

Anyone have any experience with these guys?

http://www.gatewaychina.net/shijiazhuang.htm

They seem pricey but I like the emphasis on one-on-one instruction and immersion in a non-Westernized environment.

I have to say I'm skeptical of the language claim on that page, though: "Standard Mandarin is spoken natively by 90% of the population of Shijiazhuang." (As opposed to a local dialect or a regional pronunciation that's radically different from standard putonghua.) But I've never been there, so maybe that's correct...?

[wushijiao]

I think Hebeiers speak with what might be called "a general northern accent" that is very close to, if not the same as Putonghua. Younger people, urban people, and the educated will tend to speak clearer Putonghua. I've never been to Shijiazhuang, but I think it would be fine from an accent point of view.

[imron]

Another thing to consider is that Shijiazhuang is a pretty dirty and polluted city. I've not met many people with nice things to say about it - including some native Shijiazhuangers (if that's a word ) If you're going to be spending a large period of time there, you might want to consider somewhere else.

[rpday]

I spent a month there this spring, as well as some modest travel in the north. The dust was more impressive than the pollution. I found it easier to understand people there than Beijing, and marginally better than in Henan. The big advantage to study there is the lack of foreigners. The teaching is standard, but individualized.

[SillyBilly]

Ive had some experience with these folks. Some of the promises on the website seem to be just fluff. I have not gotten good response from the transportation in PRC, or the Visa services. There was a lot of pushback on both these issues. The program is not cheap, either.

[a'long]

I'd be interested to know exactly what kind of pushback you got from KCE. Did you actually attend the program? I'm the FAO and I can assure you that every student we have ever had was offered free transport from Beijing to Shijiazhuang or re-imbursement for train tickets if they come on thier own. We also offer complete visa services to all of our students...and unlike most other schools we don;t make you pay all the tuition upfront or sign crazy contracts to do it. If you were trying to scam us out of an extended VISA while skipping out on your tuition you may have met some "pushback." Just like EVERY other school in CHina, we don't offer visa's for extended lengths of time AFTER you finish a program because it is illegal.

If anyone is curious about our school, please don't hesitate to contact me directly at info@gatewaychina.net and i'll be happy to put you in touch with a list of good references in your country.

James

[Izakoe]

I am currently attending the Konall Culture Exchange program. I must say it is the best thing ever. The school setts you up with a host family and between the host family and the school the meals are provided. Shijiazhung is a wonderful city is and the people here are the nicest people I ever have met. If you are planing visiting China and want to learn anything about their language I highly suggest coming to Konall.

[oh china]

I don't know whether or not this will still be relevant, but be VERY careful of going to Konall. I was there for a couple months and the program is mediocre, at best. Nothing special. The claims in their website are all very deceiving so do not rely on the website or on the things they will try to sell you over email, because they're pretty big liars. Management at the school is very bad. The only thing you get is a bunch of frustrated students ticked off at their system and talking bad things about them behind their backs.

The teachers are nice and have experience but in many cities you can also get private tutors that are certified in teaching foreigners for a fraction of the cost. Konall will steal money from you at every corner they can: ridiculously expensive tuition (when you go to Shijiazhuang you realize you can get a private tutor for less than 1/5 of the hourly cost); free visa - not true; apartment - they will charge you 5-fold of the real rent the pay and pocket the rest; pay for your train ride from Beijing - never happened; free textbooks - umm, if you call a photocopy of a textbook an actual textbook, the yes, otherwise they also charge you for all photocopies of workbooks. Anyway, the list goes on and on of all the negative things that I have to say about the place.

Lastly, it was clear to all of us there that the management of this place treated the teachers pretty badly, which is a bad thing because us a students hated the place but only cared about our teachers (which made us hate the place even more). They also put a lot of pressure on the students because if you cancel class or travel for a few days your teacher DOESNT GET PAID for that time, even though they still have to be present in school and they don't let you make up most of the time you take off, so basically they make you feel responsible for the teacher not having any pay. Me and other students always talked about this because we all thought it was absurd. If we pay for the extremely high tuition and we decide to not go to class, the school should not get that windfall that was supposed to go as normal pay to the teacher.

Anyway.... the place is not good and you can learn as much in many other places.

[chinahandinfo]

I would be a little skeptical of the above post - New forum member, 1st and only post, only negative things to say, sounds a little fishy to me. Anyway....

I was at konall for 5 months (December 08 - May 09) and overall was very impressed with the school and the progress i was able to make while there. I am always skeptical about any language school so i asked for references from past students who had taken part in their program, and it was the positive feedback i received from them which convinced me to give Konall a try. I researched a lot of schools before deciding on Konall and found their tuition fees to be on the cheaper side compared to most other schools that offer 1-to-1 tuition.I took weeks off here and there for travel throughout the duration of my stay, and i was always allowed to make those classes up when i returned from my trip. I lived with a home-stay family for the duration of my stay (which i really enjoyed and did wonders for my Mandarin) so am unable to comment on the private accommodations, but there were several students staying in apartments while i was there and i never heard any of them have anything negative to say about their living arrangements (we even played poker there a few times). I paid a deposit and was provided with a visa letter which i used to obtain my visa in my home country before arriving in China. After i arrived my deposit was credited to my tuition fee just like they said.The teachers were very friendly and helpful, and i have kept in contact with mine even though I am now in a different city and she is overseas. The teachers were always in good spirits while i was there and there was certainly no bad vibe or negativity coming from them which you would expect to pick up on if they were in fact being treated badly as the above poster claims. The textbooks were photocopied and binded, but this didn't worry me personally as the text was clear and that's the main thing. I'm back in China doing a six month internship (hopefully soon turn into a full time job) and would be happy to provide more details about my experiences if anyone wants to PM me. I would definitely recommend Konall to anyone looking for a good 1-to-1 language school, their programs are intensive (just like they say) their teachers really push you, and you will learn at a fast pace.

[oh china]

Whatever other posters say, I do not only have negative things to say about Konall. I do praise the teachers at the school (obviously a very important aspect of such institutions). Unfortunately, because most students did like the teachers at Konall they are hesitant about giving honest reviews in these public forums, as this can jeopardize these teachers' jobs. The fact that I'm a first-time poster is completely irrelevant.

I am by no means bitter about my experience at Konall. I just think the rosy-colored comments of many people lack much of the reality that I saw at the place during my stay there. Like I mentioned before, my comments are not only my thoughts but what me and other students talked about during breaks and outside of class. We all agreed on the things I mentioned and I've withheld any purely personal opinions because these are inappropriate in these forums.

As a person that needed more information when seeking a school in China, I thought it would be good to give people who are looking for schools in China more information about the one school that I'm familiar with. I made my decision of attending Konall based on what their website said (as at the time, there were no other reviews of the school out there). I thought the lack of reviews was a problem and when I saw this thread (trying to see if finally someone had said something) I just saw an opportunity to give people the information that I needed at the time.

Being also realistic here, schools like Konall will always have some students who were happy with their experiences. Like any smart business, these schools will seek good publicity from these students (i.e. the ones they have as reference/contacts to prospective students will always have good things to say). I'm just throwing a word of caution out there, because I think hearing the negative is more important than rehashing the positive that prospective students will inevitably hear from both the school and the reference students. It's also very easy for schools to ask these students to post positive comments on these forums, so I just wanted to give the other side of the story.

There is no reason for me to want to ruin Konall. In fact, I hope this forum is read by Konall's management (I'm sure it is), because this is all very valuable constructive criticism that they might want to do something about. Students in the school talked about these things but seldom raised their voices to complain about them to the school itself, so I hope my comments help better their business.

I will refrain from posting any other comments about Konall. I just wanted to clarify my post in light of the new post by chinahandinfo. Any other posters are obviously free to contradict what I said.

[a'long]

OK. First off, just to let you all know who I am, i am James and I am one of the founders of KCE. Since our friend here doesn't say when he was at KCE I am not sure if i was still in the office every day when he/she was there, but unless they were there within the last 6 months or so they should know exactly who I am. Unless of course you just work for another school and are purely trying to slander us, which we are pretty used to by now.

Now let's address this post:

"I don't know whether or not this will still be relevant, but be VERY careful of going to Konall."

Neither does anyone else as you don't give specifics about when you were here.

The claims in their website are all very deceiving so do not rely on the website or on the things they will try to sell you over email, because they're pretty big liars. Management at the school is very bad. The only thing you get is a bunch of frustrated students ticked off at their system and talking bad things about them behind their backs.

We claim 4 hours per day of private lessons for 8350RMB a month, no extra fees. We charged you 5rmb if you ate lunch from our kitchen. Did you experience something else than this? What claims from the website are lies?

The teachers are nice and have experience but in many cities you can also get private tutors that are certified in teaching foreigners for a fraction of the cost.

You don't know much about China. The certification process takes three exams, each of which is offered once per year. It is actually extremely difficult to find people who are qualified to teach Chinese. That English major grad student you found at the bar to "teach" you Chinese for 35rmb/hr has the grammar of a taxi driver and is just going to be copping English lessons off of you the whole time. I urge everyone to try and find even ONE person who learned Chinese from a random tutor and speaks at anything more than a rudimentary level. Not to mention the fact that you can't just come to China and hang out as long as you want. You have to be on a VISA and someone has to be legally responsible for you, which is yet another service we are providing when you pay your tuition.

Konall will steal money from you at every corner they can: ridiculously expensive tuition (when you go to Shijiazhuang you realize you can get a private tutor for less than 1/5 of the hourly cost); free visa - not true; apartment - they will charge you 5-fold of the real rent the pay and pocket the rest; pay for your train ride from Beijing - never happened

We don't claim to pay for train tickets to Beijing, which makes it quite odd that you would bring that up if you are a real student. however we do go and pick people up at the airport in BJ and bring them back here several times a week and we don't charge for it either. Tell me how we stole money from you as we are the cheapest private school around and we have NO EXTRA FEES. We state very clearly on the website that you can find a cheaper apartment on your own, if you are willing to go find one and sign a lease for 6-12 months. If you can't sign a lease and/or just want to focus on studying Chinese and let us take care of everything then you pay a little extra, about 15%-20% depending on the specific place. Welcome to the world of exchanging money for services. Also, an apartment 1/5 the price of ours will have bare concrete floors, no hot water, horrible stench, squat toilet, etc. You would never stay in it. The apartments we find are actually nice and comfortable, they are modern and clean, we furnish them, maintain them, etc. So you are dead wrong about our markup and are comparing apples to oranges anyway.

free textbooks - umm, if you call a photocopy of a textbook an actual textbook, the yes, otherwise they also charge you for all photocopies of workbooks.

Yep, we have cheaply printed books. And we give away the first 5, after that you had to pony up your own $1 to get another copy, which we went and made for you. Wow, we do suck :-/

Lastly, it was clear to all of us there that the management of this place treated the teachers pretty badly, which is a bad thing because us a students hated the place but only cared about our teachers (which made us hate the place even more).

The only part of this paragraph that's remotely related to reality is the part about students loving the teachers. We encourage good friendships between our teachers and students and they have awesome relationships. The fact that we do this, and our teachers are still here and not freelance, tells you something. We have teachers who have been with us for over 4 years, they earn more, get better benefits, and have a cooler environment than any of their cohorts.

They also put a lot of pressure on the students because if you cancel class or travel for a few days your teacher DOESNT GET PAID for that time, even though they still have to be present in school and they don't let you make up most of the time you take Me and other students always talked about this because we all thought it was absurd. If we pay for the extremely high tuition and we decide to not go to class, the school should not get that windfall that was supposed to go as normal pay to the teacher.

No, the teacher doesn't get their hourly bonus when you cancel class, but they still get their base pay, which is much much more and has nothing to do with number of hours they teach, it is for SHOWING UP DURING WORKING HOURS. Our teachers are full-time employees with insurance, retirement, and salaries, so they have to COME TO WORK. When you skip class, they don't get paid a bonus for that hour, and you don;t get charged for it either. You get to credit the hour and make it up whenever the you want, and they get the bonus then. We don't debit you an hour and give them nothing, that's a complete lie.

Regarding our prices, let me explain something to you about the study abroad industry. You see, by it;s very nature (the "abroad" part) it is operating across a global market. What that means is that over time, the price the market will bear for this type of thing will stabilize regardless of the country you are in. This is happening for pretty much all types of professional services and higher tech goods but it is readily apparent in study abroad. Go look at language programs in any country. China, India, Russia, and USA. You generally find two distinct price groups don't you? First tier cities with international companies start around $4000 US a month for this type of individual 1:1 program. Second tier cities with smaller more academic programs like mine are all right around $1300. That is the price that the market will bear, and that is what we charge. Notice that we are at the BOTTOM of the ranges of individual, intensive 1:1 programs. Compare apples to apples and it is obvious that we are not ripping anybody off. See there, you learned something neat about the world, huh?

Anyway.... I've spent too much time replying to this. Here is the deal folks. When you want to choose a school, write them, call them, ask a lot of questions, and get references from students who are still there and have already left, and then contact those people. This guy could just have a hardon for me, or maybe he works for another school, or maybe things just went sour somewhere.... cause you know what, shit happens and while we try very hard to make everyone happy, some people are just not right for studying abroad and it's never going to work no matter what we do. What you need to do is get references that are not anonymous people posting on forums, and just see what they say.

I can be reached at any time by PM or at james@gatewaychina.net if you'd like me to back up anything I've said here. Happy Thanksgiving to the Americans on the board!

[imron]

Thanks for writing up such a detailed reply.

[ky4sc]

Review of Konall Culture Exchange

www.gatewaychina.net

info@gatewaychina.net

No.88 Huai An Xi Lu

Zhuo Da Mei Gui Yuan, 24-2-301

Shijiazhuang, Hebei 050091

China

Warning: Be careful about Konall Culture Exchange!

Summary

Konall Culture Exchange (hereafter KCE) offers one on one tutoring for learning Chinese in Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China. The information given on their website is very deceiving. Positive statements about KCE, that can be found in many forums on the Internet, are most likely written by themselves. Don’t trust these positive statements as when you look closer they are all the same just slightly rephrased. Be careful about KCE!

Who am I?

I am a 28 year old German and was supposed to take classes at Konall Culture Exchange from November 3rd 2009 to January 31st 2010. Unfortunately I only stayed until December 22nd and then continued my studies in Beijing.

What you should expect for the money you are paying?

I paid over RMB 8,300 per month. The tuition fee that KCE charges seems reasonable from a western standpoint of view. From a Chinese perspective though it is on the upper end - even though they tell you otherwise. Compare it yourself! For that kind of money in a underdeveloped Chinese city as Shijiazhuang you can expect much for this amount of money as classes in Beijing are not necessarily more expensive. You should expect a qualified and experienced mandarin teacher, a nice learning environment, and superior service. Unfortunately this was not the case when I was there. More about that later.

www.gatewaychina.net and the truth

The statements given on Konall’s website are very convincing and the promises made read quite charming. Be careful though, many statements are deceptive or lies.

The following quotes are taken from www.gatewaychina.net on December 27th 2009.

The Konall website promises...

- "4 hours per day of private lessons with our professional, certified Mandarin teachers" and

- "...best Mandarin instruction available from our hand-picked and fully certified instructors.

- "All books and study materials included"

- "Unrestricted access to Language Lab tutors included"

- "Choose your own program dates and class schedule"

- "You are free to choose your own start and end dates as well as your daily class times"

Unfortunately my teacher, his name was Sid, was not a professional, certified Mandarin teacher. How did I find out? Other students told me after one month. Sid had to show his teaching qualities in a test class when he applied for becoming a teacher at KCE and two of the other KCE students were invited to take part. They told me that he even failed to draw simple Chinese characters correctly (and that as a Chinese) and that his overall performance in this test class was very poor. He was taken anyway - this is what I call “hand-picked”. When I found out I went to one of the managers and he confirmed that he was not a certified teacher. When I demanded to change to another, certified teacher I was given another teacher who was so much better than Sid who I wasted my first month with. When I told the management that I would not be willing to pay the full tuition fee for an incapable and not certified Mandarin teacher they simply referred to the contract that every new student has to sign. In the contract it does not say anything about certified teachers. It’s only on the website. Therefore they did not care much. “You read the contract and signed it” was what I got from them. Well, formally they are correct but this is what I meant with the word “deceptive”.

The textbook I and other students received was a copy. The first page of the book shows a clear copyright statement though. When I asked Sam (one of the managers) if they have permission to copy the books he assured me that they do. After mailing with the vice president of the Beijing Language and Culture University Press I was assured though that this was not the case. The funny thing about copyrights is that the user is liable. This means that KCE basically makes you commit a crime by making you use a copied textbook. This is what they call included study materials for the “cheap” price of RMB 8,300.

There is no Language Lab. When they say "Unrestricted access to Language Lab tutors included" this means that you may talk to the teachers after class.

Also, students were not able to choose their individual class times. Each teacher normally has two students with four time slots of two hours each. You were expected to choose either time slot one and three or two and four. That scatters classes all over the day and does not make good use of ones time.

The contract

As statements on the website differ from the contract make sure to let KCE send you the contract beforehand and study it carefully. You are only in the position to demand changes of the contract when you have not arrived in Shijiazhuang yet and have not paid any money. Make sure to pay in short intervals. Don’t pay too much money in advance.

The school building and class rooms

The school building is in poor condition. Everything is cheap and dirty. They don’t even have spare mugs for students. You have to buy everything yourself. When I arrived it was winter but the heating period had not started yet. The school was one big fridge and taking off the jacket during class was not an option. I then purchased myself a small heater and water boiler in order for me to have at least boiled water for tea. When the heating period started classes were still pretty cold as the windows were cheap and could not close tightly.

The whiteboard in my class was broken at several points which made writing on it quite an adventure. It was also not attached to the wall and fell down on my teacher’s head several times. That could have been quite dangerous. Also the lights in the rooms are not appropriate or in other words way not bright enough. I bought myself a small lamp as otherwise the atmosphere created by the cold light of the energy saving light bulb would set oneself to sleep. In addition my classroom was seldom cleaned properly.

It should be the managers’ and teachers’ responsibility to create an environment one can study in successfully and feels comfortable. Especially when considering the amount of money one is paying. Unluckily, the management does not care.

The teachers

The teachers, except Sid, are friendly and as what I have heard from other students very competent. If you want to go to Konall they are the reason why. It is not their fault that the management sucks so bad. Actually when you are there you can see clearly how the teachers get exploited by the school. They receive very little money and if you take a day off they will receive less money although you will not get any money back. The management is extremely greedy although they always try to make people believe that the teachers at Konall are paid extremely well compared to Chinese standards. Let me tell you: this is not the case. This is extremely upsetting about Konall - the teachers do the work, the other school services by the management are very poor or non-existent, but the majority of your money goes to the school - and these are people you will not even like .

Lunch at school

KCE employs a cooking lady who is cooking lunch for everyone who would like to eat at school. This costs extra but is very convenient as good restaurants are not really nearby. Unfortunately the dishes served are mainly side dishes from a western point of view. This means I ended up ordering in KFC at least every second day to get some calories into my stomach. Moreover the dishes repeat themselves after one week so for people staying several months at KCE the food becomes quite unsatisfying after a couple of weeks.

Host family or private apartment

I lived in a host family. Unfortunately this was not a good choice. The family was really nice but I had to travel one hour by bus to school and another hour back home. The deal with the host families is that you are supposed to teach them some English for one and a half hours a day. In my case this meant the sister of my host father came in in the evenings and we had actual English classes. And of course you need time for socializing. Together with the fact that school classes are scattered over the day this does not leave you enough time to digest what you have learned at school and for studying and repeating it for yourself.

Therefore I would highly recommend you choose a private apartment. KCE can help you to find one but they will charge you too much for it. Therefore make sure that you don’t book it for too long and then you can just find yourself an apartment when you are in Shijiazhuang. It is more than half the price when you rent an apartment yourself.

Excursions

The excursions taking place during my stay were laser quest and karaoke. Basically they will organize something every two weeks but don’t expect too much and don’t expect any other events. Moreover the school does not do anything that would have to do with “Cultural Exchange”.

School service

The school does not even offer the minimum of service you would expect from a school in China who is supposed to take care of you. I asked the management and my teacher to give me a printed address of my host family and the school but after one month I still did not have anything. They were just incapable of doing it plus, as I told you before, they don’t care. I also did not get a list with important phone numbers as e.g. a phone number of the managers who I could call in case I would need help or the number of the police. I also did not receive a map, nor information about the city, it's shopping possibilities, it's sights, or infrastructure. I also did not get any feedback sheets for my classes or for my host family.

At my new school in Beijing I received two maps, three tourist guides (one of them in German), my address and nearby subway station in pinyin and Chinese characters, plus important phone numbers on the the first evening I arrived. This is what you can call service.

It’s funny enough that "Quality of Service" is one of the three core principles at Konall (see website). After telling the management what I would expect Sam thanked me for my valuable tips as if the students would not point these things out the school could not get better. But actually the above written are just basics - therefore they admitted themselves that they are too incompetent to get the basics right.

Shijiazhuang

The fact that there are only very few westerners in Shijiazhuang is true. But there are good reasons for that. The quality of life is low, pollution from heavy industry is intense, and life style wise it is quite an adventure. For up to three months I would say it’s ok but afterwards you’ll be seriously damaging your health. I began coughing and spitting on the streets, just like the Chinese, after one month. When I and two other students went to Nanjing for a weekend trip we could feel the difference of air in our throats. The air was so much better in Nanjing (and compared to western cities we would call Nanjing air polluted ;) ).

The train ride to and from Beijing is no problem and very convenient if you are traveling without luggage. With luggage the train ride becomes a horror trip. The train stations have no escalators or elevators. When the doors of the waiting halls open hundreds of people rush towards the train and with heavy luggage in between I would say it’s an quite unpleasant experience, especially for women.

The office staff (management)

The office staff consists of Sam, James, Jason, Agnes, and Amanda plus two interns. They are all called managers but nobody really knows who is in charge.

Altogether they are quite incompetent and don’t take any pride in what they are doing. I suppose their job could be done by two Europeans easily. They work quite inefficient and slow. Moreover I would describe their characters as sleazy and sneaky. Don’t trust on their words spoken. Make sure you have everything written down and signed what they promise you.

My story

I wrote a complaint letter about the bad service, the condition of the class rooms, my uncertified teacher and the other non kept promises from their website to the management. They did not tell me about my uncertified teacher although this was what I paid for and they lied to me about the copyright of the books.

Their response was to kick me out of the school one week before Christmas. According to the contract I signed this was possible. The next day I was refused to enter the school building and I had to have class on a couch in a private apartment.

They also refused to give me any assistance to find another school or to talk to my host family about what has happened. Of course in a city where people don’t speak English and you cannot speak Chinese this is a worst case scenario. Due to good friends of mine I managed the situation quite well but if it’s your first time in China and if you don’t know anyone who can help you, you are pretty much screwed. I mean this is what you pay all the money for to the school - to support you in an environment which is foreign to you. The management handled the whole matter quite unprofessionally and I was given my outstanding money with the words “this is it - take it or leave it”. Until today I have not received any calculation of how the money I got back was calculated although I asked for it several times.

Believe me, you don’t want this happening to you! They did it once and they will do it again! This is how they really are.

Conclusion

Konall Culture Exchange’s website says: "There are too many programs out there that treat their students like cash cows." - well, this is exactly how you will feel when going to Konall. Except classes you have nothing to expect from them and the teachers are paid very little. Shijiazhuang is not a nice city to stay in and Konall not a good school as well as not a cheap school. When you are there you will be able to make it and you will also learn Mandarin but there are so many better schools in China for a comparable tuition fee (have a look!). The management of the school will not change nor will the school as a result of this. Save yourself trouble and have an enjoyable time in China learning Mandarin!

PS: Don’t participate in anything that has to do with Konall (KCE). It is still the same people behind it. Especially don’t do a high school year program with them!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[xiaoxiaocao]

*sigh*

So Kay, you've resurfaced. You have way too much time on your hands bud. I'm not going to get into all the nonsense you've written except for two points.

1. The copied books are not illegal, as we do not sell them for profit nor charge in any way for them and we are a school. Our friend kay here, as part of his little plot to extort 2000rmb a month from us, tried to get us sued by "reporting" us for copyright infringement. This ill-willed plan of course failed as his knowledge of China and essential law is pretty rudimentary, kind of disturbing that a guy who supposedly wrote a graduate thesis on copyright infringement in China would be so clueless as to academic use policy. End of the story is that we are not breaking the law in any way and we never have.

2. All of this was simply a plot to extort money form us. He NEVER said he wanted to leave the school, he just supplied a laundry list of silly little complaints (the heat is determined by CHINESE LAW, not us, again you display your utter ignorance of where you are) and then threatened us if we did not give him 2000RMB a month discount. Let me paste from his letter here:

""Should this not be the case than you would urge me to initiate measures that would cater for my revenge. Let me ensure you that this would not be a good thing for all of us. "

If our school and our city was so bad, why didn't you just leave? Nobody was forcing you to stay. Actually you liked it here, you recognized that we are a damn good school but you saw we are small and you thought you could take advantage of us.Figuring you had an ace in the hole with the books and assuming we would be afraid of you spewing slander across the internet you were pretty damn smug when I called you into the office that day. The look on your face when your little plan fell through was priceless.. You then went around to every other student trying to plead your case and every single one of them turned their back on you for the weasel that you are. Obviously we are not going to give in to this kind of crap. It is extortion by any definition and if we were so inclined we could easily press criminal charges against this nitwit (email is not anonymous anymore sherlock). We won't, be cause we are not vindictive people nor is this jerk worth the effort. His attitude and behavior is going to get him into very big trouble no matter where he goes sooner or later (my money is on sooner).

What we did do was terminate his contract, fully refunding all of the tuition he paid in advance, and gave him a week to leave the school. It was his choice to depart the day he did, and we offered to help him with a train ticket to Beijing.

Again, before you make any decisions about any school, contact MULTIPLE sources and see what they say. I'd also strongly advise you steer very clear of this kay person, he's a conman.

Happy New Year to all the forum members and BLAH BLAH BLAH

[imron]

Thanks for coming and providing your side of the story, but I'm a little curious, what Chinese law is it that allows schools to photocopy entire textbooks for their students? This is a genuine question, not a snarky comment, as surely a law like this would destroy the entire market for textbooks.

[Daan]

As always, it's hard to determine who to believe given that we only have written statements to go by online. kay4sic, would you happen to have some photographs to show us what the school looked like?

[anonymoose]

what Chinese law is it that allows schools to photocopy entire textbooks for their students?

I found this from 中华人民共和国著作权法:

第二十二条 在下列情况下使用作品，可以不经著作权人许可，不向其支付报酬，但应当指明作者姓名、作品名称，并且不得侵犯著作权人依照本法享有的其他权利：

.

.

（六）为学校课堂教学或者科学研究，翻译或者少量复制已经发表的作品，供教学或者科研人员使用，但不得出版发行；

Regarding the rest, it's difficult to know which side to believe. On the one hand, as they say, there's no smoke without fire, but on the other, there are a lot of vindictive and spiteful people around.

[imron]

But surely a key part of that is "少量复制". I don't see how that applies to an entire textbook.

[anonymoose]

It's vague. It could also be interpreted to mean a small number of copies. Anyway, I don't know how this is dealt with in practice, but I just thought I'd share the information I could find.

[roddy]

Even if it did cover the copying of entire textbooks (There'll be 办法s and 规定s for that, and the Chinese publishing industry needs better lobbyists if it does) I'll wager you'd have trouble applying it to a commercial training center. But really, who's going to care that much? One school is hardly going to pop up on the radar of any publishing house - book piracy in China is people with printing presses, not photocopiers. And any student generally happy with the school is going to overlook a photocopied textbook - it's tacky and unnecessary (what's a textbook cost, after all) but hardly a deal-breaker, ladies.*

Say one thing for Konall - they certainly generate a lot of first-and-only posters on here.

*name the TV show