BLI school Beijing - Under new management?

[Scoobyqueen]

Recently I have been receiving several mails from the BLI school in Beijing. The first one was from the director of the school saying she was disassociating herself with the school, then a few days later a mail that said her email account had been hijacked and everything was back to normal. Yesterday, I received a long mail from her saying she and the teachers were no longer working there and that BLI was under new management and they could no longer vouch for the success of the current teaching methods. They were setting up something themselves.

It seems odd. BLI was very successful and was able to command high tuition fees such as 20 Euros an hour. The reviews about the school have been very good here too.

Did anyone else get that note yesterday?

[wedge]

I received 2 strange emails back in July. The first one was from the school's email address saying that a certain teacher was leaving for personal reasons (although I'd never heard of this teacher). The second was directly from the director saying to disregard the first email.

I didn't receive anything yesterday!

[Patrick17]

I was a student at BLI in 2011 and received those mails, too. BLI in 2011 was pretty awesome, so I was kind of concerned about those mails signaling that BLI might be in trouble.

Last October I received an invitation from BLI's previous school assistent Wang Li to attend the celebration of the opening of MLC Mandarin Leadership Center. I attended that party on Nov 9 and was pleasantly surprised to meet many former students from BLI, former teachers (although not many), and a very nice school close to Dongzhimen. They even got their own bathroom now (as compared to those public restrooms at Pengrun Dasha).

During that party I was told that BLI is now closed and three teachers and Wang Li went on to set up the new school on Sep 30. I'm not a student with MLC so I cannot vouch for their current methods, but I seems like they really want to continue BLI's tradition to attract from IUP teachers and students. I hope they succeed as there are very few schools which really focus on intensive Chinese study and offer that kind of half day teaching with a full day program as most students stay all day at school to finish their homework assignments.

Their new website is at http://mandarinleadershipcenter.com/

Contact Wang Li: amy.wang.0505 [at] hotmail.com

Disclaimer: I have no financial interest in MLC, but I am friends with Wang Li.

[mlcbejing]

@Scoobyqueen @ wedge Thank you so much for your considerations. We are really very sorry about what happened last year. The old school was quite professional in teaching Chinese and established good reputation in this field. The director of the old school also impressed us a lot by her professionalism and broad knowledge, which had very deep impression on us. Now most of the teachers there have been working at MLC[Mandarin Leadership Center] http://mandarinleadershipcenter.com, we will inherit merits of the old school and make more innovations in both teaching Chinese and learning Chinese. We look forward to meeting you in the new school.

@Patrick17 Thanks for your kind words. Yes, we have been trying to be the most professional Chinese training center in Beijing.

[Patrick17]

My friend Wang Li has moved on to found a new language school to continue the BLI tradition of intensive Chinese language training combined with numerous activities.

The link to the new website is:

http://www.zhixuechina.com/