This blog has two functions. First, it is intended as a serious warning to anybody who is considering working for any of the below mentioned companies and individuals. Second, I hope it goes some way to forcing a change for good. It is based on the recent personal experiences of not only myself but my fellow co-workers. I encourage you to contact me if you have any pertinent accounts of the company or individuals - contributions are welcome.
- Are you looking for a teaching post in China?
- Do you wish to gain experience in teaching overseas - TEFL, EFL?
- Are you seeking to build upon your current teaching experience?
- Would you like to work abroad for a year and broaden your horizons?
If so, AVOID using the 'services' of:
- Dragon Charm International Limited
- Work In China Ltd.
- Camsoon PTY Ltd Perth,
- Culture and Learning Consultancy Co.Ltd,,
- Learning and Culture Co.Ltd,
- Any companies affiliated with Jiang Le Wallace/Julia Wallace.
For the following reasons:
The Contract of Employment: enables the company to wrongfully withhold deposits against your salary; has no form of arbitration; can not legally be enforced outside China; provides no security to the individual; in fact the contract is not worth the paper it is written on and is not enforcible within the E.U.; it is 'subject to change' without prior warning, or your approval, upon arrival.
The Visa: the one they encourage you to apply for is the wrong visa (and you may be left liable and incur hefty fines, deportation, or even imprisonment if caught); costs and fees may be offered as part of the contract, but is subject to change upon arrival; assistance is promised with visa renewal in the contract but is not supplied when needed.
Service Obligations: health check; visa renewal; police registration; bank account - were all promised but were not provided (which raises the question: what do they actually do?).
Further violation's of Human Rights and illicit activities they will employ as a means of punishment, coerce, or to enforce their will are to: make false allegations to the authorities in order to have you arrested; have you evicted and left homeless; having your tenancy changed or searched; entrapment of passports then used to extort and blackmail; hiring people to spy, follow and harass not only people under their employment, but also their families, by misusing confidential employee information; refusal to compensate for services and labour rendered (they wont pay you).
The above list is a coalition of my personal experience and that of two of my colleagues during the first half of 2014. 3 people in roughly 6 months. Others I knew simply had deposits withheld, salaries denied, or were never supplied a placement so were left no choice but to return home with no job or reimbursement.
The below list is a collection of documents that either validate and/or support this blog's claims, such as: correspondence between teachers and their consulates and embassies; individuals accounts and experiences; correspondence between teachers and the top management of the company (Julia Wallace/ Jiang Le Wallace); links to other blog's dedicated to the same moral crusade of revealing this very same company with its various pseudonyms; a copy of my 'contract'; and finally anything that might help identify them (logos, photos, the companies website ad's and posts, related programmes).
As I said at the start of this - be very aware of who you are dealing with. You have been warned!
Below are links to various sites, videos, and blogs created by other formers employees under the Dragon Charm/Camsoon umbrella:
http://dragoncharm.tumblr.com/thingstoknow
http://dragoncharm.tumblr.com
https://www.facebook.com/DragonCharmChangsha
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTkLpMWV7ZE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpLq6UNZte4&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhBXFGy8OoQ&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKxi2HOaQHc&feature=youtu.be
Signage/Logos:
Jiang Le Wallace/Julia Wallace (centre right):
.jpg)
Dragon Charm's London address:
Drragon Charm,
Flat C,
2 Evershed Walk,
London,
W4 5BW
Dragon Charm's Hong Kong registration details:
Name DRAGON CHARM INTERNATIONAL LIMITED
Correspondence between the consulate and myself:
(N.B.
It is worth, I think, to mention that below correspondence was sent mid-way through my spell with the company. It only got worse. Culminating in S** having the visa ripped out of her passport (when the consulate contacted the company asking them to relinquish her passport so she could return home), and I was denied my last 6 weeks salary and deposit ~ £1000.)
Date: Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Subject: URGENT! Seeking council and sending an advisory caution and serious request for investigation.
To: "consular.beijing@fco.gov.uk" <consular.beijing@fco.gov.uk>
Dear Reader,
The letter I write you today comes at a time of great worry: for myself, and for my contemporaries, present and future.
The subject of trouble is a company based in Changsha, named 'Dragon Charm' - formerly 'Learning and Culture' who have also had a myriad of other alias' and pseudonyms, and are owned by the umberalla group Camsoon Australia Pty Ltd.
'Dragon Charm' masquerade as a teaching agency who supply teachers to schools, collages, tour groups etc.. They have been in operation for 10 years now. Presumably conducting their business in much the same way as they are today - extremily unethically.
This company must answer for their crimes. They blackmail, extort, threaten, spy, steal, lie and mislead British citizens (as well as other nationals from all over the world).
The reason, and presumable motive for this is simple: greed - they only care about money, but they have a level of freedom that can only be achieved with help from local authorities (this has been proved many times, but more on that on a minute). They display an audacious disrespect for national and international law - and I have consulted numerous other agencies and Chinese companies who were all dumbfounded by what I told them. Please appreciate that I am not ignorant to the canon of Chinese business.
Personally the only 'poor practises' that I have suffered are: misleading/false information prior to arrival; not being given a legitimate contract; breach of aforementioned contract - reneging, and not supplying a medical check, help with a bank account, police registration, or insurance; not being given a signed contract, or any contract at all (only work instructions); discrepensies in the details between my 'contract' and the school's I have been assigned to; not being paid on time, or the right amount (3 months and counting); openly disregarding my schools requests for compensation when they paid me too little; and what I suspect is an unreasonable demand beyond their post: that I can only receive my final months salary and three weeks pay in arrears and my deposit (of 2500¥) if I show a valid return flight when I visit the office on the date my 'contract' expires (since I am paid three weeks in arrears what is the purpose of the deposit?).
Some of my colleagues have faired much worse than I. Two I can think of: one, a French woman, the other a British woman. M**** C***** (s*****@hotmail.fr): M**** was in Changsha for three weeks without work. She finally got a placement at a school and after a week was pulled out by the company and told she was to work at the office as a 'teacher liase' because of her competence in Mandarin. After a further three weeks M**** could suffer no more: the things she heard; the business conduct; the lies; the fraud was all too much. She told the company she wanted to leave - and since she still hadnt been given any contract, dispute her repeated requests, she didn't foresee a problem. Well, after many threats towards her she was granted terminus (it is true that her mother was very ill), she was allowed to leave, but as punishment for her disloyalty they refused to pay her any of the six weeks she had accrued. After that, the company phoned her family home and told them made up stories and harassed them, and started to threaten M****.
S** M**** (s*****@outlook.com): S** is British, and I know the finer details of her story less well, but it is if anything worse than M****'s. She has reported her story to you recently in the last month and our consolte granted her a ticket back to England. The only problem being that the company had her passport. A member of the consolate contacted the company and requested they meet with S** and return her passport to her and they agreed. When she went to the company office there were three policemen, two of the companies owners and a manager waiting for her. They threatened her and refused to return her passport, so she had to flee without it. I don't know where she is now, but she didn't return to England - how could she? This happened at the end of a long line of terrible events for S**. She arrived in China, I think, a short while before myself, maybe October. Since then she has been wrongfully arrested because she was too Ill to work for couple of days, and spent a day in jail, ill; she has been forced to sleep on park benches; she was, to my knowledge, not paid once the whole time she has been here and has no money whatsoever to her name; she has been forced out of her home; police have forced entry; and she has had her passport taken from her (utterly diabolical, and malicious, and very illegal). All of this on top of the standard affair of being requested to work with the wrong visa, a fake contract, breaches of contract etcetc. Etal. The poor girl is stuck in China, and has been trying to get home for months now.
That if anything is the main reason for this long opening correspondance. She is suffering a great deal of mental stress and abuse. She is a British citizen and needs you to offer her commited san ctuary, and an entourage to claim back her passport. Please help her, this is the duty of the consulate and I cannot imagine an individual more aptly in need of assistance and provision. The illicit problems listed above are I suspect all fairly common individual issues to which people ask of your assistance and advice, but S** has the weight of all of the above on her shoulders. I am certain, if the company had been operating under the same alias these 10 years it would have had forced closure by now (that is one reason they change so often), and I am equallly positive you have many complains about them in your records that are in seperate logged folders and dont appear to be related on first glance.
For your information and to help assist your investigation underway:
The address of Dragon Charms Changsha office is: Apartment 07, Floor 16,Gongxiao Commercial Building, Changsha, China. They also own at least one other apartment in the complex (26, 07). Camsoon appears to be registered in Australia at this address: Canning Vale, Perth, Western Australia, (Company Number141 430 408), and claims to also be a property developer.
The 'Dragon Charm' sect is run by a lady named Jiang-le Fu/Julia Wallace, and their main offices are based In London, not China. I think this is the lady I met when I initially came out to China - her English name is Julia - she is either married to a British man or an Australian man living in England but has entered into divorce proceedings (I speculate this is perhaps a rue to claim duel citizenship?). Julia works only for her sister who owns the whole shady operation.
One of the company websites is: Workinchina.info. The website looks good, but has spelling errors and a click on one of the tabs doesn't work. This is not a good sign.
Another of their sites is: Dragoncharm.info. If you click into the page you get a server error - another cause for alarm.
I have also found this site that rebuffs what myself and many others have experienced:
http://dragoncharm.tumblr.com/thingstoknow
and
http://dragoncharm.tumblr.com
They claim to be registered and accredited by SAFEA, an initialism short for: State Administration of Foreign Exports Affairs. Basically it's a Chinese government run body that gives accreditation to Chinese Registered companies to operate in China. However, if they are I doubt they have attained it honestly.
I would like to end with some questions that will help my situation and contribute towards my own safe passage when the time comes for me to leave:
What recourse do I have if I need help asserting the law if need be before I leave? Can I sue them upon return to the safety of Britian? What course should I take if compensation to the order of several thousand pounds is withheld from me at the end of my contract?
If I decide to stay in China for a few weeks on a tourist visa once I leave the company surely it is out of they're juristiction to withhold my salary from me on the basis I am not returning to my home country (it would be equally stupid of me to leave without it)?! Once the contract period has expired I am free to do what I want in accordance with, and within the national laws. Am I correct?
Anxiously awaiting a reply, L***s A.G. W****s (L***********s@gmail.com) (S*****@hotmail.fr) (S*****@outlook.com)
P.S. please do not divulge my name when talking with the company or local law enforcement, as it wil cause more undue trouble for me, unless requested and I give permission.
Consulates Reply:
URGENT! Seeking council and sending an advisory caution and serious request for investigation:
consular.beijing@fco.gov.uk to me, Consular.Guangzhou
Mar 12 Details
Dear L****,
Thank you for your email to the Consular Section of the British Embassy Beijing. We are aware of Dragon Charm and we are sorry to hear about the difficulty you and your colleagues are facing. We are also aware of S***’s situation and have been giving her consular assistance.
Please note, we cannot get involved in private disputes over employment because we are in no position to judge the facts and have no jurisdiction overseas to resolve such matters. Therefore, we suggest you consider seeking legal advice from a lawyer on your disputes with your agent. Embassy staff are not legally trained. Please refer to the list of lawyers that we provide on our website - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/china-list-of-lawyers Our website provides information to prospective job seekers in China and what to be aware of before taking up work - https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/china/entry-requirements.
I have copied in my colleagues in Guangzhou as they have consular jurisdiction over Changsha.
Kind regards,
Consular Assistance Team
I British Embassy Beijing Floor 21, North Tower, The Kerry Centre, 1 Guanghua Lu, Beijing 100020 I 嘉里中心北楼21层光华路1号北京100020
