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[sharonariel]

I went to the State Bureau of Foreign Experts. They compelled the Assistant Principal to come there, and they ruled that:

1. I should get a letter that verified my time working at that school.
2. My salary and housing allowance for December.
3. Half a month's salary for January.
4. That the formalities should be completed by January 7.

They did not specify the amount of the settlement and told me to go to the contract for reference. They also misread some aspects of the dates on the letter, and I felt that the number of days for which I should paid should have been twice as high.

(It is at this point that I filed a second, separate case with the Labor Bureau. They scheduled a meeting for 19th of January.)

The Assistant Principal, Xilef Il, took this as a chance to try to welch on the amount of money owed. He sent his assitant to the police office, and she told me something like: "Ok, you sign for the visa cancellation and THEN we'll calculate your last salary." I declined (in an earlier email, she had sent me she said that she would pay me in cash at the police station).

When I told her that I was wise to the plot (after several emails of haggling over how much I would get paid), she stopped responding (after I told her that I had already had a mediation scheduled with the Labor Bureau).

So, I went to the police station the next day, and they told me that the school had already called them and said that they weren't coming back. I also noted that they wanted to offer me a tourist visa that would expire on the 15th-- conveniently putting me out of the country 4 days before the case was to be heard in court.

That afternoon, I went to the Labor Bureau, and they scheduled an emergency mediation for Monday, the 10th.

I had to hire an interpreter (a 20 year old girl who was not experienced enough to know that it is not her role to offer interpretations). 400RMB for 1.5 hours worth of work, and found from a university. (It's really ironic that there are so many people all over China studying English and that I called every single translating agency in the city before having to hoof it over to a university to find a person who could speak good enough English to translate.)

After all was said and done, I got them to agree to a concrete amount of the settlement (16,620RMB)-- and that was about 1,625 higher than they anticipated paying the first time around (14,995). Also, I got my letter verifying that I worked for the school on Labor Bureau letterhead. And they agreed to pay me cash at the police station the second that I signed the visa application. It was also at this point that I found out that the Assistant Principal was entrused to be the legal representative of the school, but that that legal representative was apparently someone else. The Assistant Principal had to concede that he had withheld my salary for hours already worked as a punishment for going first to the State Bureau of Foreign Experts and then to the Labor Bureau.

The Assitant Principal, Xilef Il was VERY angry, and after they had signed the agreement sad in the office cursing me and berating me and saying that I was only in it for the mony. (It was never personal. I only do it for the money the same way almost EVERYONE who works does it for the money.) He accused me of having been in jail in the United States (not true) and asked why I couldn't live in America (because there are not enough Asian women there-- true).

So, to make a long story short: The manifest function of the Labor Bureau is NOT to deal with foreign experts, but if the Labor Bureau speaks, the school must listen. And any documents that are signed in front of them are legally binding. One of the problems with the document that was issued by the State Bureau of Foreign Experts was that there was no stamp (1) and it was signed by two different people at two different times (2). When we went to the Labor Bureau, all was signed at the same time and witnessed by a government official.