Xiamen teaching options

My significant other recently moved to China, we planned on it for about six months beforehand. The plan was for him to teach English as well- it's just about the easiest thing for a native speaker to do here right off the bat. I said I'd do all the front work of the job search, scout out the good places to work and just tell him who to reach out to... which proved to be pretty depressing.
Xiamen is a lot bigger than Songyaun, so I figured there would be a lot more decent schools here. Not so much. Almost every English teacher that I know had told me enough horror stories about his or her school that I was basically left with my school, one other private school, private schools I didn't know or public schools to send him to. Everyone was working too many hours, not getting paid their full salaries, not getting paid on time, getting screwed on time off or visas or something else. Having been through that at my last school, I wanted to avoid putting anyone else through that at all costs.

I also wanted to be sure he had a work visa before he got here. More than half of the English teachers in Xiamen are teaching illegally on tourist visas. If you're only teaching private lessons, this is no problem. Even if you're teaching at a school, most of the time, this is no problem. Until it is.

My school, for instance, is right next door to another English school. In July last year, the other school got mad at mine for some reason or other and called the cops. There happened to be two girls substitute teaching classes on tourist visas when the raid went down, not even regularly teaching for the school. Both ended up having to leave the country soon after.

And my school is a good one. My biggest complaint about them is the way they handled my time off with a trip I took back to the States in September/October, and about 75% of that can be chalked up to Chinese culture, not maliciousness on the part of the school.

My school, the one other decent private school and not working at a school, just giving private lessons ended up being his final three choices.