Please help me get my family and I back home to England. I’m a Brit living in China where I’ve been for almost 20 years.

During these years, I taught myself Chinese, wrote and taught English material for governmental and privately-owned organisations and companies between 2004 – 2008, wrote a course on how to read English, a book on Essential English Grammar, and starting a course of 12 books on Oral English, specifically designed for Chinese students.

I also met and married a Chinese woman.
We now have a son who is 8 and a daughter who is 4.

My wife and I started an English school together in 2012 from nothing. After a couple of years, we had our first foreign teacher join us. We also had an arrangement with the owner of a 700-student kindergarten for us to supply their English language needs. However, due to naivety on our part, we accepted the offer for investment from a parent of a student who lured us into an expansion program which she ended up project managing at a scale and cost we had not agreed to. Once the renovation work had started, the “investment” was unilaterally converted to a “loan” which has bankrupted us.

We were hauled through the Chinese court system and my wife blacklisted through the Chinese Social Credit Scoring System. Our accounts have been frozen due to the building indebtedness which severely crippled us. We are living on the edge. Today, as I write this, we have less than 400 RMB (Chinese currency) to our names (46 GBP), and we don’t have this month’s (15th May 2020) rent of 5,000 RMB (577 GBP) for our home. We’re on the verge of homelessness, and my wife is on the verge of the equivalent of debtors’ prison, as all debt is in her name, as I am pretty much a zero-entity in Chinese law.

Meanwhile, my eight-year-old son is suffering from depression, as he leaves the house at 07:30am, comes home at about 4:30pm and does his homework, supervised by my wife, until at least 21:30 hrs. He sits crying all of the time. And because my wife and I have been under so much stress, shouting and screaming has become a serious issue. My children are deeply affected by this.

My health has suffered due to the stress of these issues and I developed a heart condition requiring 3 stents fitted in 2 operations, just 6 months apart, for which we had to borrow the money required, as insurance only covers us for about 60% of costs, which are to be paid in advance.

Then came the Wuhan virus; what little income we had stopped.

In February I was seriously ill with what my wife feared was the virus. I was very ill, but stayed at home, as we didn’t have money for the hospital, and didn’t want to take the risk of my family being infected beyond our, then, present situation.

And finally, in April of 2020 I was hospitalised for vomiting blood and ejecting it from behind in three episodes between midnight and 6:30 am. It turns out that one or two of the heart medications they’ve had me on, for far too long it has now been discovered, basically caused internal bleeding. It was close, as I had lost a lot of blood. We appealed to our students’ parents and a couple of them helped fund my treatment and recovery. Without them, I would literally have bled to death.

Funds raised from this GoFundMe account will help us pay off our debts (as we will not be allowed as a family to leave China until we do so) as well as buy flights back to the UK for my children and myself, as my wife will have to remain in China until I can find a job which pays at least *18,600 GBP per annum, which then enables her to get a UK visa as my wife, and for us to have enough money to rent a place in the UK until I can self-employ or get a job.

We are, and have been, since the advent of the Wuhan virus, without income. Our lives and future earning potential has been decimated beyond recovery. We are left with no place to turn. Figuratively painted into a corner best describes our current situation. And, of course, this being China, there is no safety net, no furlough funds, no respite.

I am forced to make this appeal anonymously as we are still very vulnerable in China for the reasons outlined above. Thank you for taking the time to read this and for any donation you may choose to make.

Please help us get back home.