Pros
The reason I came to Yinchuan Aston in the first place was to experience life in a small city in a part of China I had never been, while using the three days off per week to travel around the region. Our usual working week was Thursday afternoon until Sunday evening, giving plenty of time for such travel. I really quite enjoyed my life in Yinchuan and there are some stunningly beautiful areas to explore within easy three-day weekend travel distance. If you're looking for a unique, off the beaten track China experience, I would recommend Yinchuan (or anywhere in northwest China, really). A previous review stated that there is dust from the desert every day in the city - I don't think that's accurate. Compared to other Chinese cities, the pollution was quite moderate and dust storms are an occasional occurrence. Pollution can get bad in the winter when the government turns on the heat, but the summer weather was nothing short of glorious nearly every day. Despite the negatives of the school (see below), I really came to enjoy seeing my students every weekend and got to know them very well by the end of my time there. Furthermore, Yinchuan Aston has four locations, and I had a good relationship with my location manager and Chinese colleagues. As for the teaching, Aston has their own comprehensive curriculum and textbooks and as the foreign teacher - especially for the younger students - you are essentially expected to be the foreign clown and entertain the kids. Even if the kids have no clue about the content, emphasis is on games and keeping the kids happy. This is typical across most training centers in China, I believe. You tried to save a buck by cheating foreign teachers and now you're out half of your foreign staff and facing a deluge of negative reviews. You should have considered how hard (and expensive) it is to get native English speaking teachers with the right visa to go to a far-flung place like Yinchuan, a tier 3 city at best with low salaries - not everyone's cup of tea unless you were seeking adventure as I was. Hopefully this onslaught of negative - and accurate - reviews will make that task even more difficult so others don't end up in the same situation.
Cons
While I would recommend Yinchuan as a place, Yinchuan Aston should be avoided. As previous reviews have stated, Aston is a giant company with hundreds of schools across China, but many of them are franchises. In practice this means that the head offices in Dalian/Xi'an have very little recourse short of 'advocating' (more on that later) on your behalf to the franchise manager. Aston pays low salaries, well below market average even for a tier-3 city such as Yinchuan. I had many friends who were making more than 50% above what I was at other training centers for the same teaching hours (but, it should be noted, with a 5-day working week). Yinchuan Aston is also constantly short of teachers (it's a tough market these days to get foreign teachers, especially in a small place like Yinchuan), so this means constant schedule changes and the occasional Russian - I mean "Canadian" - part time "teacher" filling in the gaps, lying to the parents about their nationality in the process. What these low salaries mean is that the vast majority of recruited teachers have zero teaching experience minus the TEFL certificate for the visa - which, unlike many other large training centers in China such as EF, is not reimbursed by Aston. I was told by the Aston recruiter that they would not pay for my TEFL because they have their own comprehensive training program, known internally as T-CERT which would also result in a qualification. The contract states clearly that this is to take place over the course of multiple days (possibly a week) and may involve travel to a different city. Instead, my cohort of new teachers received - quite literally - a few hours of training from a foreign manager who flew in from Xi'an and quickly went through powerpoint presentations pulled from T-CERT, and days later I found myself in front of a KT1 (the very youngest pre-school students, with parents in the room) with no teaching experience and none of the promised comprehensive T-CERT training per our contract. The worst came at the end of the first semester, where there is a nearly month-long break between semesters. Our contract grants us two weeks of paid holiday to be used as we wish with the exception of specifically stated blackout dates. The language is sufficiently clear that it is up to the foreign teacher as to when holiday will be taken, and when we request holiday a form must be filled and signed by the teacher, the location manager, HR manager, and the head manager of the school. Little did we know that management took it upon themselves to grant us three weeks of time off between semesters (the time off is to compensate us for working outrageous hours at the end of semester, teaching 7 days, 40 hours per week, for two straight weeks) and they took it upon themselves to deduct one week of holiday from our contract without our consent and without telling us. I won't rehash what has been stated by previous reviews, but head office and their 'dispute resolution' mechanism proved to be beyond useless, with the resolution being the exact same outcome as if I had not filed a complaint to head office in the first place, just with a different name and a fancy agreement I signed with management. As stated in other reviews, it seems that salary is at least partially determined by race, as the black teachers at the school discovered that their contract renewals were for 2000 RMB less than new, entirely inexperienced new white teachers and other teachers who resigned. From what I understand, head office proved to be useless in resolving this and full of excuses even for such a serious breach in workplace norms. And finally, what prompted me to write this review: the school terminated a foreign teacher on their last day of contract and thus cheated this teacher of a month's salary, bonus, and flight allowance for a supposed disciplinary infraction which took place no fewer than 10 months prior, with not a peep from management about this disciplinary issue until the very end of the contract, and after HR spent the last two months of this teacher's contract literally begging her to resign with Yinchuan Aston for another year. How can the school want her so badly to resign, and then decide on her last day she is so unfit that she is to be stripped of some 12000 RMB and unceremoniously fired? Nothing short of outrageous. The ESL market in China is a minefield, and no matter the city, company, or school it can be hit or miss and one must be vigilant and do extensive research before choosing a place to work, as once you are on the ground you often have zero recourse in resolving disputes. I'd give Yinchuan Aston a miss - and would advise the same about all of the Aston schools across China and Vietnam as well given the poor performance of head office in resolving disputes with local franchise management.