AFTER spending thousands to join an international talent competition in Singapore, several parents hoped that their children would be participating in a global contest, only to discover that both the competition and tour were not even close to their expectations.

A handful of parents whose children are undergoing art training at Shenzhen Art Education Organization in Futian District complained about the training center’s puffery in promotion of an international art competition in Singapore and a weeklong tour around Southeast Asian countries, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

In response to the complaints, the training center said a casual teacher was behind the promotion and the school would not take responsibility for the badly arranged competition and tour.

One of the parents, known as Gu, said that her child has been taking dancing courses at the training center for nearly five years. During the summer holiday, a teacher surnamed Li recommended the so-called international art festival in Singapore to the students.

“The teacher said it was a high-ranking international competition and the Singapore Government would also arrange a special tour for our kids to play at Legoland in Malaysia,” said Gu. Many kids were very keen on taking part in the competition and even more so for the tour to Singapore and Malaysia, so their parents registered to join the program.

About 15 students registered and a team composed of over 50 people, including parents, was led by Li. Each student was charged 6,680 yuan (US$1,001) and each companion paid 5,480 yuan for the seven-day tour. The fee covered the registration fee for the art competition in Singapore and the tour around Malacca and Kuala Lumpur.

The group departed from Hong Kong on Aug. 9, and the competition kicked off the following afternoon. However, to their disappointment, the parents found there was “something wrong” with the competition, as it was “not professional at all.”

A parent identified as Ni said that all of the candidates seemed to be only children from China. “I found there were kids from Guangzhou, Jiangmen and Guangxi, but no contestants from other countries, so it could hardly be labeled as an international competition,” said Ni. The father also complained that there was neither a host for the competition, nor an audience.

Based on a written letter of complaint from another parent, only five or six judges attended the competition and they were playing with their mobile phones, moving around and even falling asleep during the competition.

The parents were not only dissatisfied with the competition, but also the tour arranged by the travel agency.

Ni said that they stayed at a fairly good hotel when they arrived in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, on the night of Aug. 11. However, the premise for staying at the hotel was that the parents needed to stay and inspect the apartments for sale there the next morning. All of the parents had not been informed about the arrangement until they got to the hotel.

What’s more, according to Ni, when on the fourth night the team arrived at a remote hotel in Kuala Lumpur, some of the parents protested against the tour guide because they did not want to follow the agenda for the next day, but the tour guide said that they must follow the itinerary and no one could leave the group.

One parent even called the Chinese Embassy to ask for help.

According to the competition’s brochure, the art festival was an internationally reputable one, but the real competition was badly organized, said the parents.

On the other side, a person from the organizing committee of the art festival, known as Zhang, said that their headquarters in Beijing had organized and promoted the event.

In response to the parents’ doubts about the unprofessional competition, Zhang said that some judges just checked their phones during the competition, but it did not mean that the judges were not showing respect or were unprofessional. Zhang also said there were four candidates from Singapore and some guest performers from Malaysia.

Shenzhen Art Education Organization in Futian also attempted to make a clean break from the cultural company that organized the competition and trip. The head of the organization, Zhao, said that Li, the teacher who had first started to talk the children into joining the tour, was not a permanent staff there. (Zhang Qian)