Update 8/11/2016: Evidence showing the link between Alice Zhang and Edward Zhang attached at the bottom of the original post.

Evidence added for “Minior Issue -2”, showing Edward asking volunteer to use his friend’s hotel business for Go Congress off-site housing.

Update 8/12/2016: Edward Zhang, indirectly, asked me to remove his name from the title and from the post. He threatened to sue me for a defamation case if I refuse. However, nothing in this article is untrue. Hence, I refuse to remove anything in the original post. Furthermore, I will add more evidence as I see fit in the future.

If this has to be brought to court as case between a board member with a volunteer, then we will see how the court rules.

8/12/2016: As far as I know, the board of American Go Association (AGA) is doing some investigation and hoping to resolve this issue within August. I believe AGA board has good intention, thus, I’m going to hold from leaking any further evidence to the public against Edward and Alice, until 9/1.

Original post from 8/7/2016:

Edward Zhang (Zhiyuan Zhang) (linkedin) is an AGA Board member. He lives in DC area.

Alice Zhang is Edward Zhang’s sister. She lives in Beijing. Alice Zhang runs a tourist company in Beijing (link).

Major issues:

1.Identity & Copyright

Alice Zhang pretends her company is an “official delegate of AGA”. Her company account profile picture uses AGA logo and other AGA organizer’s personal photo. Her company’s Chinese name is intentionally called “North American Go” and uses “go_usa” as their email address. These are on-going situation without any consent of the AGA/AGF, board, congress organizers.

Alice also uses photos on Facebook of Edward Zhang’s connections to put-up advertise material. These photos are provided by Edward and without the photo owner’s awareness.





2. Overcharge & False Promise

Alice Zhang sends people to US Go Congress for nearly tripled costs of what AGA and Go Congress charges. She promises her customer that they will get services and materials that a go congress won’t have. She also discriminates her customers (congress attendees) in the activities they can participate based on the purchase amount of the attendee. For example, she claimed that a customer who didn’t buy housing and meal plan from her was not eligible to play “US-China Team-Relay Go”, and the rest of her customer who paid more could play, while the truth was that this event would actually not be available in this congress at all. And of course, with tripled costs, she puts her customers in the lowest price dorms.

Alice Zhang is selling US Go Community, a volunteer-based service including the Congress and AGA, as a commercial service and event provider.

Edward Zhang, while fully aware of the nature of the US Go situation, is supporting and assisting this behavior.

3. Irresponsible actions towards parents and children

Family customers (parents and minors) are the main source of customers of Alice Zhang. While the congress staff clearly stated that we are not a summer camp or summer school, Alice ignores this message and makes impression to the parents that this is a special summer camp of Go. This year, Alice Zhang tried to ignore the minor policy waiver and asked the volunteer to translate legal documents for her. She promised to lead the group of 13 people to the go congress. Being the attending guardian stated in the visa invitation letters for each child, she abandoned the children at the last minute, saying she will not come to the US, and assigned them to other customers in the group. Of course, this happened in the last minute after her receiving all the payments. She also “asked” the congress volunteers to “look after” the guests from China.

While communicating with Edward Zhang, her brother, about this serious issue, Edward dropped out president Andy Okun in the email thread and lightly notified Alice with “Google-Translate-like” Chinese.

Minor Issues:

Alice Zhang, while fully understands the congress process, keeps asking things like: “Can husband and wife take time share of a single dorm bed”, “Can a 10-year-old share with his parent “(while we stated that 5-year and above are required to take a single bed), “Can we get refund for meals that we don’t use in the meal plan” etc.

Edward Zhang asked the congress volunteers to use his friend’s hotel business to do off-site housing for the congress (link).

Edward may claim that all the issues are with Alice Zhang alone, and he has no knowledge of whatever Alice does. Well, here is a media report (link), and below is the screenshot, notice that the writer is Alice with her company information, and also the date, only 4 days before the congress.