You sure he's not flicking those looooong fingernails of his together?

Not sure I understand why, but literally over 90% of my students are girls.  This semester, of the 50 students in my two classes, 48 or female.  Not that I'm complaining.

Last year and the year before, half of my classes were filled with Russians.  Now, those weren't girls, they were women.  What a contrast.  I sighed every day in the Fall as the days got colder, the cleavage got more scarce and the shorts got longer.              

Here's a group of my students at the time out tossing back a few cold ones at the ex-pat bar.

temples and markets are pretty boring to me lol

I love markets, every time I go to the market I end up with way too much fruit and veg and a dead fish for about 30 yuan but as a tourist it's another one you only have to see once

Unless things have changed, i think the Invitation Letter for a Z Visa is issued by the local FEB which is not the PSB. So you need to contact the Changshu FEB to see if they will issue an Invitation Letter naming the Chinese embassy in Turkey as the place of issuance for a Z Visa, not the Changshu PSB.

The three Chinese agencies are separate (yet everyone likes to amalgamate them into "The Chinese".) The PSB may not like it, but it's the FEB that issues the letter and once you're in China and Changshu under a validly issued Z Visa from a Chinese Embassy, the PSBs only job is to issue a Residence Permit.

So run this through (or have your school/agent run this through) the local FEB.

The cities can be very samey but if you take long meandering walks in different areas of town you'll sometimes find a temple or a market hidden away in some back street or an old stone bridge or a huge ancient tree that's somehow been left standing  (not very often mind you but that's the challenge).

Similarly, because China's public transport is actually pretty good, you can hop on a local city bus or two and easily be 10-20 km outside the city center in an hour or so for just a few kuai.

Lovely girls.

I would like to mention again that Chinese will say any-frickin-thing they feel like if it saves them one nano-joule of effort, so I wouldn't get put off by what you've described. That's a normal interaction.

Doing the visa paper work can be a pain, especially the first time, but try to take it in stride and just keep pluggin' away and blowing off steam here. The other fellas are giving great advice. If you stay in China for a second contract, you will most likely not have to go through very much hassle like this as the permits can be renewed easily by the same school or transferred with little trouble to another school under ideal circumstances.

Don't take being lied to personally in China or you won't have such a good time. Ya might look at being lied to like catching a 3 y.o. with his hand in the cookie jar. In fact, I pretty much put everything here through a 3-5 y.o. filter in order not to get upset so much. And I'm thinking of recalibrating down another year.

I know two different Brits in their late 40's who write guide books and love exploring China, especially the Southwest. They readily admit cities like Guangzhou are to be avoided, but they know how to make the most of them while they're here.

The countryside is amazing, of course it is, China is vast.

The cities are boring though, even the historical places are just rebuilt history bits in the middle of badly made modern buildings. Maybe it's just too alien for me but exploring in China has never been that interesting for me, everywhere is too dirty and too far to walk

Yeah, I've had clickers and smackers, and pretty much just about the same variety as DD. It's quite a cornucopia of neuroses up in this neggeh, jeggeh.