Catman's take on Baicheng is refreshingly positve but not realistic. Any westerner going there is going to be extremely isolated and therefore miserable fairly quickly. A married couple might be ok there but a single person will have their survival tolerances tested to the extreme.
As for showering, outside of Catman's mastery of 2 minute cold showers (it's around -15 there and more) in the University provided accomodation, the only realistic option was a paid bathhouse that while quite fun to discover their offerings at each of them around town, eventually having ones private parts costantly scrutinised eventually pisses one off rather a lot. Putting up with a plethora of dysfunctional and corrupt Chinese systems of management for low pay is not worth it. Look elsewhere.