"In a word...." -then you go on to write a sentence. You must be Chinese. :-)

Seeing how the good people on this board have told me that the consulate won't be of much help, I think I have no choice but to go to the PSB in Ningxia and talk to the officials personally. However they have already blacklisted me with the PSB in Beijing. Do you guys think I should first go to Beijing or back to Ningxia? In other words if you typed my full name on google you will see that they have blacklisted me with the China Foreign Affairs Bureau in Beijing. Should I just go to Beijing? Do you guys think the consulate there will agree to have someone come with me as a witness?

You state that your friend had his passport taken from him by the Gong An. The first thing worth mentioning is that the passport is not his property, but the property of his homeland's government. The second thing is if it was taken from him without his consent,that would be an illegal act. The third thing is that the authorities there seem to be treating him rather well - what I mean by that is he's still in China a month after his having overstayed his visa came to the attention of the Gong An. Simply for overstaying he could be fined 500 Yuan a day to a maximum of 5000 Yuan. He could also be 'requested to leave the country' within 10 days or less after being issued with the necessary short-term visa, which he would have to pay for.
His problem is further compounded by the fact he's been working without a Z visa. Another hefty fine could be in the pipeline for that. Is he still teaching? If I were him, I'd wire my family for the equivalent in his homeland's currency of 30000 Yuan, in readiness for paying fines, and buying a long-haul air ticket. The last thing he would want to do is time in a Chinese jail through non-payment of his fines or not having enough money left to pay for his flight!
That said, it would have been very easy for him to have checked the expiry date of his F visa, it must have
'valid until.....' written on it in English! Simply by having done that, he would surely not have ended up in so much trouble.

Is GuangZhou Polytechnic Normal University the actual name of that university? In my experience Chinese universities are either called polytechnic universities or normal universities but don't have that kind of combined name. Please make sure the name is accurate.

Working on F visas can be a problem, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's always inadvisable to do so. In the case of the above-mentioned university, your friend has got a major problem. As in every other country, ignorance of the law is no excuse. Also, he hadn't done his homework first, and it seems he trusted his Chinese employer too much. Next time he'll know better, as people say - once bitten, twice shy!

I seem to remember you left a training center in Yinchuan of Ningxia in the dead of the night, and that you feared your name would be entered on a black list of foreigners not to be employed as teachers in China. I wonder if you have gotten that problem solved.

I have a good friend who had been working here since September of 2008. He was referred here by a recruiter who signed him to a 2 year contract and sent him to this school. This University obviously has management problems as when students enter the college campus they can raise their heads and see "Guangzhou Pyrotechnic Normal University" at the official entrance. Apparently this place is the father and mother of where people learned to make fireworks or something. This school also has an Austrailian teacher who is supposedly not liked by the teachers and students as he was invited to sit with Chinese staff but he remarked that he couldn't "sit with dogs", he also likes to yell and scream at students according to what the students have said.

Back to my friend, he was supposedly given a "business" visa by the school which allowed him to stay in China for an extended period of time. However come June over a month ago my friend decides to go back to the United States and visit his family so he asks the foreign affairs office to buy him an airplane ticket. Well lo and behold!! The head of the foreign affairs department calls him in and apologizes to him as they had apparently made a "mistake"! What was the mistake?? Well apparently the visa which was given to him only allowed him to stay in China for no more than 30 days!! He had to leave and go to a place like Hong Kong once every 30 days in order to legally stay in China! REMEMBER this is a University, and a public one at that.

Now my friend here has his passport taken away by a Major at the Gong An office. This policewoman along with the people at the school assure him that they are working on this case as it's a "special" case which has NEVER happened before. Except it's been over a month and they still haven't gotten anything done. My friend is looking at a possible FINE and maybe getting kicked out of the country because apparently someone up high at the school decided to be all shy and denying about what his visa really was about. The best case scenario for my friend now is that he will have to pay the fine and be out of luck with going back to the United States for the summer.

You can add GuangZhou Polytechnic Normal University to the list of bad schools. Universities which operate like this deserves to have some heads rolled and some massive management changes take place.