I've sold products around that area in Bayuquan and some little towns in Gaizhou, Wafangdian, Zhuanghe etc a few years ago. You aren't by any chance a fat ugly butch Serbian/Hungarian woman that tells the kids she's from America are you? Just joking, I know that this a wumao advertising post.

The only jobs worth doing for almost any foreigner in Yingkou, Anshan, Benxi and those cities are in manufacturing and engineering; it's an industrial part of China that isn't for the light hearted. I kind of like those shithole towns because the men aren't girly sissies like down South; they're good fun when they don't want to fight or force you to drink toxic quantities of cheap baijiu and most of the women are friendly, if not a bit naive and excessively curious around foreigners; it's just like stepping back in time 10 or 15 years.

Those towns are strictly for business trips, not long term residence especially in the worst areas. That pollution in winter will remind you of the time that your old man caught you smoking and forced you to chain smoke a whole box of 20 Marlboro Reds to put you off ever wanting to smoke again. Hopefully new regulations can fix that, but if you're new to China, it will come as a shock to you.

As for hotspring clubs and the like, they're ten a penny in that part of China and some of those open markets are absolutely scabby as f**k, larger cities in China are clamping down on the farmers, but there would be too much risk of social unrest if such a policy got carried out there. If you like to go on poverty safari, go ahead but don't talk about it like its the most wonderful thing you've ever seen.

It is far from being the worst area in the world, but if you are a newbie and don't speak Chinese, you'll be screwed.