1.) Regardless of your overall level of ability with learning languages, you should make an effort. Even if you never successfully learn a language, your efforts will most likely be appreciated by locals and will make you stand apart from those that won't even try to speak anything other than English.

Saying that Chinese is impossible to learn is a very defeatist attitude, and there are people out who do reach a basic conversational level in little more than a year. They do 1 year remedial courses to get you up to scratch for doing a degree here as an international student, lol. Also, you are surrounded by a Chinese language environment, you can learn a lot from reading menus and bus stop signs. You don't want to be living off McDonald's and relying on taxis, do you?

2.) Granted, due to its location, Hohhot might not be for China newbies though, but... not everybody is coming to China for a year long holiday. The whole "you'll have a better time" statement is flawed, you will have ups and downs wherever you go.

You don't get a job for a 'good time', you get a job to pay the bills or even just to get you a visa. Holidays and your spare time are the times when you seek the good times. There are good and bad employers, but in every job, undesirable tasks pop up now and then. Hell, I've got a shitload of marking to do and catch up on today, but it doesn't mean I hate my job as a whole.

In my eyes, the attitude of foreigners that only want to come to China for a long holiday rather than actually thinking about the job that they will actually do is one thing that allows the unethical business to get away with a lot of what they do, EF included. As harsh as this sounds, nobody will ever feel any sympathy for somebody who is just swanning around on Mummy and Daddy's money, or refusing to retire.

3.) You don't have to solely make friends with foreigners. You ARE allowed to become friends with Chinese people. There were probably less than 12 foreigners in the local vicinity in places that I have lived in, but I still made friends, even though my Chinese isn't great. I would suggest that you try to make friends with local people and not necessarily colleagues either. These are the people that you show you the good places and can even dig you out of the shit in bad times. Even start by asking a student to show you a good place to get food on your lunch break, it all helps.

4.) I previously worked in a TC and the only foreign guys that I actually liked, moved on to better jobs whilst I was there, such is the circle of life. Everybody that has been teaching in China more than a few months, quickly learns that TCs like EF aren't the best places to be. Try to get with a good public school or university instead.