Use the Internet to source apartments. Don't fall for their usual tripe, "This is how it's done in China."

Decide for yourself what you're willing to pay and other terms. Sometimes you can't avoid agents but at least you can have some control over the terms.

Yeah those guys are almost always total hacks from the countryside who didn't finish high school.

I sympathize, it can be really frustrating to try and find a decent place. If they just put 2 seconds worth of effort into looking for your requirements you could find a decent place in no time given the shockingly low occupancy rate of apartments here.

I think that because the lifestyle floor is so low and the wealth gap so wide you don't tend to get talented people who are happy with relatively lower paying jobs...if you have the talent/background to make more money you pretty much always see people take that route. 

Ditto the education industry here, but to a lesser extent. There is a reason that the EFL industry (on the chinese side) is full of such amateur hour companies, useless managers and shady people. If a local person is good at things...they don't work in EFL, they work in whatever industry has the prestige/pay to match their talent/connections. There aren't enough genuinely smart, capable people to go around to industries seen as lower paying/less prestigious so the ones who exist congregate in the top fields (to help cover for the connections hires!)

I've heard a couple of times people finding a place through an agent, then paying the person directly, but a lower sum, so the agency doesn't get their cut and tenant and landlord gets off slightly cheaper.