There is a wealth of different kinds of tofu to try as well. China is used to vegetarians and special diets for religious reasons.

But really you are better off cooking at home.

The 'wet' markets have many vendors of fish, most alive, and they will kill and clean them for you. These are mostly river species, and river fish have an earthy flavour. There are also farmed turbot, and lots of crayfish and other shell fish.

Metro is a local cash and carry wholesaler (easy to get a card) and they also do a reasonable range of frozen sea fish.

As already mentioned, lots of fresh veg, many of them wild. You can try lots of new things. There is also a big range of fresh fungi available.

Eggs are easy, and cheese (rare in supermarkets) is available for specialist local shops, run by expats.

There is a lot of apartment sharing and sub letting of rooms going on. Rooms come up from about 600/m.That is an option for you.

There are some apartments that come up cheap, but you need to be prepared to jump in in June-August after the end of the academic year to get a good one. Lots of people want them in September.

I see them use a lot of unrefined rapeseed oil from local farmers. It is dark brown and thick looking.
It has not had a lot of that nasty natural stuff taken out and so in not clear. They say that some of it is even organic, whatever that means it can't be any good, shock horror.

If you see the stories nearly everyday, they have probably been recycled.

Yes a lot of bad things happen in China. Not all food is safe. But that is still a small percentage of the whole. These 'horror stories' are exactly that. Hence them doing the rounds.

I assume you are already located in China.

Unless you are a mandarin speaker, the biggest problem will be finding a conference in which English is spoken. Or where they have simultaneous translation.

I can only offer suggestions, not answers.
Your best bet would be to check with the international affairs departments of the major universities in China as they will be the ones holding the international conferences.
You could also contact the educational affairs departments of the embassies of the major English speaking countries. They may know of a website listing conferences.
Check to see if the China education ministry has a webpage for conferences.

Contact the Confucius Institute HQ in China for info as they seem to have a finger in every pie.

Also check to see if there are any conferences running in parallel with the Education Fairs and Book Fairs.

There have been a number of Webinars on the Macmillan Website, some of them are Asia related.

These were in the field of ESL.

What field were you thinking of?