Renew China Residence Permit while outside of China?

I seem to have a big problem. My wife and two kids went home over a month ago for the summer and our residence permits expire in 6 days. In preparation for this, they would not let me renew the residence permits till 30 days before the expiration date and my family left about 60 days before the expiration date. So we arranged for a friend who was coming back to China to pick them up from my wife in the USA and bring the passports with him and give them to me (I am staying here in China the whole time) so I can get them renewed. Today I went to the Entry/Exit Bureau and they told me that they cannot issue a new residence permit while a person is outside of the country. She said the only option is to have them come home early before it expires so they can renew (an extremely expensive option which is not an option), or have them apply for tourist visas at a Chinese embassy and they can come back to China with that. I told her that these were not an option based on the timeline and I couldn’t renew them before they left because of the limit. She gave me a “meibanfa” despite asking for help or to talk to the supervisor or director. Does anyone know anything about this? I thought I read once that somebody had did this but I think I may have been mistaken. I need to know if anyone has any info!