Back Online in a New Place

It's been a good while since I put up a post, mostly because I've been busy. (It's a funny thing how when interesting things are happening, it's harder to find time to write them down, while when nothing's happening, I've all the spare time I could use.)

In recent weeks, I've changed apartments, which has eaten up most of my free time. Just looking for an apartment in Shenzhen is one of the worst experiences anyone can live through, and it's getting more expensive. (Oddly, while the real estate market is consistently going down in Guangdong, the asking prices for rent are rising. The explanation I've been given is that if fewer people are buying homes, then it must be because they're waiting for prices to go down even lower, and if they're not buying, they must be renting; therefore, raise the rent.)

On the bright side, the real estate agents in town seem to be getting a little better about showing people to apartments. The first agent I contacted actually showed me more than ten places on our first day of hunting, and she called back the next day, eager to show me more places. Perhaps the closing of many real estate offices has led to an increase in customer service and competitiveness: See last year's apartment shopping stories below. At the end of the first day, though, she did tell me, "我们今天看了那么多房子。 如果你不买一家，就我会哭!" (Women jintian kanle name duo fangzi. Ruguo ni bu mai yi jia, jiu wo hui ku! "We've seen so many apartments today. If you don't buy one, I'll cry!")

Overall, the apartment shopping was almost fun at first. I got to practice my Chinese a lot, and I got some good exercise. After a few hours, though, the whole process started to wear thin. Bathrooms in most places were too small, or had squatters. We saw at least a dozen huge apartments with no furniture. Many of the apartment owners didn't even bother to clean the places before trying to find new tenants (in two cases, families totalling more than ten people were still in residence), so bonuses like air conditioners or refrigerators were unseen behind piles of of clothes, knick-knacks or packing boxes.

In the end, I finally found a decent place where the landlord seems to understand investing a little bit of money into an apartment raises the value. The place I have now has a smaller living room, bathroom and kitchen than my previous apartment did, but these are all large enough to be comfortable. (And, really, I never got much use out of the massive sofa I had in my former apartment.) The bedroom is larger, so I'll probably end up putting in a desk for my computer--I may even get an Internet connection...maybe. My rent is about 200 元 per month cheaper, and I can walk to school, which doesn't save that much money but does cut down on the number of smelly, dirty, loud, or otherwise offensive people I have to sit next to in a day.

Probably the biggest improvement is my balcony: large enough for a patio table (metal and glass, with an umbrella) and four chairs. Since my living room is smaller now, I may not be able to host as many people at one time, but with the patio set-up, I'll probably be able to do a lot more barbequing a lot more comfortably than I used to. The balcony's cooler at my new place, too, and more private (meaning I'm looking out over rooftops instead of at a wall of other apartments), so I've been spending a lot more time there.

It took me about three days to move all my things, and about four trips in cabs. Then I got to go through the process of closing out my contract for the old apartment, a pain I'd been warned about before, which ended up being worse than I expected. (No matter how much the service may improve when it comes to getting you into an apartment, there's been no decrease in the size of the hassles you face when you leave.) Next post I'll be sure to write something about the little scam artists in my old real estate agency.

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Six Days in Nanshan: Day Two
Originally posted: 07:33, 2007-08-27

After a slow breakfast and some reading, I left the Hai Tao and got a cab to the Hai Wan hotel, where it turned out no rooms were available. I wound up at another hotel whose name I couldn't discern, unless it was actually "The Vienna Group," which is under the same management as the Hai Wan.

Where the Hai Tao had been well above my price range for the long term, this second hotel closer to the cost for renting. Besides, this hotel room provided me with much better motivation to get out and find an apartment. A bit darker and older, this room was a nice enough place to sleep and shower, but not the kind of place you'd want to kill time in.

I met with Nersey and his mother-in-law to go apartment hunting and ran smack dab into the Shenzhen business model for real estate. Set up an appointment to see places with a company, and you find out they only begin looking through listings (mostly above your price range) after you've arrived. Ask to see one of the places in your price range taped to the agency's window, and you're told it's too far away or that a much pricier one is more "beautiful." Beauty >Space+Cost is apparently the basic formula in determining desirability in housing here. After hours with the first agency, we got to see two apartments: in one the bathroom was simply too small; in the other the bathroom would have been large enough had it not also been the laundry (with a washing machine plunked right in its center). I learned the phrase "Ce suo tai xiao le" quite quickly and had a good deal of fun sitting on the washing machine, pantomiming scrubbing my feet and back.

We parted ways with the real estate folk and had lunch at Hasio, then rested a while. Later Nersey and I went out walking, collecting mingpien, and trying to get to see apartments. We managed to get a look at a little loft-style place that was really quite nice (or would have been, were it not for the garden gnome-sized bathroom), and later met with an English-speaking agent called "Apple," who almost took us to see the same loft we'd already seen. After a visit back to her office, she was able to show us an unfurnished apartment in one of the Time buildings; the owner raised the rent by 300 kuai per month as soon as we entered, and it just wasn't worth it without the furnishings.

I had dinner with Nersey and his family, and his wife made a few phone calls to agents that night, asking them not to bother calling unless they had a few apartments to show instead of just one. I wasn't waiting with bated breath while I returned to the hotel.

****On a side note, in real time I have had my first corporate class tonight. For now, I'm teaching English training at a big computer company on Monday and Tuesday nights. The class went quite well from my point of view. The students are talkative, have good senses of humor when it comes to success or mistakes in English, and seem to be very much invested in improving their English. Even better, their English is already quite good, so it's largely a matter of lowering their inhibitions about speaking. In true Chinese fashion, I'll probably have to wait a week or so to see if the class went well for them, but tomorrow I have the chance to talk less (since I don't have to do the whole spiel about my credentials) and lean on the curriculum now that I know how far they've gotten in it. Hopefully, things will continue going well, and I won't wind up with the same fate as their last teacher, who apparently forgot to let them speak now and then.

Six Days in Nanshan: Day Three
Originally posted: 08:22, 2007-08-29

For the second day in a row, I had a breakfast pass, though this meal turned out more disappointing than the previous day's: no good meat, no fruit, just a thoroughly Chinese breakfast--various steamed bread objects and congee. The only things I recognized as baozi were stuffed with zhu (pig) something, and that something wasn't rou (meat), whatever part of the pig it was. In the end I got a tray of jidan (egg) buns that were light and moist to look at, but dry and chewy to eat. Coffee, it turned out, wasn't part of the breakfast pass, so the disappointment cost me 50 RMB; live and learn, no such thing as another free meal.

Nersey and I started apartment hunting again, this time with an agent who, while not seeming to get the point of looking at many apartments, was at least willing to try. Such people help you appreciate China's sense of service, even after others have robbed you of hope. After seeing two lackluster places in the immediate area, we took a longer walk out toward the local Walmart to the NewEra building. There I got to see the first apartment in my price range that I could imagine living in. Though small, it used space very economically, allowing a good amount of space in the kitchen and bathroom. Alongside the mainroom was a sheltered balcony-cum-laundry, and the main room itself was built on a sort of open concept design; a half-wall of silhouette shelves divided the main space mentally into a sitting room and bedroom, with a curtain hung on the bed side to create actual privacy. It was a cozy little place, well furnished and decorated in a style John Waters would have loved--nice '60s and '70s colors and a sofa whose camp value alone justified a good part of the rent.

For some reason the owner felt it very important that a Chinese lantern be hung from the curtain rod while we were there looking. Since I couldn't follow the Chinese being spoken, I'm not sure whether she was just taking advantage of having people taller than herself in the apartment or whether she thought the lantern really filled out the whole overall style of the place. I put the apartment in the category of "very strong maybe" and said I'd contact the agent if I was still interested after seeing a few more places.

Nersey and I went back to his place to have lunch and a rest. Since his knee was giving him a lot of pain, his mother-in-law gave him a Chinese medical treatment; this is a massage that looks quite painful--consisting largely of loud beating and vigorous stretching of the leg--but I'm told it's actually very relaxing.

Later we saw a few more places, all disappointing. The worst was over the Eastern Athens Hotel, a cramped little space with a bathroom so Lilliputian that, were I able to sit on the training-sized toilet, my knees would jut out into the entryway and showers would have to be taken in just such a posture. The NewEra apartment was looking better and better. I got back to the hotel figuring I had at least one good option if the next day turned out to be a bust.

Six Days in Nanshan: Day Four
Originally posted: 07:53, 2007-08-30

I skipped breakfast at the hotel, opting instead for a walk around the area and some vegetable baozi with a canned coffee; all told, this ran me just five kuai. Nersey begged out of the apartment hunting, as his knee was still acting up, so I set out with two agents and a little English to one of the Time buildings and saw two apartments.

The first was a spacious room with a large kitchen, large bathroom and good-sized bedroom set off of it. It had lots of storage space, one large balcony and a second balcony for the washing machine and complete furnishings, all new or in good shape. (This is actually the apartment I wound up renting.) Next I saw a place in the same building, offered by the same owners, for the same price; this second place was smaller, on a lower floor (which Chinese apparently like less) had no washing machine or refrigerator and only one air conditioner set in the place of the least possible usefulness. "Yi yang, danshi meiyou, meiyou, meiyou . . . wo bu dong," I said to the real estate agent: "The same (price, I hoped, was understood), but doesn't have, doesn't have, doesn't have . . . I don't understand." He shrugged, nodded, smiled; I think maybe he got the joke.

I managed to get across that I really liked the first place, but that I'd need to wait for my Zhongguo pengyou (Chinese friend) before I could settle anything. While I was waiting for Nersey's wife to get home, I went out with another agent from another agency. She was able to show me a once-nice apartment whose current resident looked like he was preparing for the lead role in a cinematic version of Kafka's The Hunger Artist and who had done a good job of starting the apartment's decline into utter squalor; all that was missing was a boarded over window and maybe a graffitoed RIP for someone named Tiny or Boo. Then she showed me an absolutely beautiful room in the same building (with enough furnishings and details--such as a forty-two inch plasma TV--to make up about a year's salary for me) that just exceeded my price range by, oh, half of my monthly salary or so.

After Nersey's wife came home, we had dinner, and then a storm broke out, during which Nersey's mother-in-law taught me shandian (lightning), leisheng (thunder), and that you shouldn't touch a shu (tree) during a thunderstorm, though I think tree is actually shumu. We decided against going to look at more apartments, and I settled myself on the apartment I'd seen that morning.

We walked down to the agency, but it was closed for a business function; she phoned the agent, and he and his partner came rushing back to the office just to explain to us that the landlord was currently out of town, so the apartment couldn't be rented yet. After a bunch of talk (among the Chinese) and some confusion (on my part), we managed to set up a meeting for the next morning, but only after I'd paid a deposit--not the apartment deposit, but an agency deposit; I'm not sure why. (Perhaps arranging to sign for an apartment and then not showing up is the Chinese equivalent of knocking on someone's door and running away.)