A Room of Her Own

Two years later, and I'm still having Chinese firsts.

This weekend's first: finding an apartment.

Things will not be so cushy at my new posting. They provide fewer extras and, well, no one is as helpful as my current Handler. My new handler takes a lot of prodding to get any work done. There is no apartment provided with my new job. Instead, I get a pittance in a housing allowance and the chance to get to know the housing market intimately.

If you've been following economic news at all, you might know that China is experiencing a whole bunch of growth along with inflation. So, while more apartments are being built, they are also ridiculously expensive. It's all a little strange, because sometimes companies outright give apartments to their employees, other people buy them — cash in hand. Loans still don't really exist. And you can't really own anything, anyway, given the economic structure. I don't know; it's all very odd and seeing as I can't really read or speak Chinese, well, there's not much chance that I'll really figure it out anytime soon.

So, I got a hold of my new handler, and he agreed to arrange a time with a real estate agent. On Friday afternoon, when I was *coughcough* sick, I went to meet them. Man, was I in for a surprise. I could pay a whole lot of money to rent a studio that was a bit smaller than my current living room. Ouch. We did see one 1-br apartment, but it had rented not 10 minutes earlier. (And my new handler had been 25 minutes late in meeting me... you do the math.)

Dejected and downtrodden, I decided to take a day to fully consider my options. I really didn't want to jump into an over-priced studio without having even tried to find anything better. Although, I knew full well that if I waited too long, everything that was even remotely affordable would be gone. (With students leaving, now is a much better time to find an apartment in the university district then it will be even in August.)

On Saturday morning, I headed to the office to do a little looking on every Beijing ex-pat's source for all news, events, and entertainment: The Beijinger. I saw a few listings for 1- and 2-bedroom apartments, often for less than 4000 kuai per month. However, a phone call or two later, and I realized that most of those prices were lies. Sure, they had apartments for rent, but for much higher than the quoted price.

I finally found one man who said he did, in fact as well as in ad, have a 1-bedroom apartment for 4100 kuai a month. We arranged to meet at 1:30. It was 12:45, and he was a half-hour cab ride away. I booked my little bike over to the bank, withdrawing almost all my money, and hailed a cab up to Wudaokou. (Once again, I got a dud cab driver, who didn't seem to know where one of the most popular subway stops is. CYW!*)

Once I met up with him, we hopped back in a cab and drove past the two apartment complexes I had been the previous day, and stopped across the street from the second one. We took a walk up a shortish alley, past obviously older buildings, to a new complex at the end. We visited two places, and while they do, technically, have a separate bedroom, they really are glorified studios. The kitchen is a separate room, and there is a divider between the two rooms, but glass doors or a curtain do not a completely separate bedroom make.

Still, they came in at the quoted price. I went for option two, which has new floors and a soon-to-be-new coat of paint. It also will have a curtain, which is better than a glass door for hiding all the dirty clothes I tend to leave lying around my bedroom floor. They both had shower doors (shower doors!), and option two (aka: My New Pad) has a kitchen door that DOES NOT interfere with opening the refrigerator!

So, I am definitely taking a step down in housing. But, I am taking a giant step up in location. And I don't think I need to tell you how important that is.