My apartment hunt has been temporarily put on hold, pending the end of my first intensive week of classes next week. This morning, however, I received a call from the friendly, non-English speaking broker at Wo Ai Wo Jia. He had two apartments to show me. I scheduled an appointment to meet him this afternoon.
After my frustrations while looking at apartments last week I put together a list of things that are important to me to have in an apartment. I wrote it down, then a fabulous translator friend typed it in Chinese. We printed it out and now I can show it to Chinese brokers so that they know what I want:
"I am looking for a 2 bedroom furnished apartment, preferably in a Chinese complex (not an international compound), in Dongzhimen, Dongsishitiao or Yonghegong, with a one-year lease.
The apartment should have:
24 hr hot water
heat included in the rent
a western toilet
an enclosed shower (shower cabinet) or a bathtub
natural light during the daytime
tile, parquet or wood floors (no wall to wall carpets)
elevator if above the third floor (24 hrs)
air conditioner
high speed internet access
An oven (for baking) would be nice but is not a requirement.
I am ready to move in immediately upon identifying an apartment and signing the lease but do not need to move until I find the right place.
I have Chinese and foreigner friends who speak and read both Chinese and English and can help me understand the contract before I sign it."
You may have laughed when you read the list. Some older homes here don't even have running water, so I want to make sure that a realtor knows that it's important to me, and that I want it 24 hours a day. The hot water in some places turns off after a certain hour, so again I decided to specify. Many apartments have bathrooms with 'open' showers, which means the shower head is just a spigot or a handheld showerhead mounted on a wall, with no tub or compartment to separate the 'shower' from the rest of the bathroom. It can be a nightmare to clean, and one that I saw had the showerhead pointed right at the toilet, with not enough room to stand up or turn around. No thank you. Some buildings with elevators turn them off after a certain hour. I don't want to ever have to make a decision to leave somewhere early, or to stay out until five or six in the morning, because of an elevator being turned off.
High speed internet access is necessary because, well, because I want internet access at home and it can take months to have installed if an apartment does not already have it.
This afternoon the broker took me to two apartments. One had two bedrooms, two living rooms, a long enclosed porch and lots of great light. Unfortunately, the shower looked, um, 'nasty,' there were plastic grape vines and bunchs of grapes attached to the ceiling of one of the living rooms - a dusting nightmare, and the apartment required climbing seven flights of stairs. The second place had an elevator, two bedrooms and a view over a small hidden park with a lake from the master bedroom. The pitfalls were that the second bedroom and the living room both faced an unpleasant looking airshaft, there was very little light, the furniture was old and dark, and the layout made the place feel smaller than it was.
I explained to broker, in bad Chinese and with lots of hand gestures and laughter, that I like to have friends over but few would walk up seven flights, and that the other place felt very dark. Now he has my email address so he's going to take photos of places and send them to me. I also pulled out a calendar and explained that I'll be 'studying' all next week, from morning until night. We're going to resume apartment viewing after that.
It's an adventure, but I know I'll find a place I love if I'm patient and keep looking. If not, there's always the luxury foreigner ghettos.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
Scrabble Update
I asked a friend who spent her childhood here about how Scrabble is played in Chinese. It's not.
Local schoolchildren don't have time for games. They're working too hard. The most commonly used learning method is memorization, and students have to memorize a lot. There is little time for any type of extracurricular activities.
Local schoolchildren don't have time for games. They're working too hard. The most commonly used learning method is memorization, and students have to memorize a lot. There is little time for any type of extracurricular activities.
Rutgers
I have news: I'm going to get an MBA. From Rutgers. In China. Business Week ranked the Rutgers Executive MBA program in the top five for strategy and top six for finance globally.
This is a fourteen month intensive program, with classes being held over a one week period approximately once each month. For each week, we will be in class full time on the beginning and ending weekends and two evenings during the week in between. Classes are taught by the same professors who teach in the program in the United States. The program costs US$41,000, including textbooks and refreshments, a bargain compared to the over US$100,000 tuition and fees charged to out-of-state students taking the same E-MBA program in the New Jersey.
Life sometimes offers us interesting paths to take. I often find ones I'd never even thought existed. This is one of them. I had not imagined this as part of my plan in China but it's an amazing opportunity. I have learned something new every day since I arrived here and I know I will continue to do so.
Right now I'm trying to read as much of the 900+ pages of Accounting and Organizational Behavior textbooks, case studies and readings as I can before the program starts on Saturday. The classes are only one week long so I know I can make it through.
At this point I'm still waiting to hear back from the federal government about student aid. Anyone have an extra $41,000?
This is a fourteen month intensive program, with classes being held over a one week period approximately once each month. For each week, we will be in class full time on the beginning and ending weekends and two evenings during the week in between. Classes are taught by the same professors who teach in the program in the United States. The program costs US$41,000, including textbooks and refreshments, a bargain compared to the over US$100,000 tuition and fees charged to out-of-state students taking the same E-MBA program in the New Jersey.
Life sometimes offers us interesting paths to take. I often find ones I'd never even thought existed. This is one of them. I had not imagined this as part of my plan in China but it's an amazing opportunity. I have learned something new every day since I arrived here and I know I will continue to do so.
Right now I'm trying to read as much of the 900+ pages of Accounting and Organizational Behavior textbooks, case studies and readings as I can before the program starts on Saturday. The classes are only one week long so I know I can make it through.
At this point I'm still waiting to hear back from the federal government about student aid. Anyone have an extra $41,000?
Exchange Rates
Most apartments that I am looking at are priced in the local currency, RMB. Some apartments listed online are priced in dollars. I'm now at the point where I have to convert the cost into RMB, as that is the currency that I use most frequently.
You know you really live somewhere when you have to convert prices in your own country's currency into the local currency to assess whether a price is reasonable.
You know you really live somewhere when you have to convert prices in your own country's currency into the local currency to assess whether a price is reasonable.
Hot Chocolate at the Grand Hyatt
The Grand Hyatt hotel is located in the heart of Beijing, on Chang'an Avenue in the Oriental Plaza shopping and apartment complex, and is generally considered to be the finest luxury hotel in town.
Yesterday evening I stopped into the Grand Hyatt to pick up a package that was left for me by a visiting friend. After claiming it from the concierge I sat in the lobby to read. I also splurged on a hot chocolate. It was made in the American style, with milk, whipped creme on top, and marshmallows, biscotti and a chocolate-dipped bread stick on the side. Yum!
One noteworthy thing that I observed was the presence of a service charge on the bill. Waitstaff are certainly deserving of being paid for their services, but tipping is not the norm here in Beijing. Some premium restaurants and lounges (read: ones frequented by foreigners or ultra-wealthy locals) now charge a service fee on all bills. If it were used to reward waitstaff for good service I would respect it, but the service fee is kept by management and never makes its way to the people who are actually providing service. Remember that the next time you see a mandatory service charge in China.
Yesterday evening I stopped into the Grand Hyatt to pick up a package that was left for me by a visiting friend. After claiming it from the concierge I sat in the lobby to read. I also splurged on a hot chocolate. It was made in the American style, with milk, whipped creme on top, and marshmallows, biscotti and a chocolate-dipped bread stick on the side. Yum!
One noteworthy thing that I observed was the presence of a service charge on the bill. Waitstaff are certainly deserving of being paid for their services, but tipping is not the norm here in Beijing. Some premium restaurants and lounges (read: ones frequented by foreigners or ultra-wealthy locals) now charge a service fee on all bills. If it were used to reward waitstaff for good service I would respect it, but the service fee is kept by management and never makes its way to the people who are actually providing service. Remember that the next time you see a mandatory service charge in China.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Apartment Hunting - Chapter 1
Now that the Olympics are over it is time for me to find my own apartment.
I started this by reviewing online ads on two popular websites for expats. There were a number of ads listed that looked promising so I sent off emails. Their apartments were in areas close to where I spend most of my time and were in my price range. Most of the ads were placed by English-speaking real estate agents, who then respond and try to steer me into buildings and apartments they think I would like.
As I am a foreign woman, it is obvious to the agents that I want to be in one of the large luxury compounds that are filled with foreigners from around the world. I've looked at some of the apartments there and felt like I was looking at condominiums in Connecticut, right out of a cookie cutter. They are sterile and there is very little sense of community. Agents stress the club house and the gym facilities, but I have no use for a stair machine since I am already active physically. They tell me that the buildings are safe; Beijing is one of the safest places in the world for foreigners, especially foreign women, and the only time I've ever felt unsafe in the slightest was when I was with foreigners. The realtors look shocked when I say that I want to be in a Chinese compound, but I want to be somewhere with a real sense of community, where English is not the lingua franca.
Yesterday afternoon I'd had enough of politely arguing with the English speaking brokers and walked into a Chinese brokerage firm - Wo Ai Wo Jia, or I Love My House. The brokers weren't sure what to make of me at first, and communicating wasn't easy, but I now feel much happier about the whole process. Plus, I'm learning some new vocabulary words.
When I walked in and the agents looked up at me I said I wanted a, um, (darn it, how do I say rental?), then I pointed at the rental ads in the window so that they would know I didn't want to buy a place. That would be a lot more paperwork than I'm willing to do right now and I don't feel I'm ready to do that here yet. They asked how many people, how big, I explained that the apartment is for me and I'd like one or two bedrooms. I told them the areas where I'm looking. One realtors knew a few words of English ('how much' and 'rooms'), so he quickly became my main point of contact. I told him I didn't want to live in the big international complexes, I want a Chinese complex. He had something else to do so he told me to return in an hour. I asked for his business card, then his name. When he gave me his card he pointed to his name, and I had to explain that "Wo bu kan Zhongwen" (I don't read Chinese). As my vocabulary is smaller than that of most three year olds my inability to read didn't come as a complete surprise so he said his name and wrote it out in pinyin on his card.
When I returned to the brokerage after an hour I waited for him for a few minutes and his colleagues gave me warm water while I waited. When he walked in, he had a set of keys and he and a female colleague told me to follow them. We walked about twenty minutes to a Chinese complex and I was happy to see all of the trees and the retirees sitting outside chatting together. The apartment was a two bedroom, with lots of light, view of the courtyard below, an enclosed shower, a renovated kitchen (no oven, but that's normal here) and a piano in the dining area. It was beautiful, but I told the realtor that I would like something closer to the main street (and the subway). He said something that I didn't understand, then he and his colleague made cars sounds to explain that apartments closer to the street would have a lot of traffic noise. I still wanted to see another apartment, so asked him to find me something else that I would like.
As I walked out of the compound I took a different route, down a tree lined street, and saw that the building was only a few minutes from the street, much closer than I had thought. That night I went back with a friend, and a woman stopped her hacky sack game to tell me should would be my neighbor. It was a homey apartment, comfortable and cleanable, in a great location.
The next day I had a friend call the realtor to speak in Chinese and say I'm interested, but the price was several hundred RMB too high. It turns out that the place would be a sublet. The current tenant signed two months ago, at the top of the market, and would only come down 100RMB per month. I queried friends, locals and foreigners alike, to hear their estimates of what the apartment is worth. The tenants reduced price is still several hundred RMB higher than the apartment is worth in the current market. I liked it, but I'm not willing to pay for someone else's lack of knowledge about real estate prices. I'm going to keep looking.
I started this by reviewing online ads on two popular websites for expats. There were a number of ads listed that looked promising so I sent off emails. Their apartments were in areas close to where I spend most of my time and were in my price range. Most of the ads were placed by English-speaking real estate agents, who then respond and try to steer me into buildings and apartments they think I would like.
As I am a foreign woman, it is obvious to the agents that I want to be in one of the large luxury compounds that are filled with foreigners from around the world. I've looked at some of the apartments there and felt like I was looking at condominiums in Connecticut, right out of a cookie cutter. They are sterile and there is very little sense of community. Agents stress the club house and the gym facilities, but I have no use for a stair machine since I am already active physically. They tell me that the buildings are safe; Beijing is one of the safest places in the world for foreigners, especially foreign women, and the only time I've ever felt unsafe in the slightest was when I was with foreigners. The realtors look shocked when I say that I want to be in a Chinese compound, but I want to be somewhere with a real sense of community, where English is not the lingua franca.
Yesterday afternoon I'd had enough of politely arguing with the English speaking brokers and walked into a Chinese brokerage firm - Wo Ai Wo Jia, or I Love My House. The brokers weren't sure what to make of me at first, and communicating wasn't easy, but I now feel much happier about the whole process. Plus, I'm learning some new vocabulary words.
When I walked in and the agents looked up at me I said I wanted a, um, (darn it, how do I say rental?), then I pointed at the rental ads in the window so that they would know I didn't want to buy a place. That would be a lot more paperwork than I'm willing to do right now and I don't feel I'm ready to do that here yet. They asked how many people, how big, I explained that the apartment is for me and I'd like one or two bedrooms. I told them the areas where I'm looking. One realtors knew a few words of English ('how much' and 'rooms'), so he quickly became my main point of contact. I told him I didn't want to live in the big international complexes, I want a Chinese complex. He had something else to do so he told me to return in an hour. I asked for his business card, then his name. When he gave me his card he pointed to his name, and I had to explain that "Wo bu kan Zhongwen" (I don't read Chinese). As my vocabulary is smaller than that of most three year olds my inability to read didn't come as a complete surprise so he said his name and wrote it out in pinyin on his card.
When I returned to the brokerage after an hour I waited for him for a few minutes and his colleagues gave me warm water while I waited. When he walked in, he had a set of keys and he and a female colleague told me to follow them. We walked about twenty minutes to a Chinese complex and I was happy to see all of the trees and the retirees sitting outside chatting together. The apartment was a two bedroom, with lots of light, view of the courtyard below, an enclosed shower, a renovated kitchen (no oven, but that's normal here) and a piano in the dining area. It was beautiful, but I told the realtor that I would like something closer to the main street (and the subway). He said something that I didn't understand, then he and his colleague made cars sounds to explain that apartments closer to the street would have a lot of traffic noise. I still wanted to see another apartment, so asked him to find me something else that I would like.
As I walked out of the compound I took a different route, down a tree lined street, and saw that the building was only a few minutes from the street, much closer than I had thought. That night I went back with a friend, and a woman stopped her hacky sack game to tell me should would be my neighbor. It was a homey apartment, comfortable and cleanable, in a great location.
The next day I had a friend call the realtor to speak in Chinese and say I'm interested, but the price was several hundred RMB too high. It turns out that the place would be a sublet. The current tenant signed two months ago, at the top of the market, and would only come down 100RMB per month. I queried friends, locals and foreigners alike, to hear their estimates of what the apartment is worth. The tenants reduced price is still several hundred RMB higher than the apartment is worth in the current market. I liked it, but I'm not willing to pay for someone else's lack of knowledge about real estate prices. I'm going to keep looking.
Random Question - Scrabble
Chinese characters are mostly complete words unto themselves. There are some characters which signify a sound, not a word, but by and large most characters have meaning.
This leads me to ask:
How does one play Scrabble in Chinese?
We play scrabble by building on letters in one word to spell another word. If each character is already a complete word then we can't build on it. True, we have compound words, but those are usually composed of two or three characters (telephone is made up of the two words "dian-hua," or "electric/electricity-speak/language"). We could play by transcribing words but we'd have to find a way to include tones in our writing.
The question popped into my mind as I was on a late night stroll last night. Now I'm curious and am going to have to find out.
This leads me to ask:
How does one play Scrabble in Chinese?
We play scrabble by building on letters in one word to spell another word. If each character is already a complete word then we can't build on it. True, we have compound words, but those are usually composed of two or three characters (telephone is made up of the two words "dian-hua," or "electric/electricity-speak/language"). We could play by transcribing words but we'd have to find a way to include tones in our writing.
The question popped into my mind as I was on a late night stroll last night. Now I'm curious and am going to have to find out.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
