How to Find an Apartment in China

We got our Internet hooked up today! (I wrote this blog last Sunday.)

Most study abroad programs provide housing for students, however for several reasons the Nanjing program requires students to find their own housing. In our preparation course last winter semester, our program director indicated that students finding their own housing was a way to help us dive into the Chinese culture. I don’t really know how to describe these last few days, but I think it is safe to say that we completely dove into the Chinese culture.

After student orientation on Thursday morning, all the students met with a couple of realtors to begin showing us different apartments. I was relieved when I saw the program director there! Ok, good. There is going to be some order to this. Order?! Haha. We were given some tips on how to rent apartments in China. The central message? They will try to cheat you! The landlords will tell you they require a full month’s rent for deposit. Only give them half of that. They will try to give you a standard rate on utilities. Don’t take it. Also, require that the landlords give you the bank statement for utilities before you pay. Make sure you read the entire contract with the landlord and realtor before you sign anything. What if you haven’t learned yet to read simplified characters?! I’ll deal with that when the time comes. Finally, pay the realtor no more than half of the first month’s rent for as a commission fee. “Only half!” “No!” “Read that again?!” According to our program director, with these tips and simple phrases, finding an apartment would be no problem. After some more advice, our program director invited the realtors in, introduced them to us, and then he went on his way. And so the adventure began.

The realtors didn’t want a big pack of students following them all over Nanjing, so we sent a representative from each apartment group and then the rest of us went back to the hotel. I guess I can’t really complain about the first night of finding. Our apartment leader, Jimmy, walked around for five hours with realtors looking for apartments, while I enjoyed a couple of hours of ping pong with the old Chinese people living near our complex (more on that later) and then took a nap.

We started at 10 a.m. the next morning. We were smarter that day. We decided to split up and hire more realtors so we could see more apartments. We hoped that we could find a place on Friday, move in on Saturday, enjoy a restful day on Sunday, and then we would be all ready for class on Monday. A good game plan, right? We had six guys who were planning on living together, so we split into three groups. By the time we were eating dinner at 6 p.m. that night, we still had not found a suitable place. There was something wrong with every situation. It reminded me of Seinfeld and how Jerry always finds something wrong with every girl. However, instead of a girl having “man hands,” speaking too softly, not laughing at his jokes, or a girl being simply too much like him, the apartments were either held up by no more than bamboo and string (as the realtor grabbed the bamboo and shook it to show us how sturdy it was, the whole apartment complex reminded me too much of a Jenga game to think that living there was safe), too far from campus, too expensive ($130 American dollars a month is too much!?), or the landlords would not allow so many people to live in a single apartment. I was tired, and the octopus for dinner was more rubbery than I remember. We kept looking the rest of the night, but it was all just more of the same. The realtor calls us. He tells us to meet him at a certain spot in an hour. We arrive early. He arrives late. He gives us rides on his scooter while the rest of us walk (it was the highlight of everyone’s day) to the apartment complex. We wait for the landlord. The landlord is late. The landlord sees six American students. The landlord tells us that six is too many. The landlord leaves. The realtor leaves. We look around wondering what to do next? We buy ice cream on the side of the road. Finally, finally, around 9 p.m. that night, we found a place. It was on the 7th floor of an apartment complex without an elevator, but who has a problem with getting a little aerobic exercise? When we walked into the apartment, we thought that our search was over. It was big enough, it was close enough to the school, it wasn’t too expensive, and there was no bamboo in sight. We’ll take it! The landlord wasn’t so sure. “Do they drink?” she asked the realtor. No. “Do they like to party?” Only if it’s like 1999! (Name that song and artist and the artist’s favorite color.) Who says that?! Sorry. Anyway, it was clear that she didn’t want to rent to us as she was afraid that six American boys would tear up the place (probably a legitimate concern), however after some reassuring words from our realtor and a 1000 yuan downpayment from us right then, she agreed to let us rent the place. Yes! After an entire day of walking the streets of Nanjing, we had finally found a place! We agreed to meet with the landlord at 10 a.m. the next day and move in. Our day of hard work had paid off.

The next morning, we packed up our stuff, checkout out of our hotel, called some taxis, and went off to our new apartment. Wait a second. I missed something. Part of the agreement with the landlord was that we would pay all four months’ rent in addition to the deposit upfront; therefore, we had to come up with 27,000 yuan in less than 24 hours! We went to the ATM in the morning, but it would only let us pull out 2,500 yuan per day. We tried going to other banks, but they were either not open or they would not accept foreign cards. We ran around Nanjing for almost an hour looking for ways to pull money out to no avail. We decided we would just have to tell the lady we could only give her half. I was sure it wouldn’t be a problem. We got there and the landlord was mad! She kept telling us that we needed to pay her quickly or she might change her mind. She agreed to accept 10,000 yuan right then and the rest of it the following Tuesday. After paying her the money, we realized that there were a couple of lights out in the apartment. She said that we needed to deal with it. We could tell that she wasn’t trying to hide the fact that she didn’t want to rent to us, but hey, we finally had a place! Our searching was over!
We decided to go downtown and eat to celebrate, and we figured we would buy bedding on the way back. Jimmy’s phone rang while we were eating, and it was our other roommate. He called to tell us that the deal was off, he wasn’t going to live there, and that him and another one of our roommates was looking for another apartment. Wait?! What?! Why?! He said he didn’t like the landlord, and he thought that we were getting ripped off living at this apartment. (Ok, now come on, is $120 a month really a rip off?! Shouldn’t we all discuss this first? Wait, I thought we already had!) The other students didn’t want to pay for that apartment if there would be just four of us living there, so before I knew it, we were homeless and on the hunt again. I tried to keep a positive attitude. I tried to keep an open mind. I tried to be happy. I tried, but I could tell I was becoming frustrated. As we were finishing up eating, another realtor called us and told us he had a place for us to look at if we hadn’t found an apartment yet. Good timing. We met with him. We had already seen the same apartment with another realtor. The landlord wouldn’t rent for only four months. You’re joking, right?! The situation was becoming laughable, and I think laughing helped deal with the whole thing. One of the students was so frustrated, he left the group and went off by himself to go by a t-shirt (I guess shopping therapy is used anywhere around the globe :) That left just three of us. We met with another realtor, and he said he had two places to show us. I rode on the back of his scooter. It was so fun, except when we were going uphill he told me I was very heavy. Thanks. The apartment complex looked like the most rundown building I had ever seen, but the landlord showed up on time! To make things better, she was so nice! We walked up to the 6th floor (hey, at least it is not the 7th), and walked in. It was great! It was clean, it had enough beds, it was close enough to campus, it was inexpensive enough, and most importantly the landlord was happy to rent to us. While looking at the place, the landlord from the last apartment called us and told us we had to get our stuff out of the apartment in one hour and that she was going to charge us a 200 yuan “cleaning fee” for the day. She reminded me of Cruella Deville. We told the lady we would take the place and told her we would be back with our stuff in a little over an hour. We hopped into taxis, went back to the apartment, hauled our stuff back down the seven flights of stairs, got our money back, took our stuff back to the new place, carried it up six flights of stairs, and met with Nancy and her husband (our landlords).

Nancy and her husband were so nice! She was a nice, intelligent, and humble woman. Her husband was a stud! His arms are ripped, and he is friendly and hilarious. While we were waiting on our realtor to come, they were asking us questions about why we were learning Chinese, what America was like, who was our favorite basketball player (“Do you like Kobe?” he asked me. I responded, “No” and then learned how to say Steve Nash in Mandarin.), etc. I was looking at both of them talk with us and interact with each other, and I couldn’t help but imagine them accepting the Gospel. They had such a wonderful spirit about them, and I couldn’t help but love them. Our realtor came, and we started negotiations and going through the contract. It was tough to hang with the contract stuff in Chinese, but luckily I could understand enough to stay with the conversation and contribute where I could. Our roommate Jimmy has awesome Chinese so he handled most of the details. Over an hour later, we had signed the contract. Finally, we had a place! It was such a relief! We were exhausted, but we were happy. To make a great conclusion to a long couple of days, our landlords asked if they could take us to a shop to get bedding and they asked if they could take us out to eat. Yes, and YES! Eating and chatting with them was so fun! We ate weird food that tasted great, we learned some phrases of the Nanjing dialect, and enjoyed a lot of laughter. During dinner, they asked us how we learned Chinese and why we didn’t drink alcohol or tea? It was so hard not to tell them about our church or the Word of Wisdom, but I just kept looking at them and thinking that they were one of many, many families in China ready to listen to the gospel.

After dinner, we bought bedding, ate ice cream on the way home, and then passed out on our beds. After three days of searching, we had an apartment, and it was before Sunday which we were all grateful for. It has all worked out so well. Our six person group split up into two apartments of three each, and I really like the two other students I will be living with and I think our apartment situation is much better than the Cruella Deville place. And the fact that we signed the contract before Sunday and before school starts on Monday put my heart at ease. In a simple way, this is yet another example to me of how God is so much a part of our lives. This last week in Nanjing, I have felt very much NOT in control of my life. The language has been harder than I expected, the living arrangements were more difficult than anyone could have hoped for, and I still really have no idea what to expect from this semester. However, even as I have felt not in control of my life, I have clearly felt that the Lord is in control of my life. Every day, I have felt a calming and a peaceful feeling that has helped me further understand how much the Lord is mindful of me, I can feel that my life is moving in a positive and happy direction. I am doing well. So as one adventure ends, the next one begins. We start class tomorrow!