Have your own place

[con's fly is open]

millana said:

Okay, in need of an explanation here. I am assuming that on campus, could mean your own private apartment, but on the campus grounds. I have been offered such a place. I know what is wrong with the roommate deal, however, I have not heard the complaints about on campus living, as opposed, to off campus. Can someone fill me in here. What are it's drawbacks.

You live in a fishbowl. I have about a dozen co-workers; we work, eat, sleep (and not in the fun way), live, play and suffer together. Privacy is in very short supply, and the burnout factor plays up- you always on some level feel you are at work.
it's doable, really, but it requires aggressively pursuing a lifestyle outside of work.

All in all, I don't recommend it.

[Babala]

Millana,
Also know that some schools insist on curfews. I knew some teachers who had to be home by10pm. You are usually only allowed guests during the day, even friends or family cannot usually stay the night. You will have the Chinese staff reporting your every move to the FAO. Not to mention, they have the key to your apartment. When I lived on campus I came home one day to find about 5 people in my house!

[Lotus Eater]

Con and Wolf - I beg to differ. Both places I have been I have lived in on-campus accommodation. The first had a compound for the foreign teachers - each with their own apartment. If you are discreet you can still have a private life (I managed). The security guys would leave the gates open about 2' past 12:00, so we didn't have to wake them coming in. I gave them a pack of cigarettes and they were great to talk to if they were awake. The commute to work was dead easy. There was always someone around to play with. The students don't come around all that often. Mine came more than other people's because I coached a lot of students for contests etc, and invited them over to play games and relax. But other than that they were too busy themselves.

Here, I am still on campus, but in housing that is great - larger apartment, only one other FT, right beside the foreign students, young teachers and post-grad students apartments.

The students are around, but I am on the 3rd floor - I know when I have to get out of bed because I can hear them starting to head to class. I feel as if I am a little more involved in university life here. And same deal as above - all my students know where I live, but don't come without invitation.

I can look out of one set of windows and see the energetic ones running around the oval, watch them play soccer. The other side is quieter - only see people wandering back to their dorms or to the garden at the back of me to do tai qi, or listen to the choir practice.

The security guys here are no bothers to open the gates when I drift in around the 4ish mark - as happens once in a while. I think the poor guys are happy to have something to do, as they are stuck at a desk beside the gate, trying to sleep or study or read. At least I give them someone to smile at.

I enjoy living on campus, and in no way have I found it a loss of privacy. I do what I want, when I want - no dramas. And that includes major parties! The university even supplies extra chairs when I want to have a party - and will carry the cartons of beer upstairs for me.

When I stay at Chinese friends places I can still hear all of the noise from the neighbours. Lantern Festival had fireworks all over the place - thrown from peoples windows and balconeys - the same for weddings etc. And it's further from work.

Campus life is fine!

[Wolf]

Actually I had it easy with my on campus accomodation. FEs had their own building, each of us with an apartment. I had no life, so the gate wasn't an issue (the last bus in from town came before the gate closed anyway.)

I was just repeating stuff I've heard from elsewhere. Except the fireworks bit. Then again, noise pollution can be a problem anywhere.

[acjade]

Share a room/ apartment? Only with Tom Hank's son and only if he does the dishes, laundry and creates super lesson plans.
When I arrived here they wanted to confine a square peg into the usual round hole but I told them my agent promised an apartment with kitchen and bedroom Not a hotplate on top of the bed. This became a matter of face and so they said I could have an apartment if I paid 20RMB a month. It's worth every mou.

[Ruth]

I live off campus in an apartment. I get the fireworks noise. Every holiday for sure, but also every weekend. Seems someone is always getting married. Also get street vendors hawking their wares at 6:00 a.m. Not sure how that compares with campus life, just presenting another side.

[ilunga]

Lotus, which uni do you teach at, if you don't mind me asking? PS I've a few questions in your Xi'an thread in the city links board ;o)

I live on campus. The only real pain is being a 10RMB taxi ride from the city. Having 'guests' is fine. As Lotus says, just get the guards onside with cigarettes/Bai jiu and take them out for hotpot every now and again. They'll love you! I like the fact I can get up at 8.15 and trundle downstairs in time for class at 8.20. Being on-campus does have its perks.

[Newbs]

The only real pain is being a 10RMB taxi ride from the city.

10RMB!!! Lucky b@stard.

[OZgronk]

My wife and I have a 2 br flat on the 4th floor of a teachers block in the grounds of our school. A large loungeroom and kitchen with a separate laundry and toilet (squatter) with shower overhead.

Our next door neighbours are 2 young Canadian girls (who happen to be cousins and requested to share their lodgings).

Upstairs there are two other identical 2 br flats, each with just one FT in residence.

We have a balcony to eat our watermelons on, good aircon, and we use the 2nd b.r. as an office, storeroom and drying room.

As for noise....sometimes we wonder if everyone else has died, its so quiet, except of course when someone has actually died and then the rolls of fireworks are set off down the street.

Security starts at our place with the wooden front door, painted in the standard mission brown, backed up with a steel door modeled on those used for bank strongrooms with bolts that go into the frame all around, then the steel gate halfway down the stairwell to separate the FTs from the hoi polloi, all with separate keys.

Then there is the new compound gate, which isn't quite working yet as they decided to do away with keys for that one and go for fingerprint recognition...need I say more. Then there is the school front gates guarded by blokes obviously employed for their ability to sleep 24 hours a day whilst seated.

The steel gate in the stairwell manages to discourage flocks of soiled students from invading our privacy.

Exercise is provided by those who design our timetables whereby each lesson is delivered in a different building on opposite sides of the campus...who needs a Stairmaster in China, or those things advertised on CCTV when they aren't showing opera.

Everything is paid for including drinking water we only pay for our phone calls.....and who the hell are we going to call?

Luckily my wife and I have been sharing a house for over thirty years so we are used to it now.

[Ruth]

who needs a Stairmaster in China

I hear you on that one.

Then there is the school front gates guarded by blokes obviously employed for their ability to sleep 24 hours a day whilst seated.

Ozgronk, you crack me up. I love your writing style. Keep it coming. Are you saving your tidbits for the book you will write about your China experience?

[OZgronk]

Thanks Ruth,

It probably comes from working the past 20 years in the newspaper industry and hanging out with journos, who, due to their capacity to drink and drivel, would fit in very well over here.

I've written 10 chapters already, each based on separate incidents..this place generates stories as easily as it generates rubbish.

But I read somewhere, something like "that after a month in China you could write a novel, after 3 months a newspaper article and ends up saying after 20 years you can write one word" or words to that effect.

Does anyone know the full text?

However I already have another 12 topics that I am working on and I cannot see it drying up.

[George61]

I think I agree with that, Gronk. Now if I could only be sure!
I have discovered a certain lessening of my wordpower in the 3 1/2 years I have been here. Consider, I used to work out a cryptic crossword in the newspaper each day, read the entire newspaper, and sometimes actually converse in English to another English speaker. That doesn't happen here. Good reason why this forum is so valuable.

[OZgronk]

Oh no! George61,

I thought it must be all the bottled water lacking some enzymes, that has been leaching my brain cells. I've been here 4 months and already reached the point where I can only speak at the same rate at which I can write.

You mean it gets worse?

[acjade]

Take a deep breath OZgrunk. You have the Saloon now. Of course that hasn't stopped George from slipping on a silk frock now and then outside working hours when he's actually paid to wear a frock as part of our advertising campaign to scare away attract new Saloonites.
And .... er... how come I haven't seen you on campus. You were talking about my campus weren't you?
Everywhere I go I keep thinking Groundhog Day.

[Ruth]

"that after a month in China you could write a novel, after 3 months a newspaper article and ends up saying after 20 years you can write one word" or words to that effect.

Maybe it's because in the first month everything is so new and you just have to get it all written down. By the third month, you are somewhat used to it, so can do the condensed version. After awhile it all becomes normal, so what's to write about?

I wrote bunches my first few weeks here. I slacked off these past few months. One of the guys on my friends and family email list (the folks who want to know about my China experience) actually wrote and said it had been a couple of weeks since I'd written anything and he was missing my updates.

[burlives]

Have your own place?



I've just moved to a job where I have to have my own place. They put me up in a hotel and off I go.

You know how in, oh, other countries, finding a mid-range apartment is all about going to an estate agent, paying a deposit for a key and then nipping off to have a look at the joint? And the owner pays the agent to screen potential rentors and look after the state of the house?

In Suzhou you go to an agent who has her list of rentables off the same internet as every other agent but who by virtue of being an agent has something that any other person of sound mind and breaking body has not, the detailed physical address of the house and the telephone number of the owner. Looking at the house involves the agent calling the owner and everyone making an appointment to see the house. Then, because you're new in town and not every Chinese, including most agents, wives of someone or sons of someone, has a car, you walk to the house.

So you get to see about three places, but only if you're lucky enough to have some Chinese on hand who has energy enough to let you leech off him or her for the day, and then for the week.

And agents ask bizarre questions. Oh, you want to live on an upper floor -- why? And then the Chinese on whom you are the parasite has to explain, but they don't know either because no Chinese would have such expectations, but being Chinese they have to say something because all transactions are lengthy relationships.

And one has a week in this way to find my year-long abode. And then start a new job. And if I do find a house I'll be paying an agent somewhere between one half and one whole month's rent as a fee. And then paying three month's rent in advance.

All this while staying in a cheap hotel which at this time of year is a pool of wet airconditioning and mildew'd everything.

The only way to do this well is spend money. Pay a translator, pay a good hotel, come early and look at leisure, use taxis, bleed pink Mao. Or learn Chinese.


This is not my country.

[Mr Nobody]

Maybe you can find someone to sell it to you, cheap, so you can own the whole country. My guess is you could buy the whole place for about one month's salary.

But I suspect that management problems would make it unprofitable.

[Ruth]

Dang, Burl, what a lot of trouble. I hope you find someplace suitable where you will be happy - at least for the next year. Let us know how it goes.

[burlives]

I got hook up, and today I saw a very nice apartment.

There's an agent here who is also a qualified translator who specialises in placing foreigners in houses and, more generally, everyone in jobs. She's really good, so good that with her you only ever see places that match your requirements, and for some idiot reason she's also a well-kept secret. If you heard a great gust of wind all over China yesterday, it was the sigh of relief as I realised what a find I had made. I'll finalise the house deal tomorrow. The same day I start work and the hotel allowance runs out.

[acjade]

Good one Burl. Knock 'em out.