Our Shenzhen Apartment – Virtual Tour

 

Our apartment, unlike many of the housing options in Shenzhen, isn’t expensive, isn’t too loud, and isn’t too small. 

Housing is a common topic of conversation in Shenzhen, mostly because people like to complain about it and in my expat community, someone is always moving. Rent is expensive. Last year, we paid 4800RMB/month for a 25 square meter (250 sq. ft.) apartment. When we left, the owners sold it for 2 million RMB (about $313,000), which is about $1455/sq. ft. That’s comparable to most developed cities around the world. Yet, average salaries in Shenzhen are significantly lower than most developed cities. To make this even more jaw dropping, most houses are sold for cash only. 

I don’t understand most of the rules about buying housing in Shenzhen. I hear local Chinese friends talking about how the government is limiting the number of homes a family can buy or is starting a new lottery system for buying housing. But frankly, I don’t know exactly how it works. I do know that I’ve been constantly disappointed in the quality of the apartments (there are no houses). I also know that I’ve learned to accept the annoyances and be grateful for what I do have.

Our current apartment is a dream compared to our previous one. We are happy enough here and plan to stay in this apartment for a second year. 

Location and Cost

I work at a university which provides on-campus housing to us. This means that our housing is essentially free (apart from about $80 in utilities). Students don’t live in our building; only other employees live here. There are some young children, but mostly it’s quiet. The university limits the vehicles allowed on-campus, so outside our windows, traffic and honking is not common. Instead, we have a grove of lychee trees outside our window, which is home to many birds, toads, and cicadas. I’d much rather listen to an annoying bird, the unending croaking of toads, or the screech of cicadas than listen to traffic. We do occasionally hear an e-bike’s alarm going off or a plane flying by but mostly it’s quiet.

However, we live on campus, which means we are separate from many things and it generally takes an hour to get to anyone or anything. Fortunately, after just a 5 minute walk to the campus gate, we have a plethora of food options and a bustling community. 

Living Room / Dining Room

When you walk into our apartment, you are immediately in the biggest room of our 3rd floor walk up apartment. We use it as an entryway, living room and dining room. It’s long and rectangular and has tall 9 1/2 foot ceilings. This building was built only 15 years ago, but the initial shoddy workmanship and the lack of any upkeep over the years has made the apartment in desperate need of a major makeover. 

Like most Chinese apartments, the floors are tile and the walls are white. I hate the Pepto-Bismol pink tiles. Many of them are scuffed and the grout is nonexsistent in many places. 

The apartment came with some furniture: a dining room table, two chairs, a couch, and a bookshelf. The table is simply a piece of glass set on two saw horses. I like that it is huge and I can do many different projects on it.

One of the chairs is comfortable, the other small red chair is horrible. The seat flattens out within a few minutes so you are just sitting on the metal frame. However, I recently acquired a beautiful armchair with real wooden legs and comfortable padding. A company I know had some extra sample furniture that they needed to get rid of, so I picked up the chair and a nesting, metal side table for free.

I had hoped they had a couch since our couch is the most uncomfortable piece of furniture apart from the red “chair”. It has a metal bar in the middle of the seat and the back is impossibly straight. It does fold down to be a bed for someone less than 5 ft tall… 

I love that we have a lot of open space in the middle of the room. This becomes my place for yoga on an almost daily basis. I have three yoga mats: one is my travel mat from Prana that I bought before leaving Minnesota four years ago. I love it because I can wash it in the washing machine and easily carry it in a backpack. But, it doesn’t have any padding, so I bought a cheap pink mat to put under it. Then, at our beach adventure in Huidong, Martin found another thicker and bigger pink yoga mat. 

Also in the living room is our priceless fan. During most of the year, it runs non-stop, keeping us pleasantly cool. We have no heating in the apartment, which is usually not a big deal, except for a few weeks in the winter when the temperature drops to the 50s outside and thus inside.

The living room also sports a lamp from IKEA which helps in the evenings to provide a softer light than the harsh florescent light in the ceiling provides. 

Our most recent acquisition is the cabinet, which is my first piece of furniture purchased on Taobao, an online website akin to Amazon, only with more things. One Saturday, about a week after I had purchased the cabinet, I got a phone call… I hate getting phone calls in China, for obvious reasons. It was clear right away that the man calling wasn’t a telemarketer but was trying to deliver something. We were waiting on a couple of things to be delivered, so I wasn’t sure what exactly he needed to give to us. I said my favorite sentence to say to delivery men: I am at home now (xianzai, wo zai jia.) He wasn’t satisfied.

I didn’t understand much of what he was saying, but I did hear some location words and then I realized he needed us to meet him at a campus gate. Delivery drivers are not always allowed on campus. I didn’t know which gate he was at, but I told him to meet us at the main gate. When we arrived, the patient man was in a big delivery truck and asked us to get in. I gave him directions to our building, amazed that we were able to figure out what he had needed us to do. He opened the back of his truck; it was filled with boxes. He looked and looked and looked. He moved boxes and looked some more. He made a phone call. Our cabinet wasn’t in his truck! He told us he would come back tomorrow and he would call us again. Oh, good. We get to talk to him again on the phone…

The next day was Sunday and Martin and I were running some errands and biking along the river. When we arrived back to the main gate of campus, I remarked that it would be quite serendipitous if the delivery guy arrived at the gate now. Just then, we saw him waving at us as he waited in the left turn lane. Crazy! Amazed again, we jumped in his truck where we learned it wasn’t as serendipitous as we had thought. He had tried calling us 3 times and had circled the block several times waiting for us. Of course I didn’t hear my phone since we had been biking. 

As he unloaded the cabinet from his truck, Martin’s phone rang. Another delivery man. This time, our coffee beans. I told him I’m at home now, but again he didn’t seem satisfied. The cabinet delivery driver was chuckling to himself knowing this was the same conversation he had had with us the day before. The conversation ended, unresolved.

Martin ran up the three flights of stairs to drop off some things before we carried the cabinet up. When he arrived at the door, he found the coffee delivery man standing at our door. Of course he was confused. He was at our apartment, and we were clearly not there, yet I’m telling him that we are. Ah, if only the Chinese language wasn’t so impenetrable. 

 

I attempted to decorate the bookshelf, but the practicality of needing some shelving often usurps the decorative moments I had created. We have a few mementos on the shelf, nonetheless. My favorite are the two dala horses. Both given to us as gifts from neighbors to the house in Sweden, although given to us 12 years apart. We have a matching dala horse entry rug.

Balcony

At the end of the living room is the balcony. We keep the door and windows open most of the time, even when the mosquitoes attack us at dusk. The balcony is primarily reserved for our clean, wet laundry. It also houses three electrical appliances that we don’t use: a gas stove, a microwave, and a dish sanitizer.

Kitchen

Next to the living room are three doors: one to the bedroom, one to the bathroom, and one to the kitchen. 

Even though its simple, I like my kitchen. Our refrigerator is tiny, but it holds everything we need it to just fine. I have purchased a scattering of electrical appliances: a water boiler, a soy milk maker, a food processor (with a blender attachment), and an oven. The apartment came with a hot plate, which I would like a lot better if it had a manual function. Since it doesn’t, the temperature often changes at will, and I have to be quite vigilant not to burn my food. 

We don’t have any cupboards, drawers, or cabinets. We purchased a couple metal shelves that provide enough organization for our small kitchen. 

I don’t like the countertops, which are made from poorly-grouted tile. I also hate the floors. No matter how hard I scrub, they always look dingy and dirty.

The kitchen also houses our washing machine. 

You may have noticed the metal bars on all our windows…I hate them. I’ve thought about taking the bars off the kitchen window and maybe one day I’ll actually get around to it. In the meantime, however, I’ll continue to use it to help me dry my soy milk bag and wooden straws. 

Bathroom

Unfortunately, the bathroom has the same flooring as the kitchen. The bathroom is my least favorite part of my apartment. While it does have a window, it doesn’t have a shower stall, which means the entire bathroom gets wet when we take a shower. Consequently, after every shower, we scrape the floors and then mop the floors. If we didn’t, the floor would never dry. 

We don’t have a hot water heater. Instead, we have a hot water meter that turns on with a card. When we put the card onto the meter, the hot water turns on and deducts the pre-paid money on the card. Generally, we pay about 100RMB (about $15) for 6 months of hot water. 

The mirrors are not broken, but the seam is always in the middle of my face. The sink is ugly and has a crack, but is easy to clean. 

I hate all the exposed pipes. I hate the random holes in the tile from where the pipes used to be. I hate the dingy lighting.

Bedroom

The bedroom also has a window, but we keep the curtains (ugly!) drawn all the time. The wardrobe and bed came with the apartment, but we needed to purchase a second clothing rack to have room for both of our clothes. Much to my chagrin, the mirror in the bedroom is broken. We’ve tried to remove it but I suspect we’d need to tear down part of the wall to get it out of the bedroom. 

While the living room also has an air conditioning unit, we usually only use the AC in the bedroom. 

The lighting in this room is horrible. The main room light is quite bright, too bright for the evening. Furthermore, after it’s turned off, it blinks like a strobe light until it has cooled down…not great for sleeping. So we’ve strung some meager string lights up and that’s barely enough light at night. Another lamp would be a good idea. 

We also have a mosquito screen on the bedroom door. When we don’t need the air conditioning on at night, we like to keep the door open but we don’t want to invite the mosquitoes. The screen was a little short, so Martin cut up a cloth bag and sewed extensions to the bottom of the screen. It works great.

Overall

We love how big and open the apartment is. We love that it’s so quiet here and that we can see trees outside. We love that we both can be in the kitchen at the same time. We love the layout of the apartment. We both love the price. 

So even though there are some basic maintenance things (new flooring, new paint, new bathroom, new kitchen) that are needed, this little apartment is quite comfortable and will do just nicely for another year in China.