Apartment hunting for me was like throwing a house party for the first time – amazing in theory, a big mess in reality. It had bloomed into this magical experience in my head, until I breathed in the smell of the compound in which I would soon live.
Turns out, looking for a place to live in China is hard and frustrating and should be avoided at all costs. As my colleagues told me this, I laughed and said: “I am looking forward to it, it’ll be a lovely day.” It wasn’t. I would gladly give up a month’s rent just to forget all the things I saw.
To start with, my boyfriend and I set off on a quest to get a decent agent that would help us find our first-ever apartment together. Finding agents was easy, but finding an agent that wasn’t trying to cheat us into paying three times the agent fee was not. Finally one afternoon I was using the messaging app WeChat to talk to yet another agent who was passionately sharing pictures of his renovated flats in the city. He seemed cool. I liked him. We got along and I was ready to jump on the back of his e-bike and see these places. Amidst this conversation, I decided to check if he had any other treasures on his WeChat profile but got more than I bargained for when I saw a picture of a gun. A neat-looking AK-47 was pressed against a car window overlooking a bank. As alarm bells went off in my head, I asked for a second opinion from two friends who could read Chinese and they just confirmed my worries – this didn’t seem like a joke. This guy may own a gun, something which is very much illegal for civilians in China. As I was wondering whether I should report him, I started panicking, then deleted and blocked the guy’s account.
From then on, we were done with WeChat bros. In dismay, we wandered down a street only to see a man armed with a sandwich board sign and a trustworthy face. The sign had some apartment prices on it, so we YOLO-ed and asked if he had anything for us. Only in China would this random dude have exactly the flats we were looking for... in theory. While we got on the back of this man’s massive e-bike, I realized we were heading to a random part of town that I still, to this day, can’t put my finger on. As we parked right outside an old and very much closed hotel, this guy pulled out a card and the doors opened as if by magic. So here we were, walking into an old hotel that still had a reception area and even red carpet leading up to every room. As fancy as this was, seeing a small room that was clearly built for one, redecorated into a “studio” with no stove, was, if anything, a little confusing. Also, where the hell were we, I still don’t know.
The next place, we were told, was chuantong (traditionally) Chinese. Yeah alright, we can roll with that. The apartment was located in a quiet compound which was in the midst of being excavated at the time of our visit. Not an auspicious start, but we could live with the dust and the various construction smells. We entered the building and heard the elevator creak as it dragged us up the shaft. As we stepped out onto our floor, we found ourselves face to face with apartment windows that were shared with the communal corridor. Opening the door into a beautiful (for real) apartment, I was greeted by a stench that couldn’t have been anything other than sewage. After taking a quick look, I realized the apartment did indeed have windows that were facing the lift and didn’t lock. Needless to say, we did not sign this lease.
After more disappointing apartments, a few hutongs and even a duplex, we were exhausted. All of this occurred in the space of two days, so we were pretty much ready to live on the street at this point. Then all of a sudden, we met our match. This tiny – and I mean tiny – place had everything we needed: a shower, a bed, a kitchen and a toilet. It was cozy and clean, it was in a good location and we would be saving money on rent. On our way home, we discussed how it would be okay not having a vacuum cleaner because there’s nowhere to put it, it’s fine that we’ll iron on the bed, and showering while sitting on the toilet might actually be kind of fun. We were happy with our cozy new place. So happy. Then I went to make some toast and realized that in our snug new home we wouldn’t be able to put the toaster anywhere. Literally, there was no space for a toaster. Deal breaker.
We ended up renting a room in an apartment we share with three others that I renovated singlehandedly. It still smells a bit like paint and is nothing like what either of us ever envisioned for our first flat, but it’s a flat nonetheless, and it has space for a toaster.
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