Sorry for the late post! I had this one started and then lost it all. So sad. But fear not! I, being the intrepid blogger that I am, will start again.
As some of you know I am a self professed HGTV junkie. There is nothing I love better than to look at houses, renovate houses and decorate houses. So when we had set the date for going to look at apartments in Shenzhen I was elated! As luck would have it though, Dave was unable to come with me on the first day of the apartment hunt as he had meetings in Hong Kong. So it was me, James, our relocation guy and three Chinese real estate agents, with little or no English, making the rounds.
Apartments in Shenzhen are generally in high rise buildings and there are three to four to five high rises in a complex. The apartments are individually owned and you will have to deal with a landlord. If luck is with you, you will get a good one who likes to maintain their property. Apartments can be unfurnished, partially furnished or furnished. The complexes themselves have green space, courtyards, landscaping and maybe a water feature. Some complexes are better maintained than others. We had given James, our relocation guy, a list of criteria that we had for our apartment and the budget we had to work with. We were looking for a three bedroom, two bathroom apartment with an ocean view and within walking distance to Dave’s work. Since we would never again in our lives live by the ocean, the ocean view was very important.
Armed with our criteria, James had made up a list of places to view, so off we went. I don’t think I was really prepared for what I was going to see that day. We started at the lower end of the budget and the old adage, ‘You get what you pay for’ certainly applied here. I did find out that the one English word that all the Chinese real estate agents knew was ‘Beautiful! Beautiful!’
Here are just some random pictures of places I saw.
These apartments were in a new complex and were quite nice but were not within walking distance for Dave.
Next we toured a three level apartment complete with a rooftop garden. To reach the rooftop garden you had to climb an iron ladder attached to the wall. Even with my love of gardening I don’t think I could have done anything with this garden space.
Then we went to see a newer apartment closer to Dave’s work but the bedrooms were too small.
We went a little farther out again and saw an actual house but it was too big.
Our final appointment of the first day was at a serviced apartment/hotel. This was very similar to what we had been living in where someone comes and cleans your apartment twice a week and the breakfast buffet is included. It was a much bigger apartment than where we had been staying but it was right next door to the construction zone where they are building a new subway line. Every day at 11am like clockwork, you could hear and feel the blasting that was going on underground to build the subway line. It was just like in the Merry Poppins movie where the Banks family had to hold everything down when the admiral fired off his cannon next door.
I will admit I was very discouraged…and very tired…and very hot by the end of the day. Fortunately Dave was able to join us the second day and we were taken to a multilevel apartment which had five bedrooms, two living rooms, a huge designer kitchen and a ball pit in the basement. It was really well done but much too large for our needs.
The next couple of apartments were in a new building along the harbour and we did end up choosing one of them. But before I show you what we did pick, I will show you the process we went through to get the ‘stuff’ we needed to live in the apartment.
The apartment comes fully furnished so we concentrated on the smaller everyday things and that required a few trips to IKEA, first to scout things out and then to actually commit and buy something. IKEA is a twenty minute cab ride away and it is just like any other IKEA in the world except it is very, very busy, even moreso on a Saturday morning. There are lots and lots of families with young children in Shenzhen and this is where they all are on a Saturday morning, usually with Grampa and Gramma in tow. Dave and I had a good laugh because forty years ago we were buying Billy bookcases at IKEA when we went to university. Incidentally, the Billy bookcase is forty years old this year and IKEA has sold over 60 million units worldwide. We were also laughing because we only bought six plates, six bowls, six cups and eight glasses. Living like students again!
After paying for all the things in our cart we took it to the counter where for $10 CAD they will box up your items and deliver it to your house. Since we came in a taxi we took full advantage of that. Next stop, KFC for a well earned break!
We also visited a store called Sundan a few times, again to initailly scope things out and then finally to buy something. Sundan is a chain store very much like Best Buy where you can get large and small appliances and some electronics. It’s a bit better quality than Walmart and has better selection. We picked up a few things and had them delivered. The funny part about the delivery was that it was delivered by the two young ladies from the store, driving in the dark, balancing everything, even the ironing board, on a scooter. They even beat us home! How’s that for service? I wish I had gotten a picture of it because it was just so funny but you will just have to use your imagination.
While the process of buying what you need to set up an apartment may seem easy and we have done it a few times for our kids when they went off to school, it is much harder here. You do not know at first where you should buy items and you do not have a vehicle to load everything into to take it home from the store. You are restricted to what you can carry home in the taxi with you so we made many trips with many smaller purchases. You never came home empty handed. When you figure out that places will deliver purchases to your house there is the language barrier to deal with so you keep your fingers crossed that everything comes together and shows up at your house. Lucky for us everything did!
Dixie Goes to China 
Thanks for the update Dixie. It was great seeing you and catch up in April. Take care
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You too Julia!
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