Getting Settled into New Routines - The Apartment

We are all slowly getting settled into our routines. You have to relearn/revisit/rethink your old routines and discover what you can handle here. As requested, in this blog I will try to focus less on the adventures, and more on the basics of living here.

The Apartment

I think we really lucked out. We chose our apartment on our first jet lagged day in China. We had no concept of the layout of the town, a small concept of price range, and no real idea what we should be looking for.

We live in an area called "Cui Hen Cun" pronounced (tsway hung tsun with inflections). It took me a few days to be able to say it properly so that the taxi knew what I was saying . Its absolutely central to TEDA. Its a fifteen minute walk to the school or to Hymall (where you do most shopping). Our apartment complex is a series of 5 story curved buildings, which have an almost European look. There is no elevator and we are on the third floor. Outside our building is a pavillion of sorts. There is a gazebo, pond, flowers and large circular cement platform. This is a focal point for the chinese community. In the evenings it is full. They hook up music to an amplifier and play music. Seniors dance and sing. Children ride bikes and rollerskate. They keep this up quite late at night. Every few mornings, there is TaiChi out there.

Cui Hen Cun is gated, with guards who basically let everyone pass. Outside our building on the street is the Watermelon Man. He has a truck full of watermelons. He lives in the truck, and when he finishes his load he'll be gone for a day, and then he's back with more. A watermelon costs about 9 Yuan from him ($1.50 Canadian). There are also lots of little cornerstores with your basic supplies - so you don't have to trek to Hymall for just a little something.

The apartment itself is two bedrooms. Our room has a rock hard mattress (the norm in China, like sleeping on the box spring.) I was very proud of myself for successfully conveying the measurements of the mattres in Mandarin to the ladies at the Friendship Store and acquiring a quilted pad. This made a huge difference. Our trip to Ikea allowed us to purchase fitted sheets, which they don't use here. The other bed has two thin "mattresses?" if you can call them that. As I'm fighting a cold I've slept on them a few times, its not too bad. Don't worry, if we are having anyone visit, we will be happy to purchase another mattress pad. Each bedroom has a big desk and chair.

The living room has a very weird looking couch (they like things to look trendy, not so much to be comfortable), a dining room table, a tv/dvd. We have a balcony, but the purpose of a balcony here is for drying clothes. There are actually very clever contraptions, poles on pullies with holes for hangers, which can be raised and lowered as needed.

The kitchen has a small friend, 4 gas elements, double sink and water cooler. There are no ovens here. It is still very greasy. I have been scrubbing, but it takes awhile. In fact, I've hand scrubbed half the floor, thus half is blue, and half is still gray and sticky. Chinese cooking is heavy on the oil, so I guess this is normal.

The bathroom. The saddest part of my apartment. The landlord just replaced the toilet when we moved in. Chinese plumbing is ... interesting. For instance, it can't handle toilet paper. It has to be thrown in the wastebin, or it plugs up. This has been on the hardest unconscious habits to break. TP in the wastebin, not the toilet. The bathroom also has a small washing machine. When we use it, we take the discharge hose and shove it down a gaping hole under the sink. We quickly learned to keep the hole plugged with a damp rag between washes to keep mosquitos from coming up, as well as occasional less than pleasant smells. This actually goes for every drain in the apartment. They don't believe in "s" bends here. The bathroom likewise requires a lot more scrubbing. However, I replaced the shower curtain and bathmat, and that did make a big difference.

The utilities are very interesting. Everything is paid in advance. For instance, electricity. You purchase your electricity card (we do so with the help of our agent), and you shove it in the appropriate slot which recharges your apartment. When you are running low the electricity will shut off. You take your card and shove it back in. This will give you power for 2-3 more days while you purchase a new electricity card. Gas and Water work on the same principle.

We have television. There are a lot of stations, only one in english. It is essentially Chinese Propaganda. Travel, business, how great China is...etc. We have been able to watch soccer and baseball. We occasionally watch the other stations if its physical comedy or a crazy game show. I bought Craig an 8 in 1 Bruce Willis DVD for fun. It has 3 Die Hard Movies, and 5 other Bruce Willis movies all on 1 disk. Each chapter is a movie. The first night we could watch in English, but then it switched to Chinese the next day and we can't seem to change it back, even though we keep hitting the english button in Set-UP. Craig also purchased the complete Black Adder series for about 8 dollars Canadian. So we are watching that.

We really only eat breakfast in the apartment right now. Its usually a pastry, some yogourt and fruit. Lunch has been provided at school, though today is the last day. We usually go out for dinner. We often bring the leftovers home and reheat them in the microwave. When you can have dinner, and bring home enough leftovers for dinner the next night for $15 Canadian, its hard to find the motivation to adventure into cooking here. Saturday I actually made chicken noodle soup for scratch. We had six others over for dinner. We also enjoyed some bagette (it wasn't sweet!!!) and butter. I'm going to try to cook another 2 suppers at home this week. Probably stir fry.

So this furnished apartment costs us $2500/month. Roughly $400 Canadian. There are nicer places, more up to date, with nicer bathrooms (mattresses are still rock hard), but you pay for it, not just in money but in location. Basically, you move further away from the town centre. Its hard to get an apartment in our area so we really lucked out. All of TEDA is quite safe. There are guards and police everywhere. People are very kind in general.

Well, that's enough for this edition. Our little group is planning to venture into Tianjin proper this weekend, so that adventure will likely be worthy of another blog.

Cheers!

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