After many a strained phone call to various real estate agents in our best chinglish, and seeing many apartment's that weren't quite right, we managed to be shown a place we instantly felt would be our new home. It's in the Hutong neighbourhood we love, it's an 8 minute walk to the subway and has (most of the) western features we felt we needed (like an actual toilet you can sit on), but still lacking some, like an oven, which unfortunately seems unavoidable. We went to see it for the second time today, and put a deposit down (equivalent to bond). We looked over the lease contract, which is written in chinese and english, and negotiated all the details in english/chinese - who knew the lonely planet phrasebook would come in handy negotiating a lease? It took us quite a while, as each question had to be asked about 5 times, in 5 different ways before it was understood, but we got there in the end. We think.
After handing over a month's worth of rent as a bond, we were given a piece of paper on which one sentence was hand-written in chinese. A receipt - we were told. I guess that works.... but who know's what it actually says!
Another interesting thing we discovered about a chinese lease (after pouring over the details) is that in the case of a dispute, the chinese version of the text (which none of us can obviously read) will take legal precedence over the english. Riight. Glad we bothered then! Who know's what that part says!!
Anyway, we can move in on Sunday night. Yippee!! Above are a couple of pictures we took a few days ago in the general neighbourhood where our new apartment is located. Not very good quality as i took them on my phone, but better than nothing. Pretty eh? Will take and post some pictures of the apartment and the surrounds soon.
A x
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