How to Apartment Hunt in Beijing

3.01.2009

Below you will find 15 easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions for finding a place to rent in Beijing:

Step 1. Consult ads on TheBeijinger.com first. You may be able to avoid agency fees this way.
Step 2. Send off a few emails, an SMS or two, or—if you are the brave sort and your Chinese is better than mama huhu—start making some calls.
Step 3. Set up appointments to view the potential living spaces.
Step 4. Go to your first appointment. Realize the person you have just met is not a landlord or a current tenant, but indeed an agent.
Step 5. Decide to see the apartment anyway through a struggle of broken English and yi dian dian Chinese.
Step 6. Stand around for 25 minutes while the agent frantically makes calls to set up as many apartment viewings as possible. Feel very annoyed that these calls weren’t made earlier.
Step 7. Realize that you have now becomes this person’s victim for the rest of the day and mentally cancel all other appointments made for that day.
Step 8. Set off for the first apartment, which according to the ad is “very near* the WuDaoKou subway station."

*Further reference for decoding the distance of the actual apartment’s location from where you actually want to live:
-"very near here" = 1-8 miles away
-"close to here" = 3-12 miles away
-"not so far from here" = 5-28 miles away
-"I think the location is very convenient for you" = might as well move south of
the Yangtze

Step 9. Ride all over the city of Beijing, sitting Chinese-style side-saddle on the back of the agent’s bicycle. Get stared at 100 times more than usual for being a female laowai on a local man’s bike.
Step 10. Get shown apartments that are either out of your price range, uninhabitable, nowhere near where you want to live, or PERFECT!!... except for the bathroom. Nobody could possibly shower in that bathroom. Nobody.
Step 11. Finally find one that fits most of your criteria. Negotiate rent with agent. Have agent slyly add that there is a “service fee” of 1500 RMB for this apartment.
Step 12. After hearing 20 times how cheap, convenient, cheap, and convenient the apartment is for you, decide paying the 1500 RMB fee isn’t worth it.
Step 13. Go home exhausted and defeated-- and still meiyou place to live.
Step 14. Feel extremely anxious and depressed knowing you have to do this all over again the next day. Crack yi bing ping pijiou. Or er.
Step 15. Repeat steps 1-14 as needed. Once you can’t stand it anymore, settle on small, clean, overpriced place that has a mediocre bathroom, a so-so kitchen, a decent living room, and a truly convenient location.