Apartment → 搬家 — Moving
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This week, I moved to a better, bigger and more modern apartment down the same street where I was living.
This apartment had many problems. It had no hot water and sometimes, no water at all. It was full of mosquitoes and there seemed to be no way of getting rid of them (very annoying when sleeping!).
So I visited some apartments for rent and I found one. Here, a housing agent is writing a list of the furnitures on the lease.
In China, not only you have to pay in cash for renting an apartment, but also you need to pay one full year in advance in order to get the lease. The total cost of the lease was three times greater than my daily withdrawing limit at ATM machines. Therefore, for three consecutive days, I had to withdraw the maximum daily amount of money permitted by my bank, store the money in my apartment, and in the final day, walk on Xi’an streets with almost the equivalent of one year salary for an ordinary Xi’an worker in my pockets. (On a side note: a proposal was made at the annual Government assembly this year to introduce 1000-yuan banknotes, but the proposal was unfortunately dismissed. 100 yuans ($15) is still the highest banknote in legal tender in China, which is very inconvenient when one has to pay for housing or tuition fees).
After two hours of tough negotiations, the landlord and I finally agreed on a price and a “penalty” for only renting the apartment for 9 months instead of 12.
