My apartment in Beijing, China was truly amazing. This apartment complex was very new. In fact, I’m 99% sure that I was the first resident of this particular unit. This apartment was pretty luxurious, especially by China standards (or what I expected, at least), complete with marble floors and walls. Before I arrived, I definitely didn’t imagine living in anything that looked like this.
I lived in Future Science City, which is a district in Beijing, a little north of the city center. It took about an hour to get to central Beijing by subway, and sometimes a little less by taxi if the traffic was light. It still amazes me how big Beijing really is. Which is a good thing, considering I wasn’t able to leave the city the entire seven months I was there.
My school paid the apartment’s rent (I just had to cover utilities), which was an amazing perk of the job. And I truly loved most everything about this apartment and the complex. The security staff at the gate was the best, and I heard some horror stories of the staff at other complexes in the area. The staff at my building didn’t speak much English – actually none at all really. But they quickly knew who I was – thanks to being the only foreign resident – and were very helpful with getting my packages and deliveries.
I have some photos below that I took a few days before I left the country. So please excuse any mess and stuff you may see. The rest of this post will pretty much be a photo dump, with a few bits of info here and there. You can also watch the walkthrough video at the end of the post to see how everything was laid out.
In the picture above, you can see the gas meter. This was an interesting thing about China’s utilities. While I could pay for my electricity online, and most of China’s purchases and transactions are done online, the gas was still old school. I had a card (like a credit card) that I would use to purchase and add more gas. In order to get more, you have to go to the gas office and use what looks like an atm. You choose how much gas you want to purchase – all prepaid – and insert your card. When you get back home, you insert the card into this gas meter in the kitchen, and it automatically adds the gas limit you purchased to your remaining balance. It is a very interesting process.
I was walking distance from my school, it was a 20-30 minute walk on average, which was great when the weather was cool. Not so much in the heat. One of the only things about the area that I didn’t love was that it was all very new and still a little barren. There was not much commercial development (though things were slowly being built, and there are eventual plans for two malls in the area), and I was about a 30 minute taxi ride to the closest subway station. They are planning to put one a short walk from my apartment, but construction had been halted many times.
The last few photos are the outside of the building and the complex. I don’t have many, as it wasn’t a very expansive area. But it was nice. These photos were taken soon after I arrived, shortly after the first big snow.
I really loved living here. This is an apartment I would never be able to afford in a big city here in the states. Especially on a teacher’s salary. Click below to watch the walkthrough tour of the apartment.
