The Leaving of Liverpool, Part 1


Our apartment is full of bags and suitcases. The wardrobes, walls and the bookcase are looking decidedly bare. AGS are supposed to be coming on Thursday afternoon, to take all of our stuff to Bulgaria. 14,000RMB! Well, we thought that it might be a lot less than that. Oh well!

The other day our landlady asked us to take some photos of the apartment, as she wants to find a new tenant asap. I am including the photos as part of this post. So do you know anyone who wants to rent a two-bedroomed flat in the centre of Shenzhen?

The good news is that it is central, right in the heart of Shenzhen. We love living right next to the park. Lianhuacun MTR station is a few hundred metres away and the Children’s Palace MTR is only a bit further away. It takes me about twenty-five minutes to walk to school in the morning.

The bad news? The smells are dreadful. Sometimes there are ghastly sewage smells coming from the drains and sometimes horrible cooking odours come under the door. As for the windows, we have single glazing and so the apartment is freezing in the winter.

We are paying 6,500RMB a month for this apartment, but that is because we are laowai. Chinese landlords (and landladies) prefer to let out their properties to foreigners, not to Chinese. This means that we are probably getting it cheaper, below the market rate. As those who have been reading my blog from the beginning will know, the Bank of China Towers is covered in red tiles because it is a “ghost building”. Public executions are supposed to have happened nearby, so superstitious Chinese do not want to live here. Maybe that is another reason why we are getting a bit of a discount.

 I have disabled comments for this blog entry, as the result of some thoughtless people posting all kinds of advertising nonsense.



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