Recently I posted pictures of the beautiful houseplants in my living room, the ones that I almost always forget to water – thank you, DH, for caring and watering them when I forget! I thought you might like to see what the rest of our apartment looks like. I posted pictures of our first apartment in Linyi before, the eight bedroom penthouse. This apartment is considerably smaller and a few years older, but it’s really hard to tell how old things are here.
I think our apartment is typical of what you will find in any Chinese city. It is not a shiny new tower like the many that are shooting up everywhere now. It is a five story concrete block that is part of a group of over 60 nearly identical blocks. It just screams Soviet Bloc to me, but to an American, there is just something very cold war about identical concrete houses/buildings. Most Americans live in brick and wood houses and do not realize that most of the rest of the world does not.
So, the tour: (Darn, only the second day of the year and already breaking New Year’s Resolutions.)
Block 51 Entrance 5
The entrance to our building. We’re on the fourth floor. The red character on the door is for Double Happiness – someone in the building was recently married.
Our apartment (I really want to type flat) on the 4th floor.
The red/gold sign was put up for Chinese New Year by the previous tenants. (A group of girls who work in our school.) The white sign gives a telephone number for the bill collectors to call, since they sometimes come to our door asking for money and we can’t communicate with them!
The Living Room
That’s my yoga mat in the middle of the floor. The furniture is rock hard and so uncomfortable no one ever uses it. We’re convinced it was rejected from someone’s office. We are lucky to have a tile floor, even though it is white, since most of the other apartments in the building have concrete floors. The tile is faux marble with grey streaks across them. They coordinate well with the stark white walls and grey band around the bottom of the wall.
The Dining Room
We have quite a large dining room, dominated by this table, which is actually a really big office desk. The little stools are not very comfortable, but we don’t use this room much anyway. The kitchen is behind the windows. There used to be posters of Chinese art on the walls, but I took them down when I thought we were moving and never put them back up.
Doorway View of Kitchen
Another View of Kitchen.
Notice the state of the art hot plate in the corner, it is such a joy to cook with. What I miss the most is having an oven.
Main bathroom sink area – yea the floor is pretty gross
The apartment has two bathrooms. Ours is en-suite. We don’t really use this one since our roommates have gone.
Main bathroom toilet and shower – again, not so nice
The tank on the wall above the toilet is an electric hot water heater. We’re pretty lucky to have these. Without them, we’d have to go to the bathhouse down the street for a hot shower. A lot of our neighbors do.
Our Bedroom
It was really cold so every blanket we own was on the bed. It’s a pretty mismatched ensemble. Our bathroom is to the right, but I didn’t take a photo. It’s nicer than the other one. Looking at this room in the photo is kind of depressing. I really do love interior design. I really am a nester. Someday I will have a fabulous bedroom again!
Laundry area is located behind our bedroom. No dryers here.
That completes our tour. There are two other smaller bedrooms but they are kind of messy so I didn’t bother taking photos. Actually the DH and I are each using one of them as our closets. I could get used to having an entire room for my closet!
I have no idea what kind of rent our company pays for this house, but somewhere between 300RMB and 1500RMB per month is probably accurate, but I’d say it’s in the low end of that range. (That’s $45 to $220.) It might look kind of spartan and cold to you, I apologize for the funky coloring, there is not a lot of natural light to take good photos with. We haven’t bothered putting effort into decorations, etc. because this feels kind of temporary to us. For a lot of Chinese, this apartment and others like it are a massive improvement over their countryside homes. We have indoor plumbing, for example, and the floors are not made of dirt. The fact that there are people living in the garages downstairs makes me appreciate what I have even more!
*6 May 2009 I’ve changed a few photos here. The first set of photos felt awkward and ugly to me. Hope you don’t mind!*
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you for sharing your pictures – the living room is amazing. In the UK rooms are generally small, so any large room is like a dream here.
I recently found your blog and was hooked from day one! It is always interesting to see how people live in other countries.
Happy New Year to you and yours.
Thanks for reading my blog! I was really surprised by the size of apartments here, to be honest. I kind of always thought that Chinese lived many people in small rooms, but that is not the way things are now. (Well, in some places yes, but in general…) Most apartments are two or three bedrooms at least with living room, dining room, etc. They might not be well finished, but they are of good size!
Happy New Year!
oh come on – your fridge is bigger than my fridge! But I do have an oven and 4 gas rings – even if the thing looks like it comes from the 50ies. Oh no, hang on then, it would be trendy, I don’t know what era it looks like its from, but its just darn ugly!
gweipo’s last blog post..multi-sensory life …
LOL we do have a nice fridge! I’m rather proud of it. I’d kill for an oven & even just 1 gas ring!