Articles

Why? I’m glad you’re asking. While in Austria it’s easy enough to sign a 5-year contract for renting an apartment, and usually not too hard to renew the contract if you’re not a terrible tenant–in China, it is not. The first place I lived at in China was a flat with glass fronts facing the north and the south in an old-looking compound built just before the turn of the 21st century. The house was located in a central district in Yunnan province’s capital city, Kunming, and I shared the flat with two other exchange students. One of them, the main tenant, had decorated the rooms nicely with blankets with flower patterns–and plants and flowers that would bloom beautifully in a bright pink colour lined the window sills. Although the apartment was furnished nicely, it was certainly not a high-end apartment. It was located on the sixth floor without elevator, small, and although we had running water, we would sometimes have to wait for hot water for days, because the compound’s hot water all came from solar water heaters installed on the eight story high houses. No sun, no hot water. But still, I loved living in that tiny room of the apartment that was my first real home in China. Not too long after moving in and months before the one-year contract would have ended, though, the landlady told us that we’d have to clear the apartment within a week. This was my first move in China. Little did I know at that time that many would follow. The reasons I had to move apartments in China varied. Sometimes I could not extend a contract after one year was up. Sometimes the landlord would raise rent to unimaginable high numbers. Sometimes the landlady would want the flat back before the contract was up. Other times it was our own fault because we moved cities or crashed at other people’s places in times of transition.