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Agree with DrJ: you need to seriously consider the city you choose. Chengdu is a good one, but truly, some in China are unfathomably grim, and “the cultural experience” can rapidly become “get me outta here!”
Yeah, this is an important detail. A lot of expats come to China and end up in random (usually not enjoyable) places because a school in the middle of nowhere has offered them a job. Choose your location carefully. Chengdu is a good city to be in, and there are a few others, but doing your research and carefully selecting where you live in China is crucial to having a rewarding experience.
infallible star,
I am not sure how are you going to manage to accept a regular job, take care of your 1 year old and teach your two school age children all at once …
I am not sure it’s really possible but keep it in your good hands.
In contradiction to drjtrekker and Ray I do not find that important which city you choose (of course unless you have a strong preference for subtropical seaside or similar) with exception of tier 1 cities for which, with 5 members family and by you indicated income, you may not have enough money.
In general with such a big family which will the most probably heavily depend on you and without being able to communicate in Chinese you will most probably not enjoy too fruitful social life.
Usually the foreigners in China, when the first ‘honeymoons’ are over, have very strong opinion about the environment. Either they like it or they hate it.
It’s not easy to come to the place where you are efficiently illiterate (and will be for more than year even if you study several hours everyday), where the people are not able to understand you the most simple Chinese words even though you believe your pronunciation does not have a trouble and when taxi drivers just push you out on the street because they do not know the address and you are not able to explain them how to get there or offer a Chinese speaking person who can.
The people behave very differently from Europe and certain commonly accepted practises are from European perspective really really strange.
Saying all of this I know a lot of foreigners who really love China and enjoy their life in here – including the food which tends to be delicious.
All in all for a family with 3 children, one of them 1 year old and two in school age, none of them speaking Chinese it will be quite hard.
But probably manageable if this is what you want and if you are willing to compromise on your living standards.
Saying then that Xiamen is great because it offers kind of the European holiday ideal environment, Kunming is perfect because the weather is everlasting spring and Zhengzhou is the hell because it’s industrious city without any remarkable tourist spot is not exactly relevant because it highly depends on individual preference. I for instance believe that absolutely the best city in China is Chongqing followed closely by Lianyungang – both of them are not high on majority of foreigners priority list … 🙂
If you really decided to accept the burden so come first, taste China and later on you may decide if this is the environment you like or not. But I would anyway recommend to may try coming firstly without children for three to four weeks to get the real experience. You may realize that China is not a place you want to spend a year or two …
Hey guys,
I am not sure it is possible to make a reasonable research about the dream city when you are coming to China for the first time.
I assume that irrespective where you go you will experience the typical three phases (love, disillusion, coming to ‘normal’ stage whatever it is).
After having certain experience with Chinese environment and being able to see more subtle differences you may be able to say you like one over the another because you will have the reasons supported by experience/reality for that.
I would really question this is possible to do when you are still at in your home country and your only experience with China is the nearest Chinese restaurant …
But I do not rule out I am wrong …
It’s interesting to hear different points of view, I’ve actually met a handful of expats who really prefer living in Chongqing to anywhere else. I find that fascinating after spending a few months living there and having visited every year for almost the last ten years since I would consider Chongqing to be a very difficult place to live as an expat, but that opinion is subjective (I hadn’t ever heard of Lianyungang but will check it out).
I would say that location is important to consider for any expat moving to China, but even more so for families because few places in China are conducive to raising a family. Obviously this is subjective and people raise children in Brazilian favelas and Haitian slums but I wouldn’t consider most of China to be a good place to raise kids. The air/water/soil is polluted of course, but in a lot of places in China getting things like a reasonable education or actual healthcare for your children isn’t possible. On a flight yesterday I was reading Josh Summers’ travel book on Xinjiang (which is great) and in the section on hospitals it recommends to leave Xinjiang to get medical care, and that most expats living in the region won’t even go to hospitals there. Doesn’t sound like a great place to raise kids to me, and that is not an anomaly in China – plenty of areas are faceless industrial towns where life is a begrudging routine where the average person didn’t graduate high school and works for $8 a day.
In my opinion if you are coming to China you will want to come to a place where you can absorb as many of the advantageous opportunities here available. Work opportunities, cultural things to experience, historical sites to learn from, economic growth to participate in, and so on. Ideally you will also want an environment that isn’t completely destroyed where you can ride a bicycle outside without coughing your lungs out or contributing to your kids getting lung cancer or eating poisonous food. These are all realistic concerns in China so I really do not think that all places in China are equal.
At this point I feel like there are very few places in China where I would even want to live because the downsides are so considerable. China is covered with virtually indistinguishable mega-cities, many of which are even provincial capitals. Hefei, Shijiazhuang, Changchun, Nanchang… I’ve been to all of them and I don’t remember a damn thing about any of them. Fly out of one into the other and it feels like you are in the same drab place.
Charlie,
I think your post is basically supporting what I have written – you are writing that:
1) …there are very few places in China where I would even want to live …
2) … few places in China are conducive to raising a family
3) China is covered with virtually indistinguishable mega-cities, …
On top of that you mentioned that it would be desirable to find the place which offers reasonable education. But in my opinion this does not apply to OP as her children cannot join the Chinese education system due to inability to speak, read and write in Chinese and the budget will not allow her to send two of her children into international school irrespective if such is or is not at the given place available.
I am strongly convinced that in case the person comes from EU or US, monthly funds will be somewhere between 15000 and 20000 CNY and there is a need to support 5 members family (three of them relatively small children) so in case of any serious concern about air pollution, food safety and of course traffic safety the person shall not even consider China in the first place.
I would just recommend to search for tier 2 -3 cities as tier 1 may be out of budget and tier 4 and lower may be too harsh an experience for the ‘newcomer’.
But as I mentioned – I do not rule out that I am totally wrong in this as I absolutely agree with you that any such selection is highly subjective.
in my opinion this does not apply to OP as her children cannot join the Chinese education system due to inability to speak, read and write in Chinese and the budget will not allow her to send two of her children into international school irrespective if such is or is not at the given place available.
That is a good point, you are right. Good luck to OP, this sounds like a challenge. I have a lot of friends who have left China when children come into the picture (like Sascha) and I think that if I were in that situation I would do the same. Tough place to raise kids.
Given that you won’t be able to afford Western education, I think you should also put into the equation how long you intend on living in China. Is it simply an immersion or a long-term thing? Financially I doubt you can eventually afford the education your children needs. Because of this, I don’t think you can move to China for good. This concern trumps food safety, healthcare and air quality in my opinion.
If you only plan to stay in China for a year or two, then you will be more open to options in deciding where in China you want to be based in. Generally-speaking though, the smaller the city is, the less chances of being able to survive with just English, less expats, less Western products and less non-Chinese food options. Health care, food safety and air quality will probably be worse too.
Having said that, I wouldn’t choose Baoding over Chengdu unless they pay twice as much specially if you won’t be staying in China very long. Although Baoding is just a couple of hours from Beijing, I would stay in a more Westernized and more modern city if given a choice. It will reduce the culture shock and homesickness.
I also agree with the either you love it or you hate it thing. I come from South East Asia and I have to say East Asian countries like China will take a lot more adjusting than SEA countries.
Personally I would choose a city by the sea. Pollution won’t be as bad. Xiamen comes to mind. You can look into Xiamen University. Or maybe Tianjin since it’s a short train ride from Beijing.
Hope this helps.
OP, there are many problems in this situation, most arising from a lack of money. Let me address some.
Many have to do with housekeeping/logistical issues that may be of concern to the mother of three children.
HOUSING First, I’m surprised the university doesn’t offer housing, traditionally they’ve done so in China. Usually such apartments are free, (more or less) furnished with a few basic appliances and include at least some utilities. Referring only to the salary is not a useful comparison, because Chinese families a) usually only have one child b) often have at least one pair of grandparents, or at least one grandmother, living with them, or if in the same city, visiting daily, which takes care of many logistical issues c) usually pay less for almost everything than foreigners for obvious reasons.
Renting an apartment commercially can often involve several months rent in cash. Landlords often want 4 months — one will be a deposit, the other 3 for advance rent. The agent will get a month.
If you are not going to use an agent, is someone going to help you find and rent a place? The vast majority of agents, owners and property management offices don’t speak or even read English. If they do, they will be handling expensive housing aimed at people with expat benefits. The lease will almost certainly be in Chinese. Repair staff will not speak English, and you may be calling them a lot b/c as others have observed, the quality of housing is poor even at high rents.
Breaking a lease usually involves a 2-month rent penalty. Also, while most people have uneventful tenancies, there is no system or concept of tenants’ rights, and no system of landlord-tenant courts or arbitration procedures. One reason Chinese people are so keen on ownership is, as one told me, that it can and does happen that people can find themselves turned out of their apartment on little or no notice with no recourse. It doesn’t happen every day, but it does happen, and it’s up to you to negotiate with the landlord.
Also, in many compounds, if you hire a truck to move your stuff out, the guards may require you to have a note from the management office before they let the truck leave. The management office will generally call your landlord. So if you do have some major dispute with your landlord and decide to just leave, it may not be that easy.
I’m not saying all these bad things happen to everyone, but they can and do happen and these are things people don’t know or think about much when deciding to move here.
Also, in almost any residential compound of any size, there will almost always be apartment renovation going on. When apartments change hands, it’s almost invariable that a major renovation is undertaken, even in relatively new units, because the initial quality was low. Bathrooms and kitchens are ripped out, walls are knocked out … renovation work might go on 7 days a week at almost any hour. You’ll have to listen to all this. Some compounds will control this, some won’t. Calling the police or the management office may not produce any lasting result.
You will probably have to rent an older apartment in a less convenient or desirable location. Location will influence your commuting time and cost, along with the availability of services/stores. People have alluded to the lower quality of such buildings. I’d like to be more explicit. An old apartment can have many or all of the following issues.
The kitchen and bathroom will not be at all what you are used to. The cooker may be a two-ring gas unit that’s grimy with oil from previous tenants. Landlords don’t necessarily clean an apartment before renting it, nor do they necessarily do any number of seemingly obvious repairs.
Really old buildings may have no elevator (if only a few stories high) or have a few really ancient ones that only serve every other floor (you’ll drag your kids and groceries up or down a floor). I have seen exactly these situations in Beijing, so I imagine they exist in Chengdu as well. Some really old buildings even halt elevators after a certain hour.
In really old buildings as well, people feel free to more or less dump garbage or household debris they don’t want to bother doing proper disposal of, in the stairwells, where there may or may not be real garbage cans. Or they may throw it out the window, which is not very pleasant especially if you have a landing outside your window. The stairwells and halls in these old buildings can be barely or totally unlit, windows may be broken, security in the building may be minimal.
In the kitchen, storage and counter space will probably be very limited. The fridge will be well-used, small and not very efficient. Most Chinese families usually shop every day, and because of the tiny fridge, you will too … shop for five people with three kids in tow.
There may be no hot water in the kitchen, so you’ll either wash dishes in cold water or heat some on the stove. Kitchens rarely have ovens except in top-end, top-priced housing, so if you want to bake, you will have to buy an electric countertop oven. These might cost a few hundred RMB.
Bathroom. You’ll probably have a Western toilet, but you won’t always have a tub. The shower may be just that, a showerhead mounted on the wall with a shower curtain (no glass doors). The water is expected to run down the drain in the middle of the floor. Piping systems are not very good, meaning you’ll smell a lot of things going down the drain from the bathroom(s) above you. The lower the floor, the worse the problem. The washing machine will probably be in the bathroom and it will probably be a well-used, small top-loading model that only has cold water. There won’t be any dryer in old, cheap apartments, so you’ll have to hang your washing from a pole on the balcony.
As to hot water, you might have a gas heater that will supply a fairly decent uninterrupted supply. Or you might have an electric tank in the bathroom, which can take 20-30 minutes to heat up. If it does supply the kitchen, you could use it up doing the dinner dishes. Giving one or two kids a bath will easily drain it. Three kids plus two adults ….
UTILITIES These could get expensive because, as far as I know, a lot of buildings in Chengdu do not have any central heating (I am in Beijing, where basically all buildings do). Winter in Sichuan can be chilly and damp. If you are in a newer building, which you probably cannot afford, you might have an individual gas-heating unit. And that might cost RMB500 a month or more to run. If you’re in an older building, it would be more likely that you will have an A/C unit in each bedroom and the living room: these produce some heat. It is expensive to run them and they will have to be supplemented with electric radiators, which will also be expensive to run.
As to water: technically you can drink the water in most major cities in China. Meaning, you won’t die of cholera tomorrow. In practice, people with any reasonable amount of money buy bottled water. At present, a 4-liter bottle in Beijing costs 8-9 yuan, depending on the brand and retailer. Even if you cook with tap water, drinking water for a family of five could easily require a couple of those a day. Multiply by 30.
POLLUTION: Are there air purifiers in your apartment? If not, who’s going to pay for them? They can run to a couple of thousand RMB each.
MEDICAL: If you currently have insurance, you might want to find out if it can be used in China. Some of the big international hospitals or clinic chains do accept such plans as Blue Cross. Many Chinese employers say they offer insurance. This is usually reimbursement of some portion of costs, up to a certain limit or percentage, perhaps only in local wards of local hospitals — where as others said, there may be no English speakers.
Be aware that medical care is cash upfront, even the emergency room, and you pay for each procedure as you go. This may involve numerous trips back and forth from the treatment area to the cashier, which will be the case in the overcrowded public hospitals. Do you want to do this with kids in tow? Do you want to do this at 3am if one of the kids has a fever?
Also be aware of the tendency to over-prescribe, which is how doctors in most hospitals earn most of their money, especially antibiotics. And be aware that you may not always be able to get the exact counterparts of OTC or prescription medicine you are used to.
Hospitals can be surprisingly grimy. It’s not uncommon to go into the bathroom in one and find no toilet paper, or no soap for handwashing (perhaps only cold water). I have seen this more than once in major hospitals in Beijing. Public bathrooms, even in relatively new modern buildings, can also be shockingly filthy.
CITY LIFE: Daily life in urban China can really grind you down. Crowds absolutely everywhere almost all the time, pushing, encroachment on personal space, people darting ahead of you to save 3 seconds getting on the escalator first, relentless competition for seats on the bus, a seat on the subway, pollution and traffic jams, people ignoring you and grabbing the taxi that you thought you were hailing, kids relieving themselves anywhere and everywhere (not long ago, I saw a woman helping a little boy pee into a bottle while on the cafeteria line at Ikea, they were standing right next to the pastry shelf), waiting an hour or more at the bank to get to the teller window, etc.
Once you’ve seen the pandas, this is the reality.
You need some stress relief, but how will you and your family afford it? You won’t be able to take those quick overseas breaks or ‘staycations’ at local top hotels that those on expat packages can afford, you won’t be eating out much, etc.
If it was just the two of you, that would be one thing. With three kids, I think it’s a really bad idea.
My $0.o2 worth.
Thank you!
After carefully evaluating your suggestions, as well as balancing things through, we have decided that it will be best for my husband to accept the position in Chengdu.
As it stands we are expecting him to start the job in December-January, we will join him in April-May.I am still not convinced that this is a totally crazy idea, nor I think it is a sound one!
We would love to see, feel and experience it for ourselves.With the decision being made, I am even more anxious making it right.
I am sure there will be many more questions prior to our departure as well as during initial period. At least I know that I can rely on the forum members, and the site, which is a fantastic tool for people who are about to visit Chengdu to settle or otherwise.
I want to thank you all for all the support shown and advice received.
I would max out your luggage allowance with food and commodities from home which you can’t live without. Once you’re on the other side of the world, it will be much more difficult to get those items.
OP, there are many problems in this situation, most arising from a lack of money. Let me address some.
This is an incredibly comprehensive and accurate description of the hardships of housing in China. Thank you for sharing.
After carefully evaluating your suggestions, as well as balancing things through, we have decided that it will be best for my husband to accept the position in Chengdu.
It will not be easy, but at least now you know what you are getting into. There are a lot of wonderful things to experience in Chengdu as well, despite the dismal picture painted by the previous poster. I have some friends here in Chengdu (a foreign couple) who are raising three children here and seem to have been managing just fine for many years now without major incident. Good luck!
I guess I can consider myself very fortunate during my short stay in Beijing 5 years ago. The only problems I encountered with my apartment was the old bed sheets (which the landlord bothered to wash before we moved in) and no hot water in the kitchen. If you will cook a lot and there will be no hot water during winter, this will be a big problem. Good thing we barely cooked back then. The bathroom used a small heater with no real water storage, it runs when you turn on the shower. Worked pretty well for us. The cable TV had about 90 channels but 85 of them were in Chinese. The contract we were given had an English translation. Commission was given by the landlord.
As for drinking water, we had a supplier of drinking water which came in 5-Gallon containers. This is very cheap. You will go broke if you will get your drinking water from the groceries. Never drank from the tap.
I had other friends who stayed in both old and new apartments. Ones with elevators and security and ones without. Generally-speaking I’d say it wasn’t as grim as depicted above. No idea about Chengdu since that was in Beijing. One thing I noticed was that common areas, including hallways and elevators were dirty even for high-end condominiums. It’s like property management companies are non-existent.
Hospitals will be grim if you come from the west. I had a friend who lived in a small city outside Shanghai. The nurse told him not to sleep because he had to call their attention once his IV fluid was running low. Take good care of your health specially that you have kids with you.
The banks in China were more efficient than the ones we have here. Yes there were tons of clients all the time but the tellers worked like machines in terms of speed and efficiency.
The “real life” scenario is accurate though. Be prepared to be shoved every now and then regardless of where you are. I also saw people spitting inside one of the most expensive malls in Beijing before. Crossing the street can mean life and death and hailing for cabs during rush hour is like a competition.
Another thing related to health you should read before departure, and it doesn’t just apply to Beijing. Thousands of people die of rabies every year in China, and that isn’t just in the countryside.
“Rabies is dangerously common here in China,” emphasizes Dr. Richard Saint Cyr, a family medicine physician at Beijing United Family Hospital and Clinics. “China is in second place, only behind India, in the number of deaths per year from rabies—usually around 2,000 persons, and many of them are children. For comparison, in the USA, only one-to-two people die each year from rabies.”
“It’s so much easier to get the three preventive vaccines over one month, and if you are ever bitten in the future then you would only need two shots over three days, and no immunoglobulin injection.” Otherwise, he notes, you need to do four-to-five shots and the HRIG injection. “This is always much more complicated, not to mention very stressful, and the immunoglobulin injection can be expensive, painful, and sometimes difficult to keep in supply.”
http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/beijing/article/china-health-watch-rabies
Speaking of staycations, I must say there are a lot of big hotel names in Chengdu and the room rates are quite reasonable too.
Sheraton’s cheapest room goes for 125USD a night with breakfast or 110USD without. Oakwood’s 2 bedroom apartment goes for 220USD.
Other 5-star hotels like Shangrila goes for around 160-175USD a night, still reasonable when compared to same chain hotels located in first-tier cities.
Hello, just another thought or two:
About the kids’ education. There is an active homeschooling group in Chengdu. I expect that you will be aiming to keep their level on par with their age group back home. That means that they will have to work on their UK school work. It will not leave them time to study fulltime Chinese to the level that they will need to fit in a Chinese school. It will take them years and many hours of private tutoring (costs?) and rote learning to do so. If they manage to do (motivation??), did you consider what a Chinese high school will mean for the quality of their education? You will want to choose a school that will give them access to foreign universities and colleges once they graduate, I guess, in case they would like to. Consider the costs, entry requirements, etc. for those as well.Second, did you consider applying for jobs with foreign universities opening up new campuses in China? They may be able to pay you more and with more benefits, and at the same time you get your culture exposure. I know of a new initiative of Groningen University (the Netherlands) in Yantai, ‘close’ to Beijing. There are also UK, USA and Australian universities doing the same in other cities, such as Nottingham in Ningbo, and New York University in Shanghai. I think it is worth to explore these.
Good luck with everything.
On another note, if you want to teach piano (and musicianship) to foreigners here in Chengdu, I would suggest you try to find private students, via the international school community, the chinese schools offering English tuition, online on this forum and on chengdufamilyliving Yahoo group. Some schools allow non-employees to do private classes for students after school hours on the school grounds. I would think there is a market for good English-speaking piano/music teachers here. You may also contact Goldenotes music school, they have lots of foreign students and may be interested in a foreign teacher. And ofcourse the conservatory.
Posted this month via a recruiter: High School Music Teachers needed at Chengdu, Sichuan
http://cafe.anesl.com/jobdetail.aspx?id=20150902092313329
Starting in March, salary is low, but they do provide an apartment (which may be just one bedroom for a single person). Or they may be glad enough to hire someone who doesn’t need an apartment.
These ads have expired, but may be worth contacting them
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