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Sitting in my garden, enjoying the lovely sun, wearing my anti-pollution face mask…anyway, got me entertaining a fantasy. Since Chengdu is pretty much Chernobyl at the moment, if one were to say, break one’s contract, abandon one’s lease and pack one’s room mate into a box (relax, its a cat) and move to a coastal city, which city would you choose? Narrowed it down to the above-mentioned 3. I figure they are all big enough to be reasonably foreigner-friendly and vibrant, and crucially, they all have much cleaner air than our beloved megapolis. Been to Qingdao and thought it was nice, and Xiamen has long been ranked as one of China’s greenest cities. Anyone have any travel/living experience in these places, or suggest another (but please nothing in Guangdong)? If nothing else, it’s nice to entertain this fantasy on 300+ pollution days…gotta remember to remove the face mask when sipping coffee….
I would choose Xiamen. I haven’t spent much time in Dalian but I’ve been to Qingdao and Xiamen several times each. They’re both beautiful but there’s a lot more going on in Xiamen, plus it’s close to Taiwan and Hong Kong which is a nice bonus.
I’ve lived in and around Dalian and Qingdao and spent a fair amount of time in Xiamen. I would not choose Dalian, but only because my experience there was not the best. I thought it was boring, the air quality wasn’t really that great (Compared to present-day Chengdu though it was pretty amazing) and there wasn’t a whole lot to do.
Qingdao on the other hand is probably my favorite city in the mainland and where I’d choose to live again given the choice. The weather can get quite humid in the summer, but it doesn’t get quite as hot as a lot of China. The beaches that are a ways out from the city center is nice, the beer is better there and the food is great.
Xiamen is pretty cool from my limited experience of a few weeks spread out across a couple trips. The summer gets a bit too hot and humid for me, but I come from a cold place so I’m just bad at dealing with heat in general. The local food and stuff didn’t really tickle my fancy all that much, but the whole Fujian/Zhejiang region sort of does that for me. You might like it.
The winter in Qingdao is pretty miserable though. This is my first winter in Chengdu, so I don’t know how typical it is, but you can expect it to be a LOT colder up there. The houses all have pretty good heating though. Any new apartment has a nice central heating system.
Qingdao is a lot less developed than Chengdu is in a lot of ways though. There’s a lot less in the way of foreign shops (A few Carrefours and Juscos, a Japanese Chain, scattered around) and the subway isn’t open yet. Line 1 should be open sometime this year maybe…
Also you (kind of) can forget biking in Qingdao. The roads are tiny, curvy and more resemble some European or New England city than any other major Chinese city. Also the place is very hilly. I rode a bike around for a while but I was too scared for my life given the winding narrow roads and lack of any bike lanes and even sidewalks in some parts. The newer parts of the city (Laoshan, Sifang) are much more like Chengdu or any other big Chinese place with very wide, open roads and even bike lanes in some places… but the CBD and most of the business is in the older more central parts. If you never leave the burbs you can bike fine, I’d reckon.
Qingdao is also a bit pricier than Chengdu in a lot of ways. My apartment was pretty cheap by Qingdao standards in a new complex just on the edge of Shinan Qu (Which is where about 90% of the business/jobs are). I was about a 10-35minute bus ride from the very center of town depending on traffic and paid about 1800 for a studio. In Qingdao this was a steal, I got a break on my rent by tutoring my fangdong’s daughter, as most of my neighbors had the same-ish apartment and paid like 2000-2500. Within Shinan Qu itself any decent place will be well over 2700 a month and with roommates might go a bit below 2k. Laoshan and Sifang are a lot cheaper, but a lot further out. If you’re just looking to teach ESL Laoshan has a lot of English schools as it’s where the richer, car-having middle and upper middle class folks live now.
Another place you might want to look into is Yantai. Ironically it’s name translates to “Smokestack”, roughly, but it’s a very, very clean and nice city on the bay north of Qingdao. It’s smaller than Qingdao and Dalian, but I loved the place. Less foreigners, but it has a decent Irish pub that serves a good shepards pie.
Here are a few pics from this last summer in Qingdao:
http://i.imgur.com/Iyio5lv.jpg
There was a public park/mountain in my complex’s backyard. This is the view of Laoshan Qu on a relatively foggy day.
Here’s a pic from the roof of my complex looking over the main part of the city (Shinan Qu). The buildings stop because of the ocean.
Here’s another picture of the blue skies. Again, I lived within a 30 minute walk of the CBD. This isn’t totally our in he sticks or anything. The subway will connect Sifang with the main part of the city and will likely make that area a lot more convenient to live in.
edit: wow I wrote a lot. I lived in Qingdao for a while and love it though, so take it as you will. Also Qingdao is very close to both Japan and Korea and has huge expat populations of both, making good Japanese food like sushi and very authentic Korean VERY cheap and common. You can even spend like 200rmb to take a boat to Incheon if you want.
@Baoluo:Thanks for the input. What i really loved about Qingdao were the old German villas (although i understand they are insanely expensive to even rent), the seafood and the surprisngly decent (not pristine) main beach. Yeah, i understand that the winters are pretty brutal there. Actualy, this has been a pretty mild winter in Chengdu. Interesting that you say that Qingdao is less developed than here. Do you mean in terms of being “foreign friendly”? Cos i understand that GDP per capita far exceeds that of Chengdu.
It’s not just the pollution that’s getting me down; when i see the monstrous overpass being built on ErHuan Lu that really is a chilling vision of the future for me. Looks like Bangkok. Currently 2 million cars in Chengdu. What a folly that for years the govt here boasted about having the 3rd highest rate of car ownership. You reap what you sow…
BTW: Baoluo: are you digging our fair city?
Dalian is cold. Qingdao has heating but it still gets a fair deal colder there than here. I took a short holiday there last Spring Festival time and took my bike with me. Killer city to ride around in my opinion. Windy roads that curve through hills are where it’s at!
Xiamen I think would probably be my pick though. I think all around it would be the most enjoyable place to live year round. Although the mention of Qingdao’s beer makes it a close second.
Man that post was riddled with spelling and grammatical errors… maybe I’ve been in China too long… maybe I just need to start proofreading my forum posts…
As far as developed I was mainly talking about infrastructure and stuff. Qingdao has no metro, it’s bus system is OK and it’s not as planned a city as most in China. It’s kind of confusing to get around at first and the center of town, especially the CBD and old town, are prone to massive, Beijing-level traffic jams due to road insanity. Also, save a couple of big stores in the CBD everything is out, way out, in the burbs and requires car to get to. Chengdu, Beijing, Chongqing, etc… don’t have this problem as much.
I think Qingdao might actually be a lot MORE foreigner friendly in some respects though. It has a huge foreigner population relative to it’s size, and I liked the night-life a bit more there as a whole. I actually love Chinese food, and adore Sichuan cuisine, but sometimes I just want a burger or a pizza and Qingdao has way more (and in my opinion, better) options than Chengdu or a lot of other cities in that respect. It also has really, really good Japanese and Korean food due to the huge number of Korean and Japanese expats. There’s even a “Little Korea” in one part of town.
One big plus is that most of the construction in Qingdao is going on way out in the outskirts of town. Outside of the subway being built, there’s nothing close to present day Chengdu.
One cool thing about Xiamen, though, is you can get to Taiwan for pretty cheap. You can take a boat to an island called Jinsha which is technically part of Taiwan and from there take a relatively cheap flight to Taizhong or Tainan… I forget which one. I fucking love Taiwan and I could write about 3x what I wrote about Qingdao about Taibei. Once I finish up here in Chengdu I hope to end up back there.
I do like Chengdu, though. Until recently I was really liking it. This whole post-apocalyptic winter fog nonsense sort of put a damper on that, though!
Quote:This whole post-apocalyptic winter fog nonsense sort of put a damper on that, though!For what it’s worth, winter has always been pretty miserable in Chengdu. As long as I’ve been here, at least.
My cat’s giving me a funny look. He’s saying “don’t do anything rash now. Put that cardboard box away….”
I’d go with Xiamen. All of my coworkers and friends that I’ve met in China have moved there and love it. It offers great air, hiking, beaches, very bike-able, lots of work, and the proximity to Taiwan is a plus. That being said, when deciding on whether to move to Chengdu or Xiamen back in July, I chose Chengdu because all of my coworkers and friends that I’ve met in China have moved to Xiamen and love it. There’s something about it that I just don’t buy.
I visited Dalian a few years ago and it was so-so. It’s just a “new” city that’s modern in many ways but doesn’t have a lot of cultural identity that Chengdu has. The locals I met there all said that the city was more of a developing economic zone and that it lacked a rich cultural heritage. As modern cities go, Dalian is starting to have more issues with air pollution and the oil spill in 2010 doesn’t help out the beach scene either.
I think Kunming has some decent air and might be a pretty cool place to live. I will be passing through there during Spring Festival and scope it out.
Quote:I think Kunming has some decent air and might be a pretty cool place to live. I will be passing through there during Spring Festival and scope it out.Kunming is beautiful, but it feels like a much smaller city than Chengu and job opportunities there are much less inspiring than in Chengdu. Kunming probably has the best weather of any city in the mainland. Really nice place.
If you ever get a good offer for anything in Haikou or Sanya you take it immediately.
Hainan is actually pretty expensive, relatively, but you get to live in Hainan so it’s a trade-off.
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