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soufun.com has really edged out other sites, I think. Good search, good level of information including recent rents and management fees. You can report the agents if they post fake pictures. (Though some obvs still do.)
ganji.com and 58.com are also ok and have lots of by-owner. Koubei used to be, too, but they seem to be part of taobao now and I’ve used soufun.com for the past few moves
Good practice to confirm your requirements with the agent before going to EVERY apartment. They do seem to have an incentive just to show places, so will walk around with you even if they don’t have anything that you’d take. Just refuse to go to the apartment if they don’t confirm the wooden floor first. You will still run into problems (oops, I misunderstood/made a mistake) but far less.
The restaurant was Xiang Tian Xia, near Century City, according to this article.
Rumour has it the room where he ate is now booked way into the future and the restaurant is offering a ‘Prime Minister’ set menu.
We jumped at the chance to upgrade to 20M fiber when it became available in our xiaoqu a month or so ago, but did not notice much improvement in speed from previous 2MB ADSL. However, the loading of Chinese sites improved tremendously. I used bandwidthplace.com to check, which showed about 2M download speed. Speedtest.net showed up to 20. So since we had already installed the fiber line we dropped back to 4M fiber. Our xiaoqu does not offer Unicom, or we would probably have gone with them.
I also have a self-study background and started at SWUFE this semester after looking into Sichuan University (too expensive, classes too crowded) and the Minorities University (a bit too…suibian, though others have positive things to say about it). I am enrolled in upper-intermediate level classes plus an HSK 6 prep class and am quite satisfied with the experience. My reading vocab has increased about 20% in the two months. I would definitely recommend visiting each school and sitting in on a class or two before deciding where you want to go.
Did you find any place that shows the games? I usually end up on a choppy streaming radio or video connection. Epic sounding first game this round.
Gong bao ji ding has been getting sweeter over the years, but there isn’t a standard recipe and some restaurants even prepare the same dish in different ways depending on who is at the wok that day.
If your taste runs spicy, numbing, and on the dry side, suggest ordering la zi ji instead.
Ha, totally forgot about this topic until the maintenance glitches caused me to check my account activity.
Korean: 高升桥南街8号附9号
http://cdwellbeing.com/There is a Thai/Viet one on Jiao Da road, opposite the gate of the university. 抚琴西路新4号附6号 is the address on the card, which does not really match the location…so think it is another branch of the same shop.
Oh, and there is a Japanese one, near the Japanese Friendship Centre south of the consulate.
Well, my school (middle school) decided to have classes today because they didn’t want to risk students showing up, so I am now off to work for the second Saturday in a row. The last time I remember schools deciding to have weekend classes on days of expected protests it was pretty intense, staged or not.
Go to the postal savings bank, ask for a wang hui e, fill out the form or get someone to help you, then take the form to a teller. It’s a minimal charge and they ask you to enter a password. You get a voucher with a number, use the voucher number and password to recharge your Alipay account.
My favourite, when I was trying it out recently, was Mint since it came with everything I needed for work – browser, office suite that would do .doc and .xls files.
I also tried Puppy. Nice and compact.
And the Lili boot from USB tool was absolutely essential in installing and quickly comparing different flavours of Linux, which seem to come all packaged as .iso …who uses optical drives anymore?
I have gotten decent pie at Peter’s (though haven’t been in ages) by going up to the case and asking for a very fresh one. I would pass if there were more than a couple slices out of it. However, pie in Chengdu is definitely a problem. Most have been either refrigerated or stored at high, like ambient Chengdu, humidity, which is bad for the crust.
Cantonese or Portuguese (Macau) style egg tarts and coconut tarts are pretty common in town though. Or you could seek out a Yunnan rose pastry or lao po bing.
I usually look at the page with multiple readings, but they seem not to have been updated today. Yesterday was bad; I don’t usually get affected, but I had a headache last night after being outside unprotected all day.
Link here.
Since nobody else replied, I tried it myself…the BOC site is pretty clear that you need Windows and Explorer. CCB says that Windows is needed but will support Firefox and Chrome (I always use Firefox). Checking a bank balance is one thing, but actually transferring money and paying bills requires a hardware key that I don’t expect to work with a different OS. It may be a case of “yeah it works but we don’t support it”, but I’m not inclined to experiment on something like banking.
The Linux system I just set up on an ancient laptop the recyclers wouldn’t even take died as soon as I tried to log into Taobao (via Firefox). Suspect a hardware rather than software problem at the moment, may need a new hard drive.
And to keep somewhat on topic, my Windows 7*64 system has been running with no issues for over 3 years…it’s been way more stable than any other Windows OS I’ve used. I can work lightning fast on Windows too since by now the shortcut keys are second nature. Just figured if I had to learn a new system at this point, would rather learn Linux.
Anyone tried online Chinese banking/Alipay/Taobao etc via a Linux system (or Droid phone/tablet) yet? My thoughts are that it should just work via the browser.
Small Korean supermarkets, definitely….. There at least used to be one near Jiuyanqiao and I know of one near Gaoshengqiao (will look up address later) I have also seen small Vietnamese shops, though they usually had only candy/dried stuff and toiletries. Japanese would be tougher. Might try asking at one of the Japanese restaurants in town.
Agree 4k should be an adequate budget. Some agents are rather worthless and will parade you all over the place trying to make you feel like your budget is not enough, or get you to compromise your requirements. I would not enjoy living in either area you mention, but you don’t say much about what you are looking for in an apartment or neighbourhood so it’s not easy to give many suggestions. We must have looked at 40 places before getting into our current one.
I would look online for <brand name> 维修 place first. I would expect to pay a lot for any original brand (原装) parts and 20-50% of that cost for a generic replacement. For a phone, I would look for places near Taisheng Nan Lu rather than computer street.
Would also pick somewhere where I can see the technicians working and can see they have a clue what they are doing. If they have dirty or badly lit workstations covered with piles of dusty circuit boards, or if it is a screen problem and they say they have to take the phone/computer apart to see what kind of part they need, I would leave.
Electronics – either buy on Taobao or find out on Taobao what the price should be first, then go to a local seller. During a recent computer crisis, I also discovered through Taobao that the upper floors of places like @world and digital plaza are full of wholesalers who sell the big ticket products for a few hundred less than the booths downstairs.
Perishable Food, like dairy or meat – use Taobao to find best prices, sort by local seller, and make a specific appointment for delivery so your package is not sitting with the security guards for a day. Also avoid buying in really hot weather.
Clothing – Some sellers are gold; you can tell them your height/weight or other measurements and they will be able to say if something will fit you or not. You can also ask the seller to take extra photos of the exact item you are considering and send them to you via chat – I thus avoided getting some very fake Birkenstocks last summer.
There is also a lot of junk on Taobao, so it pays to only consider the 7-day unconditional money back guarantee items and then pay the .5-1 kuai extra for return shipping insurance. Really cheap stuff, underwear, and most second hand items will not offer the guarantee, so you know, caveat emptor.
