Agents can be useful for a bunch of things. They have data on where tons of apartments are for rent, and can find them faster than you would on your own. There are indeed websites designed to search for rentals, but in my experience they are poorly designed. A good agent should argue on your behalf, mostly because they want to close the deal and get their fee, but also because you are the customer as opposed to the landlord. If you make your requirements clear to them, they will usually see to it that they’re met, or come close to it. Finally, they’ll do all the paperwork, and have contracts pre-written that are mostly in-favor of the tenant.

My strategy to finding the apartment I want is to first find out where I want to live. Then I pick the exact building that I want to be in. With the rental and real estate market overly saturated right now thanks to the economocalypse, chances are there will be at least one unit available in that building. The agent should be able to get you in there to take a look, and if you like it away you go. If you do need heed this advice and pick just some area, or even worse an entire district, you will wind up with some massive apartment on the verge of complete and total failure, with neighbors above, below and side to side who will all be doing renovations involving high volume power tools only at times you have to catch an early flight, are hung-over, or both.

Using this technique recently netted me a decent apartment. First inspection was good. The forties something landlord guy offered me good price, and was going to supply me with all the furniture I needed. Little did I know, despite his ownership of the place, the real owners were his elderly parents who materialized like wraiths at the second showing. It’s funny how friendly they were at first, only to become hostile banshees later on.

After heading back to the real estate office to sign the contract, the demons began to reveal themselves. First, they wanted the deposit to be a number that was perfect sounding to them, so no fours, 250’s or any other unlucky combinations. Of course I agreed, not wanting to offend their foolish but perfectly normal superstitions. Their son took a while to show up, and by the time he did I got the agent to explain that I only wanted to pay two six month terms instead of upfront for the whole year. So much can happen in a year, and if for some reason I need to make like a banana and get the fuck out, I don’t want to lose an excess of rent. Not to mention, the landlord would get to keep the deposit, thus affording him time to find a new tenant. The guy’s mom was already starting to pull the strings, and said was saying this was no good, unlucky, and would end badly. The landlord then offered that the deposit should be higher that what it was, I agreed that this was an acceptable offer. But before anyone could sign the contract, his mom suddenly started shrieking that there was no way he could rent it out, this was totally unacceptable, and that he should find someone else. Just moments early she had been signing praises about how good foreigners were to rent to.

The sheer noise she was making, and the repetitive yelling was not unlike that of a little child complaining about not wanting to eat her broccoli or something. It was just absurd to me that someone of that age would act like that. It’s really hard for me to even put it in words what the situation was like but I just sat there, and listened to this old witch go on. While I couldn’t make out everything she was saying, I did hear a number of slurs leave that old wrinkled cake hole. Finally the guy got up and said that he couldn’t sign it, and they left, without apologizing, but instead the mother continuing on about how what a horrible circumstance it would have been.

Despite this rather unpleasant experience, it was a blessing in disguise. I wouldn’t be stuck with superstitious landlords that probably would have been unreasonable anal goblins. Not to mention, the landlord’s brothers would have been living above and below me, so there very well could have noise complaints, stupid requests to practice English, and the smell of burning flesh of former tenants wafting into my flat.

On my way home in the taxi from this aborted contract signing I got a call from my agent about another landlord wanting to meet about another unit like the one I wanted in the same building the next day. Within 12 hours, I had a new contract, the landlord was in her early forties, was totally cool with six month payments and basically had no qualms whatsoever. Oh yeah and the price was more than 10% lower.

Landlords really are a completely random variable. Renting a new apartment is a lot like playing Russian roulette. Except in the empty chambers, you get delightful chambers to sleep in, while the ones that are full leave a nice gaping hole in your head with your brains oozing on the floor in a big mess that you will have to clean up in order to try and get your rental deposit back.

It’s about that time of year again, where my rent is nearing expiration and I have to find a new home to live. I never bother resigning a new contract because I always feel like I can do better than what I’ve got, which so far, I have. Not to mention I quite enjoy looking for new apartments here.

Who doesn’t love a real estate agency, where within 2 minutes of walking in the door, they have some landlords bringing you up to take a look at an apartment? Never mind appointments, introductions, names or telling the agents what I was looking for. They just whisked me right up to some random dwelling. That was a stone’s throw away from the agency. As luck would have it, that turned out to be the best place of the day.

The landlords are always so into it, it’s great. They quote you a price, and then immediately say, but if you take it right away we’ll lower the price even more. The first ones I had where a young middle-aged couple. They were nice, perhaps a bit too nice. The guy looked like he had recently gotten facelift, and perhaps addicted to cocaine. He was always wide eyed and had this enormously open smile that I thought he might offer as an extra room in the flat.

After giving the place a good once over, we sat down in the kitchen to go over the details. Immediately the guy offered us all a smoke. Being a non-smoker, I politely refuted, at which point he pulled a half empty bottle of cola out of a drawer(?) and offered it to me instead. I was going to say that I only drank water and booze, but I was afraid of what substance he would pull out of his sleeve next, so I switched the conversation back to the topic at hand.

Even when I’m speaking English, I have a hard enough time with these awkward situations. It’s because I often feel pigeonholed. I like the place or thing that I’m looking at, but obviously I’m not going make big commitments right away. They seemed to think I was ready to sign a contract right after 5 minutes in the place. Really, who rents the first house that’s shown to them? As I tried to be as polite as I could for coming down on short notice to show me their apartment, I couldn’t help but see a sudden dejected look in their eyes when I told them I needed think things over and look around. It was like they just found out that their puppy was beheaded by pirates. Feline mutant pirates. They could watch the highlights on the news at 11. It was back to the drawing board at the agency.

It’s hard enough for me alone to figure out what I want in terms of a place to live, but then to have to explain it in another language to someone who has no concept of my utility-value system is almost a lost cause. Almost. But as it turns out, I still got to have fun practicing my real estate terms in Chinese all day while cruising around in a QQ.

First time in a QQ

As I was being ferried around looking at new and well…not so new apartments, I had the opportunity of having my first ride in a QQ. To those of you from countries where vehicle safety standards exist, the QQ is a diminutive little car that’s ubiquitous here. They’re powered by engines packing a whopping 51 or 67 horsepower, and are the same size as a large bathtub. I have to say I came away impressed. For a car so small, it managed to zip around without too much effort (so there were some points where it almost stalled, more than likely due to the driver) with 4 guys piled inside of it. Speaking of the interior, clearly the Ringling Brothers played a role in its design process, because everyone including myself had ample leg room. The only problem I could really feel was the flimsy construction of the doors, the walls, and… pretty much the whole car. If you get in an accident in one of these things, forget about an ambulance coming to pick you up, you’re leaving in a Hurst. SUVs would fly by us, and it felt like I was on the 401 in a Camry being passed by a Mach trucks. Despite these small faults, it was fun. Just don’t expect me and my homies to be rolling around in one anytime ever.

Despite 5 hours of visiting various apartments and offices in different states of neglect my quest continues. Will I find that royal habitat, fit for a golden goose? Or will I be pulled into the next landlord’s massively gaping mouth to the far side of another dimension?

[update march 09]
Check out this new map to see where everything is! Nightlife MAP

Welcome to the nightlife capital of Shandong Province. Oh god do I wish that really meant something.

The Western Bars

First and foremost, we’ve got LeBang. It’s one of the few places that I consistently go (too often). If you’re a noob in Qingdao, you are guaranteed to meet drunken expats here. It’s usually busy Fridays and Saturdays cause they have an all you can drink deal, and a DJ spinning the retarded love child of house and top40. It is acceptable the first time, but if you go as often as I do, it starts to smell of Vieux Boulogne. The highlight: Seeing drunken eurotrash try to get with Chinese girls and fail miserably, then get beaten up by said Chinese girls’ boyfriends.

Another popular place along the same lines is Corner Jazz Bar. I rarely step foot in there because I can’t stand the crowd of businessmen and Russian hookers that usually spawn after New York Bar shuts down. I don’t know what the deal is with their washrooms but I’m near certain that the mob’s choppin’ up bodies in there. It fucking reeks. Music is strictly top40 pop and some Korean tunes too because that group always has a presence. Doesn’t get busy till about 1am and during weekdays don’t even bother. It’s a given they sell fake booze. The highlight: Hourly catfights between drunk over possessive Korean girls.

Moving along, there’s the upscale Qbar and New York Bar on HK road, both of which are located in hotels. I avoid NY Bar for aforementioned reasons. Qbar has a ladies night on Wednesday that I used to frequent for the booze that I managed to sequester from lady friends. Besides that, it’s too expensive for Qingdao, and although the hip-hop cover band is better than average, they play the same music every night. Also the bartenders WILL try to jack your change; so don’t forget to get it. The highlight: The washrooms. I would hold my crap all day just so I could dump a load off in there. Seriously, it was nicer than my own damn bathroom, and you can high five the bathroom guy on the way out.

Then there’s also OldJack’s, New Jack’s and King’s Head. These three bars are virtually the same: dimly lit, not very large, and populated by old guys talking about, watching, or fantasizing about playing soccer. The pub style atmosphere if that’s your thing. I’m not into these places on account of four reasons: all older people, more expensive drinks, no music, and most importantly no girls. The highlight: Ordering sushi from the place next to Old Jack’s and getting them to serve it straight into bar, and watching as every other barfly looks at you like you’ve invented the wheel.

Finally there are two other western bars worth mentioning. Lennon Bar is a two-floor place that at one time was a full of hookers. The owner or more likely the police kicked out all the floozies and now all that remains is a big empty shell with the Beatles playing in perpetual rotation. On the weekends and possibly on the weekdays there are live cover bands, most likely there will be so few people that you’ll be able to get them to play songs for you instead of the 80′s-90′s bullshit that the musicians have been robotically programmed to play. Charlie’s Bar is across from Soho on Jiangxi Rd. and is similar atmosphere to Jack’s, but they have more reasonable prices, younger crowds, music and open bar on the weekends. The highlight: Watching the owner at Lennon slowly get drunk over the course of the night and then have to deal with the police showing up for the inevitable “noise complaint” a.k.a. the we need money to support our mistresses visit. Oh and Lennon has really good Chinese food.

The Chinese Bars

If you’ve ever wondered what working in the Chinese manufacturing industry is like, just go to one of the clubs. Big, loud, smoky environments await you. The product is you; the consumer and they want to “make” as many of you as possible. Hence you’ll be rushed to a table and pushed into buying only bottles of liquor, and they would prefer if you’d order 6 packs of warm beer instead of per bottle. You might wind up with a big gay plate of fruit on your table if you’re swindled into ordering your bottle in a combo or special.

On Jiangxi Rd. across from Charlie’s bar is Soho. This place used to be more Western/Korean, but was gradually overrun by locals and morphed into a Chinese bar. The music was once almost exclusively hip-hop, now it’s mostly Asian pop tunes. Some of the dancers are dudes in tight pants and makeup, if that’s what floats your boat (it sinks mine). Actually, it should be barred as counter-revolutionary activity. Drinks are cheap; but they really don’t know how to make anything other than bar rails. The interior is clearly steampunk inspired which I think is hilarious, although it is a franchise, so the owners probably had no idea what they were doing anyway. This is still somehow the best Chinese bar in town.

Right near LeBang, is the former Babyface, which has now become SOS. This bar is the newest of the big Chinese clubs in Qingdao. Take a shipping container full of LED lights, 2 hits of acid and really cheesy tastes you’ve got the interior design of this place. Upon entering you will be hounded by staff to sit at table and order drinks. Par for the course really. Music is sporadically hip-hop, which is why I’ve been there more than once. Almost always it’s garbage technopop though. Not often is it very busy, and the crowd thins out around 11pm.

Further up HK road towards the schools, you’ve got the massive Feelings. This is a large cavern of a dancehall, buried deep under an office building where it belongs. Same shit technopoop that never changes. Same annoying waiters. But this place for some reason or another is always RAMMED with people. I’m not sure why, maybe because it was the first on the block and the club kids here have rabid brand loyalty, or maybe they put crystal meth in the drinks. They do have one of those bouncy dance floors so maybe that’s the key.

Back down HK road, across from Carrefour is Feeling VIP. I only mention this place because people undoubtedly get it confused with Feelings. As far as I know the two are not connected in anyway. If you want to go to one of them (have mercy on your soul) it’s probably Feelings and not VIP. VIP is smaller and not as busy. Although I must confess I once knew someone who would give me a free bottle of vodka every time I went, so as you can imagine, I went often.

There’s other Chinese dance clubs scattered about the city, but those are the three main ones. I wouldn’t go to other ones, simply because they are going to be exactly the same as these three. What you should check out though, are the BEER GARDENS. Yes Qingdao is the home of Tsingtao Beer (captain obvious to the rescue!), and because of that we get some of the best draft beer in China. These places aren’t that hard to find. Just look for courtyards squished in between old apartment blocks, and then look for the giant stacks of kegs and you’ll know you’ve struck oil. You grab a small table, little chairs made for midgets and get your beer on. The price? 1.5RMB for a PINT. That’s 23 cents for 500ML of beer. And this is super-fresh, came from the brewery today beer. Far cheaper than what you pay in the stores for the crappy over carbonated junk, at half the price. You can also order to go, and take your beer home in a bag. Unfortunately these places are only open from late spring to early fall. Another downside? They often close up shop before midnight.

The Korean Bars

Korean bars are a different beast altogether. Thanks to the quarter million some odd Koreans in this town, they add another dimension to the nightlife. The people are mostly students and 20 somethings. They serve a few different brands of Soju (vodka-like liquor at 20%), maybe some sake, and big bottles of Tsingtao. All will be served ice cold. The deal is that you gotta buy a couple of dishes of food depending on how many people you’re with. Good news is the food is all pretty damn good. It ranges from the obvious nachos and nuggets to the more obscure live octopus tentacles that will still be squirming in your mouth as you chew away. Keep in mind that the menus will be in Korean and Chinese without English or pictures. The best bar I can recommend is Yakibar, it’s right next to the horrible sumo sushi in HK Garden. They have good servers who speak fluent Chinese and maybe a little English, but there will usually be someone who speaks English well. They also hook it up with free fried eggs and seaweed. Pure class.

According to the media, warmer than normal temperatures in the Yellow Sea have caused a colossal bloom of algae on the coast of Qingdao. What really happened was the ibetans, aiwanese, eas urkmentanis all got together with the western powers in iananmen square to poop on China’s big party. They devised a plan to attack Qingdao’s Sailing events by creating a green tide of mutant seaweed unlike any seen before it (with the exception of the massive blooms that happen every year in the lakes and various other polluted coastlines on the mainland). As a result of making sailing through the green slime impossible, the world would lose confidence in China’s ability to sail, knowing full well that the future depends on such an important method of transportation to get all the cheap manufactured goods delivered after oil peaks out. The economy would collapse and chaos would ensue. A sock puppet named Dave would be proclaimed supreme leader via a highly annoying yet repetitive pop-music single, and he would split the country into fruit shaped fragments with assorted tropical aromas.

The government was having none of that. The CPC, the almighty power that they were, in a universe far far away, had possession of both the ring, and a direct line for the Ninja Turtles. Too bad the ring was gambled away by a party official during a game of craps against Kim Jong-il in Macao. The Ninja Turtles, knowing full well that pizza on the mainland usually ranks on the flavour charts between Old Leather Shoe and Toxic Waste couldn’t be bothered. So the only sane and logical option left was to declare war against the goo!!! And let’s be honest here, when you’ve got an army two and a half million strong, if they aren’t raping, pillaging or gold farming, they might as well be carefully placing slimy goo into bags.

A week ago from my apartment’s balcony, the ocean view looked like a grassy field in Saskatchewan. That didn’t last long. A flotilla of boats said to be in the hundreds got busy, while the army was called in to take care of the beaches. One day all the public servants in Qingdao were ordered to spend the day at the seaside picking up gunk. Then they closed down entire avenues so that the dump trucks could pretend to drive like nascars as if that was somehow different than everyday. Ahhhh… the joys of an authoritarian one party government.

Supposedly they’re carting all the slime off to the countryside. Nice. The farmers do all the work around here, the crappy jobs that no one wants for 50 bucks a month and what do we give them in return? Thousands of tons of rotting green slimy algae. Well they’ll probably thank us, because I heard they’re going to save a ton on pig feed with this little bonus from the powers that be. Green ham and eggs anyone? That reminds me, I’m off pork for the next little ever. If anyone asks, I’ve converted to Judaism. Oi Vey!

And for no particular reason other than being awesome, this guy.

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but rumor has it China is hosting the Olympics this year. And it just so happens that Qingdao gets the privilege of the sailing events. Of course, the city government wants to make sure that we live up to the title of “Top Ten Clean Cities China 2005.” Every street in the downtown core has been repaved, flowers planted, and all the prostitutes have been whisked away from the pervy foreigners to where only the local bureaucrats can access them.

While I’m looking forward to everything falling back into disarray after the Olympics are done with, there is one change I’ve noticed that I hope can withstand the eventual battering air pollution and lack of maintenance.

The western half of Qingdao consists mostly of older (pre-70s) and very old (German Colonial) architecture and urban layouts. One particular quadrant is called Taidong. Here you’ll find one of the long wide pedestrian street not unlike Nanjing Rd. in Shanghai, or Wangfujing in Beijing. Adjacent to this street is a plethora of fashion stores, hair stylists, cafes and internet bars. Harajuku it ain’t, but it’s definitely worth a check just to see what the kids are up to these days. There’s also a night market, but it closes early relative to other Asian night markets, and is more of a tourist trap/pickpocket magnet than anything else.

In one giant building on the street there’s a Wal-Mart, Pizza Hut, KFC, video arcade and a movie theatre that shows western films dubbed in Chinese. Naturally, this building ensures a steady stream of foreigners into Taidong. With this in mind the government has made sure to clean it up to whatever wacky standards are swirling around in the minds of those local bureaucrats during their 3-hour liquid lunches.

Turns out they decided to repaint all of the buildings along the main drag with murals, and some on the side streets as well. Now I’m no artiste, but I don’t think any particular mural is very striking. What is impressive is the fact that they put these up in about 2 weeks and the scale of it. In typical Chinese fashion, there’s a few random things painted in there that make you scratch your head and say WTF?!

I’ll give you this shot as reference to what it mostly looked like before…..

And after….

Other interesting things to do in Taidong:

This is the Taidong area, and it smells.

The Koreans run this part, but I just moved in, so really it’s ran.

Remnants from the Mao days.

View to the west down Xiang Gang Zhong Lu.

View towards the place where they’re going to try and do some Olympic sailing. Take note of the group of buildings in the middle. 10 condos, all empty. I can’t imagine how much it must suck to be that building developer.

Northwestern view into the chaos.

Downtown Financial district.

When the air is clean, you can see the mountains, and yes today is as clean as she gets.

Density everywhere.

Across the bay to Huangdao harbor.

One of the first and most important things you will need to do, is get your residence permit, after you get this and want to apply for a long term visa (residence, work ( Z ) and study ( X ) 6 months or more), go get a medical test. While I can understand the very simple minded logic behind this rule, it really serves no purpose. People who come to China on short term visas don’t have to get them done, with the exception of a brief questionnaire on entry, which anyone with half a brain can lie on. Assuming you were sick with something contagious and you wanted to go to China, there would be nothing stopping you. The irony is that the people who do take the tests, are at a much higher risk of getting hit by a bus/birdflu/being forced to drink the awful beer, than Chinese being at risk from them. Despite this, rules are rules and today was examination day.

I arrived at the testing complex around 10am, and wandered around trying to find which building and which reception office to go to, after a little while I found it on the second floor of a main building. They quickly rush you through some paperwork, and then point you towards the gauntlet. I should note to anyone that is going to the exam for the first time, remember to bring a copy of your passport and a passport photo, or else you will have to go down the street like I did and get it done, which cost me about 25Y which I know isn’t much, but very inconvenient and pushes you back in the overall queue. At this medical clinic, they only doing testing for foreigners for the visa, because of this, they run a very tight ship, which puts you through five different tests in about an hour.

The first test I had was the blood pressure/heartbeat thing. Very simple, the doctor/nurse/random joe checked my pulse and then proceeded to quickly scribble down some numbers and sign a bunch of parts on the paper work they have you carry around. The next test, is some type of cardiological thing, where you lie on a table with your shirt off and they stick suction cups on your boobs while a machine makes a printout that looks like an polygraph. The following test is similar, only I believe it was an ultrasound. You lie on another table and take off your shirt, the guy rubs you up with some goo and then really grinds this plastic appendage all over your torso. It was hard not to laugh, especially because while the guy was doing this to me he was in a loud conversation with his significant other on the cell phone. After that, came the blood test. You stick your arm through a window, just like a drive through, and they take out a generous portion of blood. As a bonus I got to find out my blood type is O. They do take a damn lot of blood though, and I was feeling pretty dizzy. I somehow managed to make it to the next test where they did some kind of nuclear/x-ray type analysis with a giant machine, while i was crushed against part of it in a compromising position watching the person in the control room smile and give me the thumbs up.

There were dozens of other people going through these tests at the same time as me so it was either a highly efficient or really sloppy operation they have going on. You decide.

The costs of all the tests was 313 yuan plus 10Y for the shipping deal, because they ship the results right to the school in three days instead of me picking it up. Thats a pretty good deal considering it cost me 40Y taxi to get there and back. So I wound up paying about 388Y for the whole shebang. I’m of no authority to say whether the tests, procedures and equipment will even produce any worthwhile results (I’m not holding my breath), but if it lets me stay in the country without having to make a trip to Hong Kong every two months then I’m all for it. Plus I got to play hooky because they only do the exam in the morning…nice!