This whole house hunting trip started off a little rough... a lot rough you might even say. Intel's relocation folks are going through some transitions, training some new people, and the logisitics of this trip were not very well organized... That's the politically correct, everything turned out OK version of how things went. The Joe's lost his patience version involved flaming e-mail, escalations to managers, and at least a half a dozen 4 letter words.
But as I mentioned, it worked out jut fine. For those who are interested, here is a little day by day sumarry of our house hunting adventure in Shanghai. I limited the pictures to just a couple from the hotel and a couple of the school we picked for Olivia. I posted pictures of the apartment we chose in the next post on my Blog.
Sunday, 03 June
Steph and I both flew into Shanghai - me from Frankfurt, Germany and Steph from Portland, Oregon. It worked out really well - my flight was about 30 minutes late, and hers was about 30 minutes early, so we arrived at the Shanghai Pudong Airport within an hour of each other.
We arrived at the hotel to find that Intel had booked us into the new wing of the Shangri-La Pudong Hotel, and that we were upgraded to what they call their 'Bund View Room'. This was totally by accident, as Intel (if you saw my previous post about business travel) is all about the cheapest rate they can get... And as a shareholder, I have no issues with that policy! Anyhow, the room was great - floor to ceiling windows with views over the river and of the Bund... Here are a couple of pictures - not nearly as impressive in these pictures as in real life, and not as impressive during the day as at night.
Monday, 04 June
This was our first day to actually get out and look at houses and schools. Unfortunately, due to the screw ups by the Intel relocation people, the China Relo Company was really scrambling to get us an agenda put together. The first day we were focused on Pudong (the East side of the river - newer, cleaner and sometimes considered 'the suburbs')... we saw a 4 different schools and 3-4 different places to live. Unfortunately, none of these schools actually had availability. Since we had both flown in just the night before, we were pretty beat by the end of the day.
Tuesday, 05 June
This day was also focused on the Pudong side of the river. We finally saw some schools with availability, and saw some pretty beautiful houses - unfortunately, these houses were all well outside of the center of the city.
During lunch on Wednesday, Steph saw an apartment complex with a few towers that faced the area we were eating, and asked the relo consultant about them. The relo consultant said, 'oh, that is Green Court, they are really popular, and there are rarely opennings'. Steph and I learned our first lesson in dealing with things in China - you just have to keep asking! We said we would like to take a look. They showed us an apartment that was open, but already being rented to someone else.
Dinner Tuesday night was in the Hotel. Our relo consultant explained that the Chinese food restaurant in the hotel was widely considered some of the best Chinese food in town. We went there for dinner, and learned that she was right - at least by US standards, who knows what the locals think. We had 'Mandarin Fish' (you might remember the deep fried, sweet and sour fish from the post about my last trip to Shanghai - you can check it out for the picture), as well as a couple of other dishes... They were all very good.
Wednesday, 06 June
Steph was up around 4am. Calling it 'jet lag' alone is probably not accurate. We think it was a combination of 'jet lag' and the stress of having seen all these different living situations (houses, apartment, condos) and different schools, and knowing that in a day or so we had to make a decision - and nothing really seemed 'just right' at this point.
This day was focused on the Puxi (pu-shee) side of the river - specifically Hongqiao-Gubei (hong-chow gu-bay). Puxi is 'the original expat community' so it's a little older, and more of what we thought China would be like (as compared to Pudong). It also has a very 'global feel' to it, counting among it's inhabitants expats from Germany, France, America, Korea, and many more. Steph really liked one of the schools on this side of the river, as well as the more urban vibe that came along with the Hongqiao area. I liked the area just as well, but the houses/apartments that we saw were just not as nice as the other side of the river, and not even as nice as our home in the US. Had we not started looking at places in Pudong, it might not have been such a large contrast in quality, and I likely would have been OK with it.
So at this point, we are through 3 days of looking at houses and schools and unfortunately, Steph and I are split on what we want to do. I wanted to live on the Pudong side of the river at am apartment complex called 'The Crescent', and send Olivia to Shanghai Community International School. Steph was OK with the school, but preferred another one I'll explain in a minute. Her biggest issue with 'The Crescent' is it being a new complex in Pudong, not yet filled up, it really lacked the 'community' we were hoping for. Also, it was not really within walking distance of any of the things Steph would want to get out and do during the day, meaning she would always be tied to the car and driver, or need to grab a cab (which is an adventure most of the time).
In addition to really liking the Hongqiao area of Puxi, Steph really liked the Yew Chung International School. It is built on the British Curriculum system (which is not really why Steph liked the school - just an interesting factoid... or maybe not so interesting?), and was close to the only apartment in the area that we would have considered living in - 'Windsor Place'. Steph really liked the school for the exposure to Mandarin the girls would have gotten. They teach in 70% English and 30% Mandarin, and add the Mandarin spoken on the playground and on the bus (many Mandarin speaking expats send their kids to Yew Chung to allow them to learn more or better English), and the kids could have had nearly a 50% Mandarin experience. Steph loved this idea, as Olivia really seems to enjoy new languages... I was a little more reserved. I think it's more my issues than Olivia's, but I felt like this was going to be such a big change as it was, I was concerned with how comfortable she might be in a situation where 50% of her day was in a language she did not speak. Also, the only apartment available in 'Windsor Place' was near the entrance to the compound, and near a busy road... The alternative was to live in temp housing for up to 6 weeks waiting on the next available townhouse.
Basically we were at an impasse... We continued to press the relo consultant about Green Court, asking her to have 'the office' - which was really a housing specialist named John Hu - look for places both below and above our budget. We thought if the Green Court was a good compromise, we would consider either a smaller apartment, or I would ask my management team for a slightly larger budget if it meant a place both Steph and I would be happy. Since we pressed the point, it turned out they found an apartment that we could see the next day that was just under our budget, as well as a penthouse apartment that was over our budget. We were really hoping that visiting this place would help break the stalemate.
We tried our best to put the decision facing us out of our minds for the night, and enjoy a really nice dinner. We had put together an itinerary for the next day that involved a trip to Green Court to see at least 1 apartment, and return trips to each of our favorite apartments to this point - The Crescent for me, and Windsor Place for Steph.
We had Italian food at a restaurant at the top of the Jinmao Tower called 'Cucina'. The food was very good, and the view was even better. Between the view, the food and the half bottle of wine we ordered, we were able to block out the immediacy of the decision facing us, and actually enjoy the meal and being together. While we missed the girls immensely, being alone together for 4 nights and 3 days alone hasn't happened since Olivia was born 4 years ago!
Thursday, 07 June
We started the day by visiting Green Court. We wanted to see the available apartment that was just under our budget, but we also wanted to schedule to see the larger apartment what was over our budget - just in case the smaller one didn't work, I at least had the option of asking Intel to cover a larger rent payment.
The relo company was balking at showing us the more expensive apartment, as Intel has put some pretty strict guidelines in place, forcing them to only show apartments/houses that meet the pre-defined budgets - and in most cases, I think this makes a lot of sense. Luckily for everyone, it became a non-issue after seeing the initial apartment.
The apartment is 'private owned' versus 'management owned'. To quickly explain - when a developer builds these compounds, he sells some to private owners - cash up front to the developer. Some are retained and rented out - monthly income stream to the developer. There are pros and cons to each, which I won't go into in detail, as I imagine a small minority of people have actually read this far - I just scanned the post to this point, and it is impossibly long - all I will say, is that to this point, the 'private owner' places we looked all were all very bad.
The apartment's layout is 85% what we were looking for. The kitchen is it's own separate room, as opposed to being open to a dining area, and it has some funky bar area, that resembles a 'marble receptionist area' - but other than that, it met both Stephanie and my expectations. The owner had partially furnished it, since she had lived there herself and just moved to a new home, and she wanted to wait to furnish it with whatever the new renters wanted. We got a chance to meet her, and she walked us through the apartment. As we walked through it, we looked at each other and knew - this was the place. Not because it was amazingly nice, or 'exactly what we were looking for', but because we knew it was a good compromise.
We told the owner on the spot, we would take it. There was a matter of our documenting everything that we needed/wanted from a furnishing standpoint, and her agreeing to make those purchases, but we wanted to make sure she agreed to negotiate with us on these points rather than rent to someone else (there was another couple finishing up their walk through as we got there).
So, the place is just a bit over 3000 square feet, with 4 bedrooms (or 3 bedrooms and a study), and 3 bathrooms. The apartment is on the 2nd floor of a 13 story building, and there are only 2 apartments per floor. It looks out on the central courtyard, complete with playground, sandbox, and pond/stream. The owner made a point of explaining 3-4 times that per 'feng shui' (not sure I spelled that right) being able to see water from the apartment is very good - that it brings good fortune, symbolizing wealth 'flowing' into your house. Not that either of us are big into eastern philosophy, but we thought 'can't hurt'.
The other funny thing about the owner is that she is absolutely in love with her hardwood floors. She had them installed when she and her family bought the place, and she made a point of telling us that she was excited to know the renters, and she knew she could trust her floors with us. We told her up front we had 2 little kids - so we expect at some point she will remember this and not feel so great about it! She also told us that she would be sending her 'ayi' (eye-ee) - which is like a maid or nanny - to train us, or our ayi, on how to care for the floors properly! It was really funny.
The complex is located in the Jinqiao (gin-chow) area of Pudong. Jinqiao is the newer version of Hongqiao-Gubei. Many expats live in the area, and the apartment complex is within walking distance of shops, restaurants and supermarkets that stock some imported western goods and speak resonable amounts of English.
We also settled on a school for Olivia. She will be going to SCIS - Shanghai Community International School. It's about 20 minutes away from the apartment, kind of on my way to work, and since Mom is traumatized about putting our little 4 year old on the bus, I'll likely be dropping Olivia off for the first week or so.
As desperate as we felt on Wednesday, we were so happy to find the apartment and make a final decision on school for Olivia. It was a hard week, but we were really relieved.
We finished up our day on Thursday by going out to dinner with some other expats from Intel-Oregon, Dwayne and Dayna Canfield. They are just finishing up 2 years in Shanghai and have 1 left to go. As it turns out they also live in Green Court, just 2 buildings away from ours! That was fun to find out. We had a great dinner and were able to pump them for information on some of our other 'moving to Shanghai' questions.
Friday, 08 June
We woke up after a great night's sleep to pack and head back home. I checked my e-mail quick and saw a message from the China relo company explaining that the owner had agreed to all of the conditions that we submitted, and they were hammering out the last details on the contract. That was truly a great way to end a long and difficult week!
If you have made it this far - bless you, you are a saint... or really, really bored :)
We plan on moving to Shanghai right around August 1. We will be accepting any and all visitors starting in the fall - don't come in August, the heat is brutal, and we'll still be a mess!
Check out the next post for some pictures of the apartment... it's very time consuming to move them down here in the post.
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