Our family has been pretty nomadic over the past year. We are one of those families that can be at home almost anywhere as long as we are together. BUT I will say that after living in our new apartment for a month or two now - After a long day in a place that's foreign (no matter how much you love it), it is really nice to come home to a place that feels like us. How did we turn our Chinese apartment into our home?
There are several things you can usually expect from a Chinese apartment. Some interesting lighting (maybe disco or fun colors). It will not have an oven, clothes dryer, or central heat and ac. Usually it will not have closets or dressers (ours happens to have closets, which is great!), but usually they have a big wardrobe for clothes. You can also expect concrete walls. We were trying to hang a wall mirror recently. After going through two drill bits and several boxes of concrete nails, we realized that mirror was not going there. A chinese friend explained that was a special wall. We asked how we could tell which walls were special. He said we just needed to try to hang something. If it didn't work, it was a special wall. Of course special or not at that point the wall is messed up.
Days spent unsucessfully hanging a mirror = frustrated husband = normal day in china
*Note to people in or thinking about being in China: I definitely recommend bringing duct tape for some fix it jobs and locktite (strong blue sticky tact) for hanging. Since paint quality is often not very good, command hooks often don't do the trick. China sells great wall hooks that can support a lot of weight, but in my experience they tend to become part of the wall fixture itself. They will not come off with out taking a chunk of the wall with them.
On that note, no matter how great an apartment is it going to have its issues. It could be that your kitchen can't get hot water, the toilet can't flush paper, or the washing machine catches your bra on fire. Yes, even though our apartment is wonderful all of these things are true.
Chinese apartments typically come furnished. It makes perfect sense because many apartments, like ours, do not have elevators. Usually the rule is that if an apartment has 8 floors or higher the building must have an elevator. With that in mind, can you imagine carrying all your furniture up as many as 7 flights of stairs? Like many people I think I'd decide to leave the furniture too.
We are really fortunate to have a great landlord and great furniture in our apartment. The only thing that we had to do was make the furniture work for us. So, that meant taking things apart and switching them all around between rooms. We also had to put on our problem solving hats on to get things to meet our needs. For example, we had a honkin big desk/bookshelf combo that we wanted out of Bella's room and that wouldn't fit anywhere else. Getting rid of furniture is not usually an option since it belongs to the landlord. We decided to take the desk and bookshelf apart. Then we had to build legs for the desk portion (its not pretty, but its functional and withstood the earthquake) and do a little fix it work on bookshelf. Now the desk fits in the spare room, the bookshelf is a nice addition to our living room, and Bella has lots of space for playing. :)
Buying second hand items (like furniture, clothing, ect) is NOT part of chinese culture. It seems contradictory to a culture that rarely lets things go to waste, but perhaps it is because Chinese people usually don't get rid of things that are still useful. The idea of buying a new couch because you want a new couch or style, when the old couch is still functional would seem very strange to most here. So there just aren't as many quality used items to buy. It has caused some sticker shock on my part! Yes, when comparing buying new items in America vs. buying new items China - buying in China is almost always cheaper. But I am all about thrifty shopping, craigslist, and yardsales. I hardly ever bought new items for our home in the states, so I am used to second hand prices and having the option to buy nice gently used things cheap.
We have been really fortunate to come across several other foreigners moving from our city though. Foreigners move in and out of cities a lot and are often willing to help each other by passing, along or selling cheap, the things that they no longer need. We have been really blessed by some great hand me downs. And we are looking forward to passing along many things when we move away. Below is a changing table that a foreigner imported to our city 17 years ago! In its 17 years in our city it has been passed along through many families and babies, and now it will be used by little Emma. Getting it back to our apartment was a whole other adventure.
How did we find decor? We live in a bigger city, so we have access to a lot of things others don't. Also, with the use of TaoBao (chinese ebay) shopping has become a lot easier for everyone in China. We also love going out to big markets and looking for neat things from street vendors. You can find some really neat stuff for cheap. I bought all three of these vases and a nice coffee mug from a woman selling pottery on a blanket on the side of the road. All together I paid about $8 for all 4 items. Score!
You can buy tons of things here, the trick is figuring out where to buy it. A lot of times there isn't a one stop shop for buying everything you need. If you want to buy red and white flowers for your vase you may need to go to a particular store that sells white flowers in one part of town and then go to a different store in a different part of town for red flowers. Okay, so maybe its not quite that specific, but my point is that shopping takes time. A lot of time. Which is why it has taken us awhile to get things set up and to take pictures. But we are settled now and so happy with our home. :)
