Pre-China Checklist, Part II: Prepare for takeoff tagged: , , ,

Pre-China Checklist, Part II: Prepare for takeoff

Posted by Obio Ntia in China Living, Guest Bloggers, Travel, Work

I’m Moving to China tomorrow!   My recent 15-point task list of things to do before I depart the US is currently fourteen checks complete.  In the first part of my pre-departure series, I highlighted ways to make China feel more like home.  Now I’ll focus on some general visa and housing preparations you should make before you move.

Get Your Visa, a.k.a Follow the Rules to the Letter

My transition process has been smooth so far.  Two weeks ago, my workplace mailed my Alien Employment License  with my Z-visa invitation letter in a DHL package that arrived the next day.  Thank goodness for DHL.  I promptly took the docs along with my completed visa application forms and paid my $160 to the Chinese Consulate in New York for next-day pick up.

Although I arrived at the consulate at 7:15 AM, I was not surprised to encounter six earlier birds perched on the building’s stairs and window ledges waiting for 9 o’clock to come.  It was going to be a long wait so I struck up a conversation with the gentleman who happened to share a window ledge with me .  He often visits Keqiao in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province to source textiles for his family import-export business.  After this new buddy and I had been chatting for over an hour, the security officer finally opened the doors of the consulate so we on the long line  of visa applicants could enter the building.  When the officer checked our paperwork at the door, the textiles businessman was turned away because he did not follow the consulate’s newest directions.   This made for a slightly uncomfortable goodbye.

The most recent policy posted online for the Chinese Consulate in New York (note that each location has their own forms and procedures, so check with yours) requires each person applying for a visa to arrive with the June 2011 edition of the Visa Application Form already printed and completed.   The  consulate no longer allows people to obtain and fill out applications on-site and, although he had showed up empty-handed and applied that way in the past, things changed and he should have checked the website for policy updates.  The lesson here is to follow the rules to the letter.  If you’re Moving to China, you will save yourself some headaches if you make it standard practice to read, understand and adhere to the myriad rules and regulations that will apply to you as a laowai (foreigner).  Get used to it.

Develop a Housing Gameplan

For the most part, the visa process is straightforward if you play by the rules.  And it goes without saying that your own checklist probably includes booking a flight of some sort and you already have the know-how required to manage air travel.  Before moving to China, however, you should at least formulate  a good idea of where you are going to live and how you are going to acquire the place.   You can stay in temporary accommodations until you secure your own place, but pre-departure housing research can significantly inform your hunt.Finding an apartment in a city of 19 million people like Shanghai is daunting.  Doing so from overseas can just seem like a cruel joke.   Add on any potential language barriers and I wouldn’t fault anyone for reevaluating their life choices that led them to plan a relocation to the Middle Kingdom in the first place.   One way to make it more manageable is to break down your new city into its districts then into neighborhoods then residential communities and start your search based on targeted locations.  Once  you combine your desired districts and neighborhoods with your own prioritized list of requirements you will begin to take control of the process.

To actually find available housing, your main choices for research may be real estate agents, English-language apartment websites, Chinese-language apartment websites and on-the-ground sources.  I have not enlisted the services of a real estate agent from overseas, so I have no valuable comments on going that route before you move.  As far as apartment websites go, you may find that the English-language sites do not come close to listing the number of apartments available that the Chinese-language sites do.  Also, the English sites–whose visitors are mainly expats–tend to list apartments with much higher rents than the Chinese sites.   So, try to visit the Chinese sites (if necessary, with the help of a Chinese reader or with translation software) for more variety, more choices, and more bang for your yuan.

Your most fruitful resource may be in on-the-ground sources, though.  Even the Chinese sites do not list everything that’s available.   Additionally, the apartment pictures can be models; the descriptions, vague and/or exaggerated.  If you have anyone willing to view some places for you and take pictures, at least you know the information is from a more trusted source.  So, if your employer, for instance, offers any kind of apartment hunting assistance, then take it.  Having contacts over there to help with the legwork might just result in you being able to waltz right into a perfect pad.

Do you have any stories to share about your search for housing in China or on getting a visa?   Share your thoughts in the comment section.

Obio is an international educator who writes sometimes.  He is moving to Ningbo.