The view from the seventeenth floor

November 2019: Renting an affordable flat is a new experience

I was picked up from the airport by a new friend from the school I work for. I got on the plane in Newcastle a factory worker and 30 hours later arrived in Dalian an English teacher. A very tired English teacher. She took me straight to a phone shop where I got a Chinese SIM card in my battered old Nokia phone. It later cost £10 to fix the screen I smashed in Prague during CELTA whereas a guy in Durham offered to charge me £90. After the phone shop I was taken to the office to meet the team, although doing this straight after travelling across half the planet was a bit much!

I stayed a few nights at a hotel called Home Inn, all paid for by the school. Not the Ritz but try getting that off Adecco. A shower and a bed is all I need. A few days later I got shown three flats available for rent. The first one had a dodgy balcony without a door handle on the outside of the door. I don't fancy being stuck out there so gave that one a miss. The second one was nothing more than a small single room with a little kitchen in one corner and a bed in the other. New and clean but very small. It was in a recently built tower called Guohe Jinli and high up with a birds eye view of the city. I could see for miles stretching out across the city to the military shipyards and the tower blocks on the other side of the bay. The third flat is the one I chose; in the same Guohe Jinli building. It’s half way up on floor seventeen, if we call what we call in England the ground floor the first floor, and is similar to the second flat but with a bedroom to the side instead of being one little pod without any inner doors. This flat costs 3000RMB (£330) per month. Can you imagine what's available in England for £330? Even in the darkest depths of Sunderland you can't rent for as low as £330. A crack den would cost at least £400.

So I've managed to get better digs than I ever had back in England and without having to pay an arm and a leg. Underfloor heating in winter, air-con for summer. A small kitchen with an electric hob. English style ovens are hard to find. Plenty of furniture included and a TV from the landlord. Or more likely from the last occupant who didn't fancy carting it back to South Africa. The view from the seventeenth floor looks out over part of residential Dalian, a city I still don't know well enough a year later. A furniture mall is opposite and there's more towers old and new with restaurants here and there. Behind them are the docks then on the other shore more towers. Living in a city of this size I've realised just how rural my home village of Browney in County Durham is. Instead of beautiful greenery through my window there’s now a concrete jungle full of spit and horrific driving standards. Although I'm yet to see a gypsy with a horse and buggy block the rush hour traffic. So, renting in Dalian is very affordable. As for bills there's rent and that's it. Electric is so cheap compared to England it's not really a bill. It's the price of a big coffee from Starbucks rather than four new tyres and a fucking leg. Internet was 2000RMB (£220) for a year and it's fast by Chinese standards. Fast and reliable enough to give me and the kids no problems when events forced us to teach online. If only England was so affordable.