For the uninitiated, navigating the bureaucratic systems in China carries a certain degree of challenge. Differences in language and legal system alone will make contracts unfamiliar and intimidating for most foreign residents, increasing the risk that the average expat will sign without a full understanding of the terms of the agreement, or is left without much recourse should terms be violated. To avoid the headache of common contract problems, here’s a basic primer.

The Basics

• Language: Contract language can be chosen by both parties, meaning that you have the option of Mandarin or English. If the contract has an English and Chinese version, only the Chinese version is legally binding. This feature can leave foreigners who do not speak Chinese in a vulnerable position, as terms may differ in the Chinese language version, so if possible, ask to have the contract written in English only.
• Structure: Chinese contracts tend to use simple language and are generally shorter than in most Western legal systems.
• Key provisions: When crafting a business contract with a Chinese counterpart, make sure to include an amendment for damages with the correct business name. Preventing any confusion and clearly establishing legal penalties will save time in the event of a conflict.

Rental Agreements

• Contract length: Rental agreements are quite variable in length and highly subject to a case-by-case negotiation. While you might pay month to month, paying in installments of three to six months is more common.
• Deposit: Landlords may mandate two months’ rent in an upfront deposit. When paying your deposit, avoid paying in cash when possible. Creating a paper trail will help protect you in the event of a dispute.
• Disputes: Renters, whether foreign nationals or PRC citizens, have limited recourse in the event of a rental dispute. In recognition of the challenges faced by renters, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development rolled nationwide laws to clarify the obligations of landlords and protect the rights of tenants in spring 2017. These stipulations prohibited landlords from arbitrarily evicting their tenants, and instituted fines for raising rents prior to the end of lease agreements. Should you need to dispute your rental contract with your landlord, you can take the case to Chinese court. However, expect the process to be lengthy and unlikely to gain a favorable resolution. To save yourself the headache later on, ask for feedback from previous tenants when possible.

READ: How to Find and Rent an Apartment in Beijing: Everything You Need to Know

Work Contracts

• Length: Most contracts for foreigners in China are for one year only and are designed to align with yearly work visa renewal requirements.
• Probation and termination: Inclusion of a probationary period is common, within this timeframe either you or your employer are able to terminate the contract without penalty. When negotiating your contract, pay attention to termination terms. When possible, make sure your employer is mandated to give you at least 30 days’ notice.
• Annual leave: Under Chinese law, workers are guaranteed mandatory annual leave. For more than one year and less than 10 years of work experience in China, you are guaranteed five days of vacation in addition to national holidays. If you have worked for less than a year in China, you are not legally guaranteed any additional leave.

Want to Work for Us? The Beijinger is Hiring!

Phone Contracts

• Key players: the largest mobile companies in China are China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom. While you will receive similar service with all providers, there are a few differences worthy of note. China Mobile has the largest market share of the three, so will provide the most options for service no matter where you travel domestically. China Unicom is the only provider that offers 3G services for phones purchased outside of China. China Telecom, in contrast, will not work with any phones bought internationally.
• Getting service: The most common option for foreigners purchasing phones in China is to buy a pre-paid SIM card with a set amount of data and minutes and then top up as needed. If you will be in China for a longer period, monthly service contracts (referred to as “set meals,” or 包月套餐 bāoyuè tàocān in Mandarin) will automatically deduct funds for a set number of minutes and data per month.
• Location: Whenever you purchase your SIM card determines your location restrictions. Although your phone will work in other parts of China, you may need to purchase additional data when traveling domestically.

READ: Everything You Need to Know About How to Get the Elusive Chinese Green Card

Image: talkingconstruction.com

Moving house is always a stressful time. Moving house in a foreign country however can lead you to the brink of insanity, heightening your levels of anxiety, and leaving you with a sense of utter helplessness. Add a baby, a disgruntled landlord, and incompetent agents, and you’ve got yourself a whirlwind of taxing unease.

A constant worry for expats living in Beijing is renting a home, particularly for families trying to negotiate their way through the concrete jungle of real estate. What is the best location? Where can you get value for money? Are there adequate amenities in the vicinity of your apartment or house? What about your landlord’s disposition with foreigners? Who will communicate with you? Will it be possible to communicate directly at all? These and more carry you into an abyss of uncertainty about whether or not you are making the right choices.

When approaching the beautifully laid-out compound of Upper East Side, Lido, I was seven months pregnant and ready to nest. I instantly fell in love with the neighborhood and was even more set on occupying a spacious two-bedroom, with access to a roof terrace, when I waddled into the real estate agency’s office and spoke to English-speaking staff who offered a parched pregnant lady an ice cold paper cup of water.

Both looks and words can be deceiving. The can-do attitude and candid approach of the agent, the sturdy and somewhat staunch proprietor, led me to believe that all was above board. How could anything go wrong? They specialize in “rental and sales of high-end apartments and villas in Lido,” and on their website provide you with glossy assurances, “We aim to win your trust with sincerity and get your recognition with great efforts. We will always be here, ready to serve you.” Surely they would only have the very best properties and even better landlords on their books. I was wrong.

After meeting the landlord, there were signs that not all was well. He seemed disappointed upon arrival when we all turned up for the handover of the apartment, and both my husband and I felt that for one reason or another we weren’t quite what he was expecting. Broken agreements, faulty items in the home, repaired and replaced large purchases, and a tiring back-and-forth WeChat conversation over the course of the first month all ensued, and was the start of disastrous things to come.

The apartment hadn’t been serviced in a while and my husband and I found items dating back to as early as 2008. We agreed to replace the sofa and the fridge, re-grout all the tiles in the home, and replace the pipes under the sink on the condition that those items from the moment of purchase belonged to our family. Inventory amended, agreement made, and we all thought we could now breathe.

Fast-forward one year later. My husband is at work and I’m packing up my home with my 9-month-old baby in tow. The large purchases we’ve made have been successfully sold, and although we decided to leave a year earlier than planned, we gave the required notice, forfeited our deposit, and informed the agency. This was somewhat a challenge as just eight weeks into our signed contract the real estate agent had blocked us on WeChat and refused to deal with the most basic of requirements; which doesn’t really mirror the promises made on their website to “serve” clients with their “expertise” and “sincerity.” Further down the rabbit hole we went.

The landlord refused to grant us a permit to clear our things from the compound, stating that the sofa that had now been sold was his. Our personal intermediary agent and my husband and I explained that this was not legal and we had every right to remove our belongings.

A moving company came, and while bringing down our things, freighting Gestapo-style antics began. With my baby in my arms and my ayi by my side, up to six security men surrounded us, one tried to physically stop me from accessing the gate to leave the compound and the belligerent proprietor from the agency turned up to film the struggle. The offense team of intimidators spoke no English, and what followed was one of the most stressful moments I’ve ever encountered while living in China.

We spent seven hours trying to negotiate our way off the sidewalk. I called the police, who left without helping to resolve the matter, and no one took a statement from me. All our things were packed in the back of a van, my baby’s diaper and clothing had to be changed, and the bottle we had prepared for his trip to our new home was already demolished.The landlord on top of our deposit wanted to extort another RMB 5,000 from us. He got his goons to surround the truck and refused to let us leave. Although having a further two weeks to move out and arrange an official handover, the boss stood by, creating a scene and refusing to acknowledge that what was developing was utterly atrocious.

Our landlord was able to rally a team of bullies made up of members of compound staff I had developed friendships with to literally spy on us and circumvent our attempts to do what we had every right to do. In the end, the needs of our child took precedence, and after much debate, we handed over RMB 1,000 and went on our way. In the end it wasn’t about money but about face. The landlord and his partner-in-crime, were not going to leave without some kind of signifier that they had come out of this situation on top.

This kind of experience raises grave concerns about the reality of the world of tenancy agreements, contracts, and policing of expats in Beijing. The rights of expat tenants is a real area of concern, marginally regulated, with little or no security attached to the signing of any arrangement or settlement. After sharing this experience with friends, I’ve been made aware that this same agency has been the common denominator in other instances of breaches of contract and poorly handled grievances.

If there are telltale signs at the beginning that you’re dealing with charlatans when renting a property, go with your instincts and move on. Understand that when contracts go wrong, little will swing in your favor, so limit the kind of arrangements you make to replace furniture and other items, and refrain from agreeing to the amendment of a contract that already will likely favor the landlord should things go wrong. Also, be wary of real estate agents who market themselves as foreign-friendly; they may not be able to back up their talk with a walk.

Photos: Pixabay

One of the most annoying frustrations about life in China when I first moved to Beijing was that electricity needed to be pre-loaded on to our house meter before usage. I understand this is a better control measure than an unending supply that just runs, especially in a city with millions of people who migrate or who want to save money, but inconvenient for many expats, nonetheless.

In the middle of my first winter, the electricity stopped in the middle of the night, and we had no idea what was wrong. Our landlord had initially put electricity on the meter, which we paid her for, but we were clueless about the process of recharging the meter. It’s one of those things that none of your re-settlers know that you don’t know, since they’ve never lived out of China.

I don’t know why we panicked the first time the juice was cut, but we did. We called one of our friends and he got up in the middle of the night to add more money to our meter. As expats from the South in the US, we felt incredibly embarrassed because it’s expected that you “grow up” in our culture. Responsible people can take care of things for themselves, or pull themselves up by “their own bootstraps.” I typically didn’t like to ask for help, and especially not for things I should be able to do on my own.

I was so happy when I learned how to use Alipay to charge money to our electricity, though I did need a friend to help set it up. This prevented almost all further problems not including the instances when the electricity shut off before I had expected, and then in turn shut down our router and Internet. Since I didn’t have data on my phone at the time, I had to ride my bike to school to use the Internet.

I became obsessed with making sure our electricity was always charged – even getting up in the middle of the night due to anxiety. I didn’t want to be stuck with the electricity off during a time when the neighborhood electricity office was also closed.

After we moved to a different apartment, I continued to utilize Alipay to pay for our electricity. I was really proud of myself for noticing one night that we only had RMB 300 and that I needed to put on enough for the next season. We had a big apartment and guests over often, so I guessed RMB 2,000 would be more than enough to last us for a while.

I added the RMB 2,000 to my account and had put it out of my mind until one night the electricity cut off in the middle of the night. Our guests at the time woke up along with us, and I set up a WIFI hotspot using their phone since I still didn’t have data (I finally do, by the way). I added another RMB 2,000, in a bit of shock that it ran out so fast, and went back to sleep since sometimes the system takes a while to adjust.

When I woke up, the electricity still hadn’t been adjusted. I felt sick to my stomach that so much money had somehow not ended up on our meter.

After some investigation, I remembered I had to make a separate house account on Alipay to pay for my new apartment’s electricity since it was not as easy as simply removing our old apartment from the account.

Our friends stepped in and immediately contacted the electricity company to see what could be done. Essentially, nothing. The money was already charged to the account, and they would need permission from the owners of the meter to take money off.

Our friends then called our landlord, who we thought would be reasonable, as we had separated on peaceful terms. Surprisingly, her response was that it was our fault, and that it’s major trouble for her to give us this money back, but we could go ask the people in the apartment.

Our friends took my husband and went back to the old apartment. No one answered, and we were never able to get in contact with them.

Finally, a bold friend called the electricity company. The woman at the electricity company told us every time she had ever contacted the owners of meters in this sort of case, the party who had come into the money unfairly would usually return the money. They completely understood. The mobile apps are convenient, but accidents happen. She was shocked to hear our landlord refused.

Our bold friend then contacted a lawyer. The lawyer told us that with a fapiao from the electricity company and clearly establishing that this was a former landlord, we should sue the landlord since there was no reason for her to keep this large amount of money from us.

At the pinnacle of the conflict, my bold friend told her he was going to sue her in our name, and she yelled back, “You’ll never get a cent out of me!”

Our circle of friends, all Chinese, were absolutely furious to hear that this was happening in their country and felt that such injustices were not acceptable. They said they thought instances like these contributed to the reason “everyone” dislikes landlords. They called her crooked and a shame. I was just embarrassed and wanted to hide in a hole. If only I had humbled myself to have someone help me with the Alipay, this never would have happened.

Since the old apartment contract was in my husband’s name, he had to go through the process of appearing in court, which was kind of like a bank with judges sitting behind windows. Those with complaints or small cases would take a number and then wait their turn to explain the problem.

The judge who saw my husband and friend said it was a simple case. The landlord clearly needed to return the money. Eventually the judge required her to come in person and then required her to pay for both the accidentally added money and then an additional RMB 2,000 as part of the settlement. She went on a payment plan, which is hilarious, considering she was very wealthy with a mansion in the north.

My misconception of a lawless, scam-filled China was corrected. Admittedly we succeeded because we had awesome Chinese friends willing to bear with us through the process. Of course, there was also the fapiao to prove that it was actually our money, and our landlord couldn’t prove we owed her money (since we didn’t). If anything this process made me realize if I wanted to be self-sufficient in China, I would need to learn to read the language, not just fumble through speaking it.

Photo: Flickr

More stories by this author here.
Email: vanessajencks@truerun.com
Twitter: @vanessa_jencks
WeChat: vanessajencks

Dear Landlord,

Hi, it’s me. You know, that guy who for the past ten months made sure your apartment remained in good working order and even did a few home improvements. That’s right, your tenant. It’s been almost a year and it’s time for your annual review. I know you were not expecting one, but I think you need one and I really don’t mind.

Back in August, you mentioned some things that I took to heart: that you are a good landlord, you wanted our family to live well in your apartment, and that you had no intention of selling. Since your place fit our pressing needs, we inked the contract and took you at your word.  As you may recall, our previous landlord sold the place out from under us, as did the two before that. Unfortunately, you did not seem to appreciate that two years does not equal 10 months.  I’m afraid in the math department, you need some work.

Of course, it is well within your right to sell your property and I do not begrudge you that. I think we can all agree that the decent thing to do would be to show your renters some curtsey and discuss the matter with them first. No, we wouldn’t buy the place, but you might have asked. Either way, a bit of a heads up would have been nice. As I hope you can now appreciate, showing up at our doorstep on a Saturday morning and announcing your intent to sell with a half-dozen real-estate agents in your wake expecting to come in and take photos unannounced, that was…well…it made you look like an ass. I’m afraid in the not-acting-like-a-douche department, you need a lot of improvement.

Finally, your attempt to play this off as some trivial misunderstanding is frankly insulting. When I review your reassurances from last summer, what is clear to me is that you only care about three things right now – money, money, money. So be it, this is, after all, your place.. However, for the sake of the rest of humanity, I suggest that you quit the landlord business. There is too much improvement to be done in this department and we feel your talents, such as they are, must make you better suited to more isolated work. You know, one where you don’t actually interact with people.

Note: I’ll be pointing out to any potential buyers just which “home improvements” I’ll be ripping out before I go. Hey look, I’ve already got my crowbar.

Photo courtesy of HomeSpot HQ (flickr)

Since moving to Beijing in 2008, the gods of housing have decreed it necessary for us to move four times. Although moving provides a convenient time to reconsider what one owns in life and what should be sold or given away to an excellent charity such as Roundabout, the act of moving sort of sucks. Making the best of a bad situation, each time we moved we chose more spacious accommodations to make room for our increasing family. At present, we live in a 175sq meter apartment with three bedrooms, an office, and two bathrooms. It is not the nicest place we have rented, but it is the most spacious.

In the past, location and size of the apartment always trumped other factors. We looked hard and negotiated harder to stay within our set budget, but the ever swelling price of all things Beijing-based is threatening our financial capacity to remain in the city and rent is a major factor in that equation. We reached the point where I expected our next move would force us out of Beijing, but now I’m not so sure.

Over the winter holiday, my daughter visited the home of a friend and I tagged along to see where she lives and chat with the parents. The family is a happy one with four kids, working parents, and a bustling ayi to help out. It is a common scene among expatriate families in Beijing, with the exception of their home. They live at the top of a six-story walk-up in a two-bedroom home. Since they bought their 70sq meter home years ago, they simply continued to make it work with each new child that arrived. The result is a lovely family in an apartment that is packed in tight and filled with evidence of their love and affection as a family.

All of this got me thinking about our own home. When you really think about it, there is a great deal of empty space the bigger an apartment gets. Sure, you can walk, run, or even dance on empty floor space, but most of the time, it is a place for someone to sweep and mop. Reduce the space, save some money, and there is less cleaning work to do too. Another great thing about down-sizing is that it requires more thought about what to keep. Unfortunately, the more space we have, the greater the chance that we will simply hold on to something we don’t really need. Having moved four times in recent years, I can attest to the ever-growing size of the moving trucks too.

Rather than wait until we are forced to move again, I’m already looking at our home with an eye for minimizing possessions and maximizing the use of space. Our living room already sports a slide, perhaps I can build in a swing, some monkey bars, and a sandbox too. I’m sure the kids won’t mind.

As I mentioned two weeks ago here, we’ve been in the market for a new home in the Wangjing area (motto: You can never have too much KFC). As promised, we did find a place in the complex we had settled on and even a full day earlier than I predicted. However, this time the process has left an acrid taste in my mouth and I don’t think the apartment we settled on is quite perfect. It will do, comfortably so – low hanging living room chandelier aside. No, the distaste that I’m left with isn’t so much about the actual apartment or even the process of looking for a place, unpleasant as that may be, it’s the amount of deceit that Savvy and I picked up on this time around.

I don’t expect everyone to be a paragon of virtue, but when we started noticing that the majority of people in the housing industry appeared to be massaging reality, it does give me pause and wonder if humanity had reached some sort of low-tide in the department of character and credibility. For example, this time around, one suggestion we had received was to check with online listings posted directly by owners. Savvy contacted a few and in each instance the person who called us back was a real estate agent who had posted the actual listing. Why? One explained that it was a simple marketing ploy to drum up business. I guess that could be seen as enterprising to some, if not a little disingenuous.

There was the obvious bait-and-switch where apartment sizes are listed at a given price but when the agent arranges to show you around, those better-priced units have just been rented out. Or what was promised as fully furnished is actually empty and the landlord wants more to furnish it. Both could seem like honest situations, except we worked with at least half a dozen different agents this time (I lost count) and when patterns start to emerge across different companies and agents, I’m fairly good at reading the writing on the wall.

Yet it was the seemingly inane lies that make me the most suspicious of the entire Beijing housing industry. For whatever reason, we began to favor one agent and his approach. He seemed candid and more cognizant of what we were actually looking for in an apartment. He also had a way of making it sound like he knew the landlords we were introduced too. More than once, he said a landlord was an old client that he had helped before. Subtle things like that added an air of credibility and made me feel more comfortable with him. Which was great, until Savvy overheard him tell one landlord who inquired as to how we had become his clients that we were old customers whom he had helped find a home before. That was news to me. Add liar, liar pants on fire! to the list of phrases I need to memorize in Chinese.

It doesn’t seem like that long ago when my little family felt the strain of the global economic crisis. In spring 2009, our then landlord informed us that we would have to move since he needed to sell the apartment and get his money back into South Korea where he lived. It actually worked out in our favor, as we were able to rent a larger, more nicely furnished apartment that was closer to Savvy’s office and more centrally located in Wangjing.

We like our complex and the location, but the landlord told us when we moved in that the apartment was for his daughter once she graduated from the university on the other side of town. No problem, thought I. That could take ages what with graduate school and a doctoral program. What young lady doesn’t want to study for a decade these days? Well, for one, the landlord’s daughter. Seems she only needed a brief two years to graduate, find a job, and be ready for her well looked after home in the heart of Wangjing. So, we’re on the hunt for a new apartment but, oh, the times have changed.

The biggest change? Greed. Or insanity. It must be one of those because I don’t know what else would cause the rent for the very same apartment we are living in now to increase by 50 percent in a year. Home prices in Wangjing are way up, but you still can’t find a cab driver that knows the neighborhood.

Once again we have found a complex that we like that is closer to Savvy’s office and Reina’s school (just across the street), so we plan to do our part to make Beijing a little bit greener and substituting cabs for walking. The other good news is that we will find the perfect place on Wednesday of next week. I know this because past experience has taught me that the last place I look at is always the perfect one for us and Wednesday is the last day I’ve allotted for apartment hunting. It’s nice to know our search is almost over. Now if I could just locate a cab.

A China Daily article cites a report by the Golden Keys real estate agency that claims the "ratio of home price to income in Beijing is now 27 to 1, five times the international average."

The ratio was based on government statistics and calculated using the average annual income of a family with two wage earners in Beijing (approx. RMB 60,000) measured against the RMB 3.04 million (!) that is now the purported average cost of an apartment in the capital.

Ever the optimists, the National Statistics Bureau refutes the ratio, claiming that after "usage costs like taxes, maintenance, expenses, which are much lower in China" are factored in, the ratio should be much lower – around “three to six times” a family’s annual income, based on "international standards."

What the article does not explain is exactly how much lower “taxes, maintenances and expenses” are here in China and precisely how they affect the overall ratio (but I’ll grant that in general, utility costs and even the cost of furbishing a new apartment is indeed lower than in most developed countries).

In any case, all this is hardly reassuring. Simply put, the reported RMB 3.04 million average cost of an apartment in Beijing (which still seems surprisingly high to me) just goes to show that there is still a glut of overpriced housing here in the capital and not enough apartments available on the lower end. And what’s even more certain is that there remain far more lower income families than not.

Meanwhile alibaba.com reports housing prices have reached their highest levels since 2007 and a recent decline in housing sales in the latter part of August is due to "buyers waiting for housing prices to drop." Despite the buyer uncertainty, Chinastakes.com warns "a large number of developers are still purchasing land and arranging finance, preparing for a new round of increases, but prices could also fall depending on the government’s credit policy" – a trend the report deems "crazy" on the part of the developers.

All told, this is encouraging news for prospective homebuyers as housing prices could very well drop in the coming months. But how this bodes for the long-term stability of the Chinese economy could be a far different story – especially if the freewheeling lending continues and real estate developers start defaulting en masse on their loans (sound familiar?) …