Travelling in China

[Bamspeedy]

You can't buy guns in China except these:

Is it the lighting from the photo or do some of the pistols look very realistic? My kid came home with a gun, camouflage machine gun with a bright orange tip.

810sqft with 2 bedrooms and a study. Be interesting to see the floorplan. Those have to be some small rooms, so they have to save space somehow.

(Not drawn to scale!)

I don't know the exact size of my in-laws apartment, but it's probably close (but no study). The master bedroom had room for a bed and a dresser and wasn't cramped for walking around the bed (many bedrooms here are designed way too big, with room for multiple dressers, a king size bed, etc.). The five of us stayed in the smaller bedroom which had room for one bed and a mattress on the floor, with very little extra space (most of the time getting to the bed just had us walk on the mattress).
The kitchen was basically a thin aisle, with little counter space. Bathroom was a thin aisle too, but most of the time there is only one person in a bathroom at the same time so you don't really need it big as they are typically built over here.
Overall, it was a nice little apartment for a couple with no children. Put a table on the balcony and with the table in the dining room we had no problem with 15-20 people eating dinner in the apartment (cooking was obviously the challenging part). Another in law lived in another tower and that layout was different but since I was there only once I can't give a layout for that one.
Both apartments might technically have two balconies, but the second balcony I wouldn't even call it that. Where I stayed at there was a small area where the bathroom and kitchen meet that was outdoors (an extension from the kitchen, didn't draw it on picture, but not hard to figure out where it is), but I didn't see much there except a mop bucket. The washing machine was on the other main balcony so was used as the laundry room (and it is not connected to the drain that is a few inches away, so everyday the balcony is wet, the bathroom floor is wet, must wear sandals all the time, most annoying part of the trip except for the missed flight bit)....The other (larger) apartment's foyer could be called a balcony I guess.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

She told me that it was inexpensive. The Chinese housing market is very speculative. In this situation, the building is still under construction and is pretty centrally located. After these four towers there will be more built in the same area. I'm thinking that the price is low because they are a year out from being finished. Her current flat in a dense low rise neighborhood (7 story buildings) 4 k closer to downtown has a 25% higher value. I hope to get a link to the drawing on Thursday so I can watch it.

Keep in mind that this is in Changsha and not Beijing or Shanghai.

Ok yeah it sounds like there's a pretty big bubble. Google tells me the average wage in China is about $4.5k. I don't see how this qualifies as inexpensive. Is it a luxury condo? To me this all reads as rampant speculation (as you've pointed out) which could be a very, very bad thing for the world if the bubble bursts hard.

 

[Lexicus]

$4.5k

per year?

 

[Birdjaguar]

810sqft with 2 bedrooms and a study. Be interesting to see the floorplan. Those have to be some small rooms, so they have to save space somehow.

Gengxin sent me an image of whar I think is of the finished housing project. The four towers for sale are numbered.

On my trip I spent two nights in an apartment that was pretty similar to the one Bamspeedy drew.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Ok yeah it sounds like there's a pretty big bubble. Google tells me the average wage in China is about $4.5k. I don't see how this qualifies as inexpensive. Is it a luxury condo? To me this all reads as rampant speculation (as you've pointed out) which could be a very, very bad thing for the world if the bubble bursts hard.

If you look at the image I posted above, you can see that the complex will have a substantial shopping area/public space. I don't know how much of that is complete. I wouldn't think that Gengxin can afford a luxury flat.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Changsha Skyline looking west from Hunan University across the river.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Is it the lighting from the photo or do some of the pistols look very realistic? My kid came home with a gun, camouflage machine gun with a bright orange tip.

I took that photo at night at a street stall in Pingyao and so the lighting is not daylight. I think some of the guns were pretty realisitc, but since no one except security/police carry guns, I'm thinking that kids with guns are not considered any kind of threat.

 

[Birdjaguar]

On the bullet train from Beijing to Changsha.

 

[Bamspeedy]

per year?

$4,755 in 2014.
People earning that much aren't likely the ones that got approved to bid on these apartments.


https://qz.com/170363/the-average-c...arns-about-the-same-as-a-cleaner-in-thailand/

Chinese internet users are abuzz about an online tool that calculates how one’s annual wages compare with those around the world. And many of them aren’t happy to know how little they make compared to their peers.

...

(There is some nuance, of course, related to the purchasing power of a smaller salary in China compared with the same amount in more advanced economies, but this doesn’t get much of an airing in these debates.)

....

Using CNN’s tool, Chinese media plugged in government figures for the country’s “high income” bracket of urban disposable income (link in Chinese)—and discovered that the closest equivalent is a taxi driver in South Africa.

 

[dutchfire]

810sqft with 2 bedrooms and a study. Be interesting to see the floorplan. Those have to be some small rooms, so they have to save space somehow.

That's not so unusual, is it? Looking at social housing in NL (built in 60s/70s), it is easy to find 3 bedroom apartments that measure 90m^2. 10m^2 is reasonable for a small bedroom.

 

[Birdjaguar]

That's not so unusual, is it? Looking at social housing in NL (built in 60s/70s), it is easy to find 3 bedroom apartments that measure 90m^2. 10m^2 is reasonable for a small bedroom.

US housing normalities are pretty skewed toward larger than necessary when compared to the rest of the world. But there are still lots of folks in the US living in 14x40 doublewide trailers. Those are less than 600 sq ft.

 

[Cutlass]

That's not so unusual, is it? Looking at social housing in NL (built in 60s/70s), it is easy to find 3 bedroom apartments that measure 90m^2. 10m^2 is reasonable for a small bedroom.

It's not exceptionally small, no. But it's tight for 2 bedrooms and a study. Here there's a part of town where the base house is all under 700 sq feet. But over the years most of those houses were added on to. You don't get a lot in the way of a kitchen or bathroom in such a place. For a small family in China it probably feels pretty good. My last apartment was 1 bedroom, a little under 500sqft, and the kitchen was tight.

Americans now have gotten in the habit of building bigger.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Somewhere between Pingyao and Beijing...

 

[Birdjaguar]

The Summer Palace was my favorite part of Beijing.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

per year?

Yes.

$4,755 in 2014.
People earning that much aren't likely the ones that got approved to bid on these apartments.


https://qz.com/170363/the-average-c...arns-about-the-same-as-a-cleaner-in-thailand/

Which is why I was surprised to hear that this $100k apartment was considered 'cheap'. I acknowledge that there is going to be a pretty big wage disparity between the rural and urban populations; I just can't square that with the notion that somehow this apartment is cheap. Which is why I immediately think of a massive property value bubble and the major headaches those bring when they burst. That or wage disparity in (purportedly communist) China must make the one in the states seem like a quaint joke.

 

[Farm Boy]

$4,755 in 2014.
People earning that much aren't likely the ones that got approved to bid on these apartments.


https://qz.com/170363/the-average-c...arns-about-the-same-as-a-cleaner-in-thailand/

If my experience/discussions didn't steer me wrong, some stuff is supercheap some stuff is redicuspensive. Inexpensive food was very inexpensive. McDonalds cost about the same, so was actually pretty expensive. Apartments in cities? Bubbled the likes of which less controlled markets couldn't hope to bear. Like it's in "that just doesn't make sense" territory, until you realize that buying real estate is possibly the savings instrument that's available. Then the seas of empty and raw unfurnished real estate start to make sense. If it's left at bare concrete there isn't a lot of drywall/carpet/stuff to mildew and fall apart as quickly sitting idle and unoccupied.

China changes so fast I'm not sure that stuff is still up to date even though it seemed pretty true less than 5 years ago?

 

[Bamspeedy]

The wealth and wage disparities in China are approaching US standards.

The US has what less than 2% of people in the agricultural industry? In China it's 35%. Farmers aren't moving into these apartments. But was it rural and urban differences?

I was in a pretty blue area on this maps: (Guangdong province, the southernmost blue area)

https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/09/mapping-chinas-income-inequality/279637/

Rural, urban, didn't matter, coastal areas are much better off. But migrant workers factor into this:

So is the real divide in China between coastal and interior, rather than urban and rural? Not necessarily. Chinese economic statistics don't adequately account for internal migration, a trend involving over 100 million people each year within the country. Because each Chinese person has a hukou, a household registration document that functions as an internal passport, they are only eligible to retain social benefits in their city of origin. Therefore, those who migrate internally are essentially undocumented workers and do not count toward municipal economic statistics. As a result, Beijing's income is actually poorer than it seems, simply because so many of its poorer workers technically "live" elsewhere.

But wait:

However, the hukou alone cannot mask regional disparities in China: the sort that has driven internal migration in the first place. Why do these differences exist? Uneven investment and development is one explanation, but another significant factor is internal barriers to trade: Since the first years of reform, Communist Party officials in Beijing delegated economic policy-making to provincial and local authorities, who then established tariffs and other roadblocks that slowed trade within the country. In some cases, as this report shows, Chinese provinces have even had an easier time trading with foreign countries than with other parts of China.

 

[Farm Boy]

Sounds familiar-ish.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The wealth and wage disparities in China are approaching US standards.

The US has what less than 2% of people in the agricultural industry? In China it's 35%. Farmers aren't moving into these apartments. But was it rural and urban differences?

I was in a pretty blue area on this maps: (Guangdong province, the southernmost blue area)

https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/09/mapping-chinas-income-inequality/279637/

Rural, urban, didn't matter, coastal areas are much better off. But migrant workers factor into this:

Nice maps. Have you seen anything more recent? 2012 data is six years ago. In the past five years lots of people have moved from the country to the city.

This link tracks the urban rural change since 2006.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/278566/urban-and-rural-population-of-china/

Here is some income data for 2016. you can convert yuan to dollars by dividing by 6.3 (todays rate).

This statistic shows the per capita disposable annual income of urban households in China from 2000 to 2016. In 2016, per capita disposable incomes of urban households in China had amounted to 33,616 yuan.
Income development in China – additional information Annual per capita income in Chinese urban areas has seen a significant rise over the last two decades. Between 1995 and 2013, the annual income of urban households had increased from 4,279 to 29,547 yuan. Being an emerging economy, China faces a large number of development challenges. One of the most pressing issues is income inequality, especially income disparities between the country’s urban and rural areas. In 2013, annual per capita disposable income of urban households had been nearly three times as high as in rural areas.

Besides inequalities between rural and urban areas, a large income gap still exists between eastern coastal provinces and central regions of China. In economically advanced cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, the average per capita annual income had reached over 45,000 yuan in 2013, almost twice the average income of most cities in central and western regions of China.

Moreover, there is also a considerable pay gap between different occupational groups) in China. Topping the list were people working in financial intermediation, with an average wage of approximately 100,000 yuan in 2013. People employed in the agricultural sector had earned the least, with an average income of 25,820 yuan.

 

[dutchfire]

If my experience/discussions didn't steer me wrong, some stuff is supercheap some stuff is redicuspensive. Inexpensive food was very inexpensive. McDonalds cost about the same, so was actually pretty expensive. Apartments in cities? Bubbled the likes of which less controlled markets couldn't hope to bear. Like it's in "that just doesn't make sense" territory, until you realize that buying real estate is possibly the savings instrument that's available. Then the seas of empty and raw unfurnished real estate start to make sense. If it's left at bare concrete there isn't a lot of drywall/carpet/stuff to mildew and fall apart as quickly sitting idle and unoccupied.

China changes so fast I'm not sure that stuff is still up to date even though it seemed pretty true less than 5 years ago?

I think things that have to be imported are essentially the same price as here, whereas for example local food is extremely cheap. (This experience is also 5 years ago.) Famously, (rich/upper middle class) Chinese people visiting the Netherlands often go fashion shopping since it is cheaper here.