Discriminated against foreigners by Shanghai leaders, meeting the conditions for settlement but not giving me the qualification to stay in Shanghai
Narrator: Mr. Meng, 29 years old, engineer
Expected place of settlement: Shanghai
After graduating with a master’s degree, I came to Shanghai to work.
In that year, the house price in Puxi was about 10,000, and my family had the intention to make a down payment and let me buy a house, but I still thought that the house price was too high and would definitely fall down later.
Now that I think about it, it was very easy to buy a house and settle down.
In the following years, housing prices soared and it became more and more difficult to settle down, and a hukou book with the word “Shanghai” was as precious as gold.
In 2016, in order to get a job in exchange for a hukou, I took the subway from Pudong to Songjiang for two hours every day, a four-hour round trip, and I was almost sick on Line 2 and Line 9.
Every day when I heard the subway announcer say “Century Avenue, here it is”, I thought she was reminding me that my end was coming.
During that time I talked to a Shanghai girl who lives in Songjiang, her parents asked me to buy a suite in Songjiang before agreeing to the marriage.
But my social security was broken, so I was not eligible to buy a house, and I had to get a Shanghai hukou to buy a house.
At that time, HR replied to me that I already had the conditions for applying for a household registration as stipulated by the unit, but the old leader was transferred and now I was waiting for the new leader to come and sign.
During that time, I would take part-time jobs and run drips on weekends to save more money to buy a house. With the money given by my family, I was able to pay a down payment of more than one million yuan for a house with a total price of more than four million yuan, located in the suburbs of Shanghai.
My partner, who is very considerate of me, said she could accept a smaller and farther house and didn’t want me to spend all my money on the house, which would put me under a lot of pressure. I can tell that she truly loves me. If anything, I had 10,000 reasons to leave Shanghai, but as long as I had her, I didn’t want to leave Shanghai.
One working day, I approached HR to fill out the application form for settling in. As a result, the new leader said he needed to observe me for a while and see my performance.
Our department is small, including the leader, there are only 6 people. Except me, all of them are local people in Shanghai. After the new leader came, I had less and less to do, and she assigned me to others.
I felt that I was isolated. Sometimes in meetings, the leader used Shanghainese to set up the work, which I half understood and seemed to understand, resulting in a very passive work. I had to secretly record it on my phone and play it to my partner at home, so she could translate it.
Later, I learned from other department employees that this leader looked down on foreigners. From some daily contacts, I can also see. I could feel her discrimination at the monthly departmental dinners.
She asked me some things about my hometown at the dinner table, and then couldn’t help but compare it with Shanghai.
For example, she often asked me, Shanghai house prices are more than ten times the price of your Henan side, right? Foreigners in Shanghai is not easy, oh, you na considered back home felling? Back home is good!
My partner and I especially like to go to the original French Concession on weekends to see the paulownia trees. Tall and wide trees, plump and dignified. The historical buildings scattered among the trees seem to be vaguely telling the extraordinary things about the city.
Of course I want to stay here, but it’s not an easy road, and I’ve been walking for a long, long time for this page of my account book.
Sometimes I think, either forget it and go back home. But when I thought about my partner, I told myself I had to stay here.
The good news is that I heard the internal news that this leader’s ability to work is not recognized by the higher authorities, and a new leader will come soon, so I don’t know if he will sign for me.
I gave up my Beijing account, maybe I am still young and have the time and money to dream
Narrator: Yuzu, 25 years old, media person
Expected place to settle: Beijing
I am a fresh graduate in 2020, majoring in journalism, and I received an offer with a hukou, which may seem “satisfying” to others, but I refused it.
For me, it’s best if I can arrange a hukou, but it doesn’t matter if I can’t. Salary, job content and prospects are the most important parts for me.
With this in mind, I did not vote in the beginning of the Internet companies, always feel that the rate of separation is too high, it is locked in the institutions, state-owned enterprises.
However, most of these places do not organize autumn recruitment, which also led to the whole autumn I almost did not cast a resume.
But who would have thought that the epidemic came, the autumn recruitment of the Internet completely ended, the spring recruitment shrunk, and I even began to hate myself for not having voted for a few big factories and not having a guaranteed offer.
In the first half of 2020, I began to cast a resume, cast nearly 100, including some very small, and even never heard of the unit, although it does not know what the unit is, but all those who have seen the eye will be cast.
However, even so cast, received only 10 replies or less. I began to doubt myself, the school, professional are okay, also have some of the outstanding internship experience, but the results can not even get a written test opportunity.
What was the problem? I fell into reflection and self-blame, hating myself for not having more quality internships.
I finally got a job offer as a journalist in a media organization, which was in line with my expectations and I cherished it for a while.
Immediately afterwards, the unit informed me to take up an internship before signing up. I brushed up on the rental information in Beijing, and this is how I found out that a second bedroom in an old rundown apartment costs more than $3,000 ……
After the internship, I found that the situation was not as rosy as the interviewer had promised.
First of all, if you start a job, you may not be able to prepare, and most of the time you need to work overtime until the middle of the night. Secondly, there is a serious talent gap in the company, and two years of employment is considered a “senior employee”, and the staff turnover is very large.
What’s more, although I was a writer, I rarely had the opportunity to go out for interviews. I had to sit in shifts every day, editing and typesetting like a machine day after day, which was far from my expectation.
When I think about it, the interviewer said that if you want to have an account, you have to sign a contract with the company for at least 5 years.
Five years is not a long time, but not a short time. If I keep doing it, I can’t imagine myself making too much progress, and after 5 years, when I leave the company, I may not have the ability to jump ship anymore.
The only advantage of this job is the account.
But what exactly is the use of the account? Until now, I have no specific concept.
Only my mentor had told me that the hukou can solve the children’s schooling, buy a house just need, do things without having to return to the origin frequently, convenient.
But I think I am not a peaceful person, if I work for a few years and go to other cities, will this Beijing hukou still be useful?
Some of my classmates said, “If I were you, I would have signed up long ago, without hesitation,” while my boyfriend advised me to give up, tired and insecure, and my parents called me almost every day to go back to my hometown to take the civil service exam.
Almost all my friends back home are taking the civil service exam, one year can not take the exam for two years, two years can not take the exam for three years, commonplace, parents can accept.
I was so hesitant until the day I signed the contract. That day my boyfriend gave me a call, he said, “You’ve been torn for so long, it means you already have the answer, why ask others? “
That phone call was like an enlightenment. When I hung up the phone I went upstairs and told HR that I would not sign.
After the rejection, I felt more relaxed than ever – my fate was back in my own hands.
I don’t want the so-called guarantee, and I don’t want to grab one out of thin air to offset my so-called sense of anxiety.
Since I had already given up on one, I had to wait until the best one came along, and I would never waste my experience again.
It only took three months to settle in Shanghai, and the hukou eliminated my “big city wanderlust”.
Rachel, 28 years old, working in the finance industry
Place of residence: Shanghai
Shanghai has a points-based settlement policy, and the score varies from year to year. The year I settled in Shanghai, the threshold was 72 points, and I scored a low 73 points.
My undergraduate degree was from a 985 school, my graduate degree was from a 211 school, and my major in education was a bonus subject. In addition, the year I came to work in Shanghai, I entered the key financial units in Shanghai, these have helped me to finally settle down.
The competition for settling in Shanghai is very fierce, and it is not guaranteed if you pass the standard line.
I had a senior who graduated from Peking University and was 2 years older than me, but he didn’t have any awards to add to his score, so he didn’t complete. After waiting for more than two years, the unit gave him to do talent introduction, he fell down.
The returnee, salary and social security meet a certain percentage, and can also settle in Shanghai quickly. I know many international students who chose Shanghai as their first stop back home, because Shanghai’s settlement policy for returnees is more lenient.
However, it takes longer time and more documents to settle in Shanghai, and it takes half year to settle in Shanghai at the soonest.
But I was very lucky that I passed the examination in 3 months and realized the settlement, even faster than my classmates who graduated from Peking University.
I studied in Beijing for my university and graduate studies, so it was not as convenient for me to settle in Shanghai as it was for my classmates who studied here, and I came to Shanghai only because I was looking for a job in Beijing first and did not find a suitable one.
I have some students who have decided to come to Shanghai for a long time, and they started to prepare when they were studying: for example, they applied for excellent graduates.
If you apply to the school’s outstanding graduates, you can add several points, and the school will also reserve these places by default for students who want to settle in Shanghai.
I didn’t plan to come to Shanghai at first, so I missed this opportunity. Later, when I applied for extra points for settling in Shanghai, I was quite vain, but I was able to pass.
In fact, from my own observation, Shanghai’s settlement policy has loosened in recent years.
Recently Shanghai released some policies: Tsinghua, Peking University graduates can directly settle, followed by Fudan, Jiaotong University, Huashi University can also directly settle, feel that now Shanghai also has the trend of grabbing people.
I do not like the sense of wandering, but also love the life of a first-tier city. So when I had the ability to choose, I anchored to find the company that could help me settle down.
It is only when I settle down that I can buy a house and have my own home in this city.
Now I like Shanghai more and more, I like the small roads, I like the paulownia trees, and I like the fact that I finally have my own house in the city.
I landed in Shanghai, put down roots, and hope that life will blossom.
2 years of running around for household registration twin cities, just to get the children to a good school no longer as hard as I
Narrator: Xiao Ling, yoga instructor, 33 years old
Expected place of residence: Shenzhen
I graduated from junior high school to work in Shenzhen from Anhui Province, and stayed in Shenzhen for 20 years, and got married and had children to buy a house (Shenzhen to pay enough social security to buy a house).
When I first came to Shenzhen, I did a lot of work at the bottom, the most tired when standing in the assembly line for more than 10 hours, the hand only 2000 yuan less than the salary.
Later, by doing cosmetics sales, earned a lot of money and met the same junior high school graduate business husband.
Shenzhen in the early years are like me, not high education, willing to suffer young people, you can say that the bottom of Shenzhen is the struggle.
In 2014, my daughter was born, because my husband and I are not Shenzhen hukou, landing is still the rural hukou – which means that my daughter can not study in Shenzhen.
Shenzhen’s points-based admissions will first look at whether there is a deep household, whether there is property, after the local household registration of students to arrange foreign children, high points to be assigned to public schools.
After thinking about it, my father and I decided to take care of the adult’s household registration, become a Shenzhen household and then let the child move in; with a Shenzhen household + a house with a degree, the child would definitely be able to go to school.
Although Shenzhen is known as one of the best first-tier cities to settle in, and even young people to settle in the “money”, but these are for full-time students with a bachelor’s degree or more.
For our kind of education is not enough, only to go to the points settlement policy.
My husband is a salesman who drinks all the time and has a fatty liver, so the medical examination is a risk.
After discussion, the family decided to send me to become a household settlement.
Points to meet the 100 points can be settled.
I calculated my score: age 35 years old or less, can accumulate 5 points; social security intermittent, not more than 2 years, at most 7 points,; education does not meet the standard, can not be points.
I only have 12 points, far from 100 points. So buying social insurance and upgrading my education became my way to improve my points.
I quit my job in sales and went to work as an assistant at a yoga studio for $5,000 – where I could continuously pay my social security to earn points.
Next, I planned to get to high school (or junior college) and then get a college, which would count for 70 points.
But there are too few schools in Shenzhen, plus each link is stuck very tight, a little delay is easy to abandon the previous work, so I looked for a degree upgrading institution.
The agency gave me the advice to study abroad to get secondary school, and then go to Hubei, a large province of education self-test college.
The company’s main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers.
I started low, secondary school and college will probably take 3-4 years, 20,000 yuan.
When I first heard the price and knew that I had to go to Hubei regularly to take the test, I was a little hesitant, but the other side said that Hubei is gradually abolishing the self-test, if you do not seize the opportunity, it is estimated that it will be difficult to do in the future.
I immediately paid the money. The secondary school diploma is read in the Guangdong Province, a year will be able to get, but to go to a nearby city regularly to report the examination.
Then it is self-examination college, a total of 15 courses, a year there are two opportunities, each time two days, up to 4, up to 8 a year, the fastest 2 years to get a certificate, each exam to Hubei to take the test.
Examinations in the double holiday, I will each time Friday night by T96 departure (Shenzhen direct to Wuhan, to sit 14 hours and 34 minutes), the next day at seven o’clock to Wuhan, and then run to the examination room. After taking the exam in a hurry, I would take another 10-hour train ride back to Shenzhen.
Why not take a train or plane? Because not only is it cheaper to buy train tickets, you can also save two nights of accommodation.
In this way, the first year I enrolled in 8 doors. But the first half of the second year I missed the exam, and have failed, so I had to delay the exam for one more year.
There were originally more than ten people in the same line, but in the end less than five of them stuck around, almost all of them were mothers who were trying to settle down for their children’s studies.
In 2019, I finally passed all the exams. Got a college degree, and social security has also accumulated 3 years of payment, the points add up to more than 100 points, to meet the policy of settling households with points, and now waiting for a series of procedures.
But for me, settling down is just the first step to help my children to have a higher starting point.
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