On the last day of the moving deadline, Beijing cooled down to below zero degrees Celsius.
I stood downstairs in my down jacket and watched the stall while the movers brought down my belongings in a small trailer. There were seven or eight duct-taped cardboard boxes, a white office chair, two self-assembled shelves, an electric piano, and a folded coconut mattress. My dressing mirror was left at the entrance of the building first. “This wind blowing, earn your money have to pay for the mirror. ” the master explained to me.
This is my seventh move in Beijing. 5 years ago when I first came to work in Beijing, I only had two suitcases with me. Before that I went to school abroad and lived out of my 8 square meters in a dormitory that felt like prison.
After renting a spacious bedroom not far from my flat, I thought I could finally settle down.
“The first place to settle down in the north. “I took a few pictures in the room and sent them to my circle of friends, writing, “I hope the days of dragging boxes around are over from now on. “
This hope was obviously dashed. A few years later, I rented eight places, spanning three districts of Beijing.
My co-workers said I had the worst luck they had ever seen in renting an apartment. I couldn’t understand why it was so hard for me to rent a stable apartment when I was a hardworking worker who had never missed a rent payment.
One
I had thought that as long as I avoided shady agents, there would be no major problems with renting an apartment.
As a new reporter, my income is not much, but my rental requirements are a bit high. I needed to be close to a subway station, so I could go out and do interviews on the fly. Because I often have to write at Home, the indoor environment should not be too bad. After a few trips in the “house manager” electric car, I rented a three-bedroom master bedroom outside the second ring road, 18 square meters, facing south, with a separate balcony. I shared the kitchen and bathroom with my roommate. The house is a Family house of an institution.
The advantage of signing up for a long term lease is that it is convenient and hassle-free. The rooms are newly decorated, the furniture and appliances are all complete, the common areas are cleaned twice a month, and free repairs are available if anything breaks. The customer service and “Life manager” are always available for us through the website or App. The only drawback is that it is expensive. With the service fee, my rent is nearly 3000 RMB a month.
My roommates are two girls, one is preparing for graduate school and the other works in the bank downstairs. I added WeChat with them and pulled a group to share utilities in the group. We are like guests living on the same floor of the hotel, except in the kitchen when we meet will chat, usually almost not face to face.
I began to live comfortably, and figured out the freshest vegetable market nearby, and learned to make diet meals at home on days when I didn’t travel. One weekend afternoon, two months later, I suddenly heard a “bam bam bam” banging at the front door. An angry middle-aged woman shouted from outside that she lived downstairs and that the people in our room were spitting in front of her house, asking us to come out and “lick the spit back”.
My roommate and I cowered in the room and didn’t dare to move. After she left, we found that the metal security door had been chiseled out with dozens of small holes, I don’t know if it was a kitchen knife or an axe.
We immediately called the housekeeper of the apartment, and within a few days, two people from the neighborhood committee came to understand the situation. We clarified that none of us 3 girls would spit, and that there were takeaways and couriers passing by the stairs, and we hoped they would communicate with the residents downstairs.
After the door was cut, my roommate and I were a little nervous, walking up the stairs always have to look left and right, home as a thief.
After a period of calm, one day in the middle of the night, I woke up in my sleep again by the “bam bam bam” sound of smashing doors. I looked at the Time, late at night 1:53. I flipped out my recorder, opened the door to my room, and let the unpleasant sound of cursing drift through the living room. The next morning, I took the recording to the police station and reported it to the police.
The other party said that she had come in the middle of the night because we had left the taps on, and that we had “a lot of men coming and going every day”. She spied on us through the cat’s eye every day, and even knew when my roommate was leaving and coming back.
Faced with such a security risk, the apartment agreed to give us a no-obligation sublet or surrender. So after living there for less than 3 months, I started looking for an apartment again.
Two
The second time I rented an apartment, safety was the first priority.
The girl who was studying for her exams moved to a relative’s house, and my roommate who worked in a bank and I decided to continue to share a room. We needed an elevator, safe passage and surveillance so that even if the neighbors came with knives, there was a way to escape. Finally we selected a 60 square meter two-bedroom apartment in the most upscale neighborhood.
Security comes at a cost. My new bedroom faced west and was smaller than the previous one, but the rent plummeted to 3,900 yuan a month. We signed a contract with the landlord through a rental agent and had to pay an agency fee of 7,300 yuan on top of the rent. The landlady took the chicken and dog account to two decimal places and said that the TV line was broken but she had already paid the TV bill, so we should be responsible for this expense.
With the financial support of my Parents, my housemate and I moved into the house and felt that life had been upgraded to a higher level. Having a small living room and sofa, my housemate and I often chat and eat together, and it feels more like a home than our previous place. I had a whole wall of solid wood closets to put my clothes in by color gradient order. When my then boyfriend sent me home to mill around downstairs, the exquisitely decorated lobby would also provide a sense of urban idol drama images.
However, the days of urban beauty did not last long. I received a notice from the unit, after the year to go to Yunnan station for a period of time. With four months left on the lease, I dropped to 3,000 yuan a month before subletting my bedroom.
After returning from Yunnan, I moved to Wudaokou, which is closer to my boyfriend’s school. Before that, I lived in Chaoyang District, so I was in a long-distance relationship with him, and it cost me 50 yuan to take a taxi to meet him. There are many technology companies in Wudaokou and the rent is high, so I rented a small room in a five-bedroom apartment through a long term apartment, 11 square meters, for 3300 yuan per month.
Because the room was small, I started to study storage and organizing techniques. The distance between my desk and the bed could not accommodate two people sitting down to eat together. When my boyfriend came over, we had to lift up the bed sheets and spread newspaper and placemats on top of the mattress to turn the bed into a dining table.
This time with more roommates, I began to experience the trouble of sharing a room. Every morning, I held my toiletries in my hands, kept my ears open to hear when the occupied bathroom would open, and was ready to rush over. I needed peace and quiet to write at home, but every day there were couriers and delivery people knocking on the door. I don’t smoke, but my room smells like smoke all the time.
Since an American guy moved in next door, home life has become even more of a headache. He was partying twice a day, blasting Music out of the sky. One day, I noticed that a cup was missing. I put a notice on the fridge and the American guy told me that he had broken the cup. By then I realized that for a long time he had been using my cutlery and chopsticks. “I thought they were communal. ” he said to me with a sincere face.
When the one-year lease was over and my boyfriend graduated and left the country, I didn’t renew the lease.
Three
The fourth time I looked for an apartment, I had been off sick for a while for health reasons, my income was reduced, and I wanted to save some money on renting.
I found a house that was rented directly by the landlord, and the landlord’s daughter, who did not live at home, had a spare bedroom. The room was somewhat small, half of the view from the window was blocked by the opposite wall, but the good news is that it was fully furnished, with closet, bookcase, bed and writing desk all custom-made and stuck tightly inside. The landlord charged me 2,800 yuan a month at the same rate as my daughter’s rent outside, and I didn’t have to share the utilities, which is a very affordable price for a house outside the third ring near the subway.
Living with the landlord was a bit like finding a host family for myself. I’m about the same age as the landlord’s daughter, and I call the landlord my aunt and uncle. My aunt’s parents live downstairs, so I call them grandma and grandpa. Sometimes my grandma would make dumplings by herself and bring me a bowl of them from downstairs. When I came back from a business trip, I would receive a WeChat from my aunt telling me that she had left a vegetable dumpling in the fridge for me. When my boyfriend came from Japan to visit me in Beijing, my uncle even made a special stew of big bones with sauce for him at home. On Mother’s Day, I prepared a greeting card for my landlady with a long thank you note.
Living together also has its inconveniences. My grandfather got up at 5:30 every morning to walk the dog, but whenever he saw light coming through my window, he had to scold me for a few days. Later, when I worked all night again, I buried the lamp under the blanket.
Auntie works in a hospital and loves and is good at housework, disinfecting the floor with alcohol every day and putting the house in order. Before she used to include her daughter’s room into the tidy up, when I was away on a business trip, she once cleaned up at home, tidied up my room as well, and washed all the clothes in my dirty clothes basket.
“Ugh how I can’t help it. “Auntie sent me several voices apologizing to me about going into my room without permission, and she carefully said, “If you don’t like it, I’ll restore you to the original state ……” then she told me she didn’t wash my underwear, “I think that should be your bottom line . “
I laughed half-heartedly and replied to her that it was okay and thanked her for doing so much of my housework. But to be honest, I had a little discomfort inside of me that my privacy was being invaded. I wrapped it in a paper towel and put it on the table and left in a hurry, but I couldn’t find it when I returned. I didn’t mention the nail to my landlord for $1,200.
Later, my landlord aunt repacked my closet, bookcase and cupboard one after another according to her habit, and almost all my things were not in their original places. On several occasions, I retrieved notes from the trash that my best friend had written to me. Those notes were so important to me that they were placed on the shelf, but my aunt threw them away as scrap paper.
For a while, it bothered me that my landlord acted in such a kind but transgressive manner. I struggled to adapt to this way of getting along. “Maybe that’s how northerners are. ” I explained to my Shenzhen best friend who was shocked at the landlord’s behavior in entering the room. There were times when this unfailing warmth felt warm. The neighborhood is a relocation house, and most of the people living there are old Beijing neighbors. Once I went out for a run in my sports shorts, and a grandparents I didn’t know in the elevator looked at me and said, “Girl, it’s already cooling down at night, so don’t freeze in this. “
But sometimes it is difficult to grasp the degree of this unseen. When my aunt is at work, it is usually me and my landlord uncle who are at home. Uncle a few years earlier brain hemorrhage, leaving the sequelae of leg slightly inconvenient, usually do not work, watching TV in the living room or out walking. Perhaps it is rather lonely, he is particularly willing to chat with me, as long as I come out of the room, he will be greeted over. As we talked, he would wipe his tears and start to tell me a lot of private topics about the family, complaining about his aunt and grandma and grandpa, saying that they all looked down on him because he was sick, and all sorts of tearful accusations.
In order to avoid such embarrassing conversations, I had to stay inside until my aunt got off work, and I wouldn’t come out of my room until I had to go to the bathroom as a last resort. I thought about moving out, but I thought it would be too much trouble for the landlord to find another tenant, so I was too embarrassed to mention it.
Until one day, the landlord aunt suddenly came to me and told me she was going to divorce my uncle. It turns out that my uncle has always been alcoholic, before is drinking caused a brain hemorrhage, recently my aunt found that he is still buying alcohol from the commissary on credit, plus other reasons at home, completely dead to him. The uncle did not agree to the divorce, so the aunt came to me to help her write a statement of divorce, she went to the court to submit the indictment.
After a while of tossing and turning, my uncle moved out. Auntie and I were living at home together, and it felt pretty good. But then one day, my aunt had a shadow on her lung and needed a minor surgery. She felt that maybe the house was too dark and feng shui was bad, and “since I’ve been living here, I haven’t had any good days”, so she decided to sell the house.
Four
“Seeking recommendations for reliable housing. “I started looking for a room again and listed the hard requirements for this one in my circle of friends, “good lighting, large rooms and spacious desks. “
I would have liked to save on agency fees, but after looking around on Douban, most of the direct rentals by landlords are complete sets of rooms, and the ones in the hands of second landlords are either old in their homes or have very short leases, so long term rentals are still the best option. The one I rented before broke the news of a series of excessive formaldehyde standards, so I chose another long term apartment for rent.
In those two years, rents were going up so fast that I expanded my search to the East Fifth Ring Road. A partitioned room converted from a living room best met the requirements, with floor-to-ceiling windows that were sunny, twice the size of the previous room, and curtains that separated a balcony. I finally had a place to spread out my yoga mat and move around at home on my own during the week. With the service fee, the monthly rent is 4,000 RMB.
I didn’t forget the lesson I learned from my previous bad roommate. When I was looking for a room, I saw some bathroom countertops covered with cosmetics, and some living rooms with a wall full of shoe boxes, so I just gave up no matter how nice the room was. The common areas of the place I rented were neat and clean, but I couldn’t predict what the tenants who moved in later would be like.
A girl moved in shortly after I moved in, and the living room was immediately filled with her packing boxes, which took her half a month to clean up. She was very thoughtful about the placement of her belongings, and the things that I and my other roommates had put in the fridge were moved around at her whim. There were many empty cupboards in the kitchen, enough for each person to have one without disturbing each other, but she would put some of her things in each cupboard.
As soon as she cooked once, the kitchen was a mess. Sometimes she would leave her leftover snail meal in the unventilated living room, and when I would help her go downstairs to throw it away, she would say, “I’ll clean it up later. This is usually two days.
Once she bought a small sofa and put the dusty box on top of the dining table we were eating on. I put up with it for a week and reminded her a few times, but she was still slow to put it away. Finally, I went straight to the tape cut, folded the carton up against the wall. She saw a difficult face, said originally wanted to keep the box to see whether to return. My face full of fake smile: “I can help you recover. “
The last thing that broke me was a boy who moved in later. He was at home every day bare-chested, wearing a pants sitting in the house, the room door never closed. Every morning he would occupy the bathroom for half an hour, soot began to appear on the toilet ring, and every now and then I would hear him spit.
The worst part was that he wanted to ask me to dinner. I politely declined several times. One time I was staying up late, I guess I saw the light coming through my door, he sent a message at 3:00 in the morning “roommate, still awake? I didn’t reply to him. By the next afternoon, he sent another message: “roommate, how not yet up? “I hurriedly ordered the door seal in Taobao.
After two days he also pushed an electric car charging in the living room. I decided to move out immediately, preferring to lose part of my deposit and find a house to change the rent.
In addition to larger rooms and fewer roommates, I needed to be closer to the city center. Living outside the East 4th Ring Road, the cost of travel was too high. For a one-hour dance class, three or four hours pass from the time I leave the house to the time I get home, and my energy is consumed on the road.
I went back to the third ring and rented a room in a place one subway stop away from China World Trade Center. The advantage of the living room partition is the large area, this room has 26 square meters, and a small open room, can put my friend gave me an electric piano. Naturally, the price is also very expensive, paying 4,600 yuan a month. The house is three bedrooms in total, the small room is not rented out yet, and the other room is occupied by a couple who get along very well. They keep their things neatly organized and offer to pay for both when they share the water bill.
V
When I went home for the Chinese New Year (Editor’s note: 2020), there was an outbreak. Some of my colleagues went to Wuhan while others worked on the home line, and at the end of February, the unit notified me to return to Beijing. Because of the Epidemic, the high-speed train from my home to Beijing was suspended from time to time. I had a hard time booking a ticket when I suddenly received a call from my roommate, who told me in a panic that someone had come to demolish my house.
I listened as she tried her best to negotiate on the other end of the phone, saying, “People haven’t returned to Beijing yet, things are inside, it’s not good for you to demolish it directly like this. Several men on the other end told her to go back to the house, saying, “This is illegal group renting, it’s illegal, you know! “
After a while, the roommate sent me photos. The wall of my room has been largely smashed, the edge of the steel hanging some crumbs, cement blocks piled up all over the floor, covering the white ivory wooden floor, my bed, table and chairs and electric piano fell full of ash.
The person who smashed the wall left a “Notice of Supervision of Illegal Group Rentals” and a “Notice of Illegal Group Rentals Standing Reform Measures”, which reads: “According to the “Notice on Governing Illegal Group Rentals by Law” and the requirements of relevant laws and regulations, the apartment is now forced to restore the original structure of the house, remove the illegal Illegal beds, retire the people living in excess of the standard, and eliminate fire safety hazards. “The signature is the illegal group rental house management office where the house is located.
When I rented the room, the housekeeper of this long-lease apartment assured me repeatedly that the partition in the living room was not a problem. It’s very common in long term rental apartments to add a partition wall to the living room and turn it into a separate bedroom for rent, called the “N+1” model.
I checked the relevant regulations on the Internet, and the “N+1” model is compliant in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Suzhou and other cities, but some cities do not support the policy. Because of “changing the original structure of the house to make a partition”, it is considered as “illegal group rental”.
Just like that, my room was demolished without me being in Beijing, without receiving any advance notice, and without anyone protecting my personal belongings from damage or theft.
I admitted my bad luck, but I couldn’t understand why this matter was handled at a time when the epidemic was so serious. According to the requirements of the epidemic prevention and control work at that time, I had to be isolated at home for 14 days after arriving in Beijing, but my home was turned into a ruin with no walls to isolate.
The good thing was that my application for a temporary stay in Beijing was approved by the unit and I could continue to finish my work online. After a round of phone calls, this home rental apartment gave me a no-obligation refund.
Over the years of renting, in order to be safe and to be able to live comfortably, I raised my budget bottom line again and again, gritting my teeth to convince myself to eat less and buy less clothes, only to find that this time, after spending the highest price ever, I couldn’t buy housing dignity even at 4600 yuan per month.
I was not the only one who was depressed in those days. My mother began to directly reject the relatives to buy a house borrowing money request: “I also want to save money, my children are being driven around also strange poor. My dad held back for two days and spit out a sentence at dinner: “I’ll try to buy you a small set next year. “
Although settled in Beijing, I never had the idea of buying a house in Beijing, one is that I can not afford it, and the other is that I think the price is too high. When I was young, my mother told me to be self-sufficient, “full 18 years old, you’ll be whisked away. Later, she bowed to reality all the way from “cutting off your financial ties after you finish school” to subsidizing my rent from time to time after I worked. My parents came from a rural family and changed their Destiny by going to school, “all on my own, not a penny from my family” is something my mother has always been proud of.
The times and prices are different, but her philosophy has been successfully instilled in me, and I can’t accept that I am misappropriating my parents’ savings. In addition, if you buy a house, you will be burdened with a heavy mortgage. My mom likes to travel and makes two or three trips a year at home and abroad, and I usually dance and sing and play the piano and pay a lot of money for each lesson. With the pressure of the mortgage, we have to give up our preferences, so what is the meaning of life.
I had already reached a consensus with my parents not to buy a house in the first place, but once the wall was smashed, they were shaken again.
But after a few days of reprieve, I got my act together again. I announced to my parents that I was “prone to going out, wandering, constantly pursuing and expecting, and having difficulty in purchasing property”, so that they could let go of the burden of buying me a house.
I thought about it, if I had a house right now, I would sell it for money and go abroad to study musical theater. I don’t really want to own property, I just need somewhere to live. There’s nothing wrong with not renting a partition in the future, I reassured myself.
VI
Since I received the notice to return to Beijing, I had to scramble to find a room, switching between 5 rental apps on my phone interface. When I was a guest at a relative’s house in my hometown, I went around the house and said, “This costs 12,000 yuan for a whole rental in Beijing.
When I returned to Beijing in May, I put my suitcase under my workstation in my unit and immediately went out to look at houses. I rented a three-bedroom master bedroom with a balcony from this long-lease apartment. With the support of my mother, I paid the entire rent of more than 50,000 RMB in one go because of the 2 months’ rent rebate on the annual payment.
I believe that this time I can “finish well”. The house was in a good location, high floor, mature neighborhood, both roommates were quiet and clean, and I had dance and voice lessons within a 10-minute walk of each other.
My mind is gradually righting itself again. In Beijing, I could easily find good teachers and learn what I was interested in. The cost of living in a rented apartment is high, but you have access to the resources of the capital. Whether it was my work or my hobby, I could grow the fastest here.
After six months of living here, this family rental apartment started to be in the news a lot because of the vendor’s wage claims. That’s when I noticed that the bi-weekly housekeeping at home had been on hiatus for a while. I checked the company’s app wallet and found that I hadn’t received cash back since October.
In mid-November, a couple in their 40s and 50s came to the door and told us they were half a month overdue on their rent and that we should move out within a week.
My lease was until May of the following year, and the other two housemates had one until the end of December and one until the end of January. We understood very well that this family rental apartment could no longer get the money and the internet suggested either halving the lease term or paying the landlord half of the rent for the remainder of the lease. Our landlord didn’t seem like a reasonable person, and my roommate and I were going to talk to her about letting us stay until the end of December and give us some grace to find an apartment.
“I’ve been kind enough to let you guys live for nothing for so long, do you understand? I’ve already terminated my contract, I have no legal relationship with you guys, get it clear? You have difficulties, and I am not a charity, understand? “The landlady was tough, lecturing us as if we were trespassing shrews and scoundrels. She gave an ultimatum to come and take possession of the house on Friday, or else the water and electricity would be cut off.
The landlady’s aggressive words had already caused me to lose sleep for a night, and I decided not to rip into her for the sake of my physical and mental health. I admitted my own bad luck and lost 25,000 yuan.
I rushed out to look for a house, not daring to touch the long term rental apartments, nor did I have time to look for a co-rental. Almost all of the self-proclaimed no-agent landlord direct rentals were false listings. I borrowed 20,000 yuan from my dad, signed a deposit for a one-bedroom apartment, paid the agent’s fee and rent, and immediately fell into abject poverty.
I could only make myself work more and earn more money, but after working and looking for a house to move to for a few days, I understood why “living in peace” was put in front of “working in happiness”. I realized why “living in peace” was put in front of “working in happiness”.
When I was installing broadband and fixing the washing machine in my new home, I received a news tip about a long term apartment tenant who had spent several nights in a house whose front door had been removed by the landlord.
I interviewed her. She came to Beijing with her undergraduate degree, worked in a very good unit, and was an annual tenant like me, with 7 months left on her lease.
The girl was on a business trip to Chongqing when the landlord asked her to move out, and her mother, who was in her 60s, was in her rental house. The landlord had cut off the water and electricity, and she hid in the hallway between jobs, calling the neighborhood committee and asking the other party to coordinate with the landlord and wait until she returned to Beijing.
She knew that the landlord had an agency relationship with the apartment, and that the lease contract signed with the tenant during the agency period was protected by law, and that the landlord had no right to ask her to move out. She asked her mother to send her a copy of the warning for “unlawful unlocking” and “trespassing”. “trespassing” on the front door. “on the front door.
When she returned from her business trip, the girl went straight to the apartment’s headquarters as soon as she got off the plane with her suitcase and found out that there was a “double-cross”. After returning home, the landlord immediately came to the door. She took the thick civil code in her arms and tried to talk to the landlord about the law.
“Move out! You didn’t sign a contract with me! Do you hear me, you didn’t sign a contract with me! “The landlord yelled at her, “What’s the point of staying with me? You’re so rogue! Then he took down the security door and moved out.
After calling the police four times, she finally made the landlord understand that both sides were victims, and that the landlord could sue the company in court for rent arrears by the long-lease apartment, but it was illegal to remove the door and other actions that affected the normal living of the tenant.
Finally she signed a settlement agreement with the landlord to put the door back and halve the remaining lease term, sharing the loss .
“I wish I had interviewed you a week earlier. “That’s what I said to her most. In my opinion, this girl was a textbook example of tenant advocacy.
But after a few days, she sent me a message saying she was on edge every day. “Sometimes I wonder if losing some money like you did is the best way to go. ” “I don’t know which is more important, the mental panic or the loss of money. “
She said that after three years in Beijing, she is considering whether to leave for the first time.
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