Life in Beijing 在北京的生活

sheilalouise (25)in #life • 7 years ago (edited)

📌: 天安门 Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China.

After reading my introduction post, some of you might have wondered, "What made her move to Beijing?", "Why Beijing?"
Before I explain myself, please allow me to vaguely share a bit about the city itself.

Beijing 北京, which translates to "Northern Capital" (from the Chinese characters 北 for north and 京 for capital) as it is located in northern China, also formerly romanised as Peking, is the capital of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Home to a few World Heritage Sites such as the Forbidden City 紫禁城 (officially called 故宫), Temple of Heaven 天坛, Summer Palace 颐和园, Great Wall 长城, etc., Beijing is a megacity rich in its history. Beijing Municipality is surrounded by Hebei Province 河北省 with the exception of neighbouring Tianjin 天津 Municipality to the southeast; together the three divisions form the Jingjinji metropolitan region 京津冀城市群 and the national capital region of China.

📌: 三里屯, 朝阳区 Sanlitun, Chaoyang District.

Back to the question:

I decided to move to Beijing with my sister @shaaazretta for work. I was working in Australia last year while she was working in Europe, and on one fine day, she asked me out of the blue, "How about we consider moving to China together for work?" My answer was a solid yes. We ideally wanted to settle in southern China as we have visited some of the cities in the past, but we realised we haven't been to northern China yet, so here we are! In Beijing!

Living in Beijing has its pros and cons, I must say. When you live in a city this big, getting to your destination is not really ideal. Fortunately there's the subway (Beijing MTR, 北京地铁) that could take you anywhere super quick, which makes life so much easier and more convenient, though there's a saying over here "If your workplace is only an hour away via subway, consider yourself lucky!" My daily commute to and fro work takes at least 1-1.5hour from where I live, I've had colleagues who lived 3-4hours away from the headquarters. Not to mention the traffic during peak hours... Crazy, aye? Well, that's life in Beijing. It's considered normal.

This is what happens when you run into peak hours...

Wallet is out of the essentials, but DEFINITELY not your phone!

Technology here in China is amazing. Wherever you go, you must take your phone with you! Convenience is the number one priority here. If you hadn't known, you could use your phone to pay for EVERYTHING through WeChat Pay 微信支付 and Alipay 支付宝 apps. Literally, everything. From your utility and phone bills to buying food on the streets. Heck, that's how we get our monthly salary paid. Not to mention, other apps such as Mobike 摩拜单车 / ofo 小黄车 (bike sharing) helps a lot when some places aren't of walking distance - Just scan away, unlock your bike, and you're good to go!
Fun fact: Did you know the word ofo is in the shape of a bicycle?

外卖 (wàimài), which translates to takeaway, is super common here. Most people would say takeaways are cheaper than cooking at home, and I could agree. You can find a decent set meal for just RMB 10 kuai (that's only A$2!) There's a number of food delivery apps like Meituan 美团外卖, Eleme 饿了么, Baidu 百度外卖, etc. On top of that, I'm sure you can relate those days when you're terribly unwell and all you wanna do is just stay at home, but you need to go out to get some medicines at the chemist? No problem - 叮当 (Dīngdāng) is your friend! You can order your meds on the app and have it delivered right to your doorstep within 28mins! Also, there are professional chemists online (not robots, they're real) on the app if you need help. How amazing is that?!

However, as an expat living in Beijing, there are some things that I'm not used to at the very start, especially having all the well-known social media applications that I’ve been using for years, such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Google (Gmail/Gmaps), Spotify (sometimes) blocked in China, a VPN will be your new best friend. The substitute for these apps are WeChat, QQ, Baidu, Youku, and more. Another thing is it will be quite a struggle to live in China if you have no basic Mandarin skills, because most things are in Chinese and the majority of people here can hardly speak any English. As for me, coming from a multilingual country and English being my mother tongue (I'm multilingual too), it's still pretty difficult for me to communicate with the locals here. The Chinese that we speak in Malaysia is completely different from they they speak over here, but I'm glad some of them can still understand me - huge shoutout to the 滴滴出行师傅 DiDi drivers (China's equivalent of Uber), 您还大概明白我在说啥! 😂

Beijing has a long history of poor environmental issue. I'm pretty sure most of you have heard of the severe air pollution. When I came here 6 months ago I got lucky, people were telling me it isn't as serious as it was a year ago. We would always check the Air Quality Index (AQI) before eaving the house just so we know if we should wear a mask. When the AQI goes over 200 it's considered "seriously unhealthy", so it's a must to wear a mask. There are days where you can barely see the buildings a few miles away due to the widespread of smog.

WhatsApp Image 2018-03-16 at 2.11.12 AM.jpeg

Photo taken from expat group

Speaking of which, Beijing is awfully dry and cold. For the past 6 months I've been here, I've only once experienced rain in the city. It's ridiculously dry and cold up here to the point where your skin and lips would chap, fingernails would split, and you would have rosy cheeks when you're outdoors. Winter here was a torture for me since I’m from a country with a hot wet climate - the coldest we had was -19°C (-2.2°F)! Funny thing was; despite the cold, it has never snowed throughout the whole winter season which was such a shame. From that you can tell how dry it is over here in Beijing. I'm looking forward for spring/summer though, which is coming very soon. Can't wait!

Right, I guess that's the end of my post. I hope you enjoyed this post and got an insight of my life here in Beijing, it's a rather long one compared to my introduction I must admit. I'm also hoping this post would be helpful for some of the expats who are planning to move to China, and tourists coming for a visit!