Living in Nanjing: Updated November 2007
On appointment, you will be placed in email contact with one member of our Senior Education Team, our HR Manager, and a volunteer teacher, who will answer your specific questions about the practical details of everyday life in Nanjing. This document simply gives a broad picture of life here.
Our Human Resources Manager will guide you through the visa process, to get you into China, and will advise you on getting your personal effects here.
Nanjing is a provincial capital of 6 million people. It is the capital of Jiangsu Province, which is home to 60 million people. It is located in China – the world’s fastest growing economy over the past decade. Nanjing is located in the East of China, about 350 kilometres from Shanghai, on China’s Pacific coast.
Nanjing is a rapidly modernising city. It has up to date supermarkets, a good road infrastructure, a developing metro (subway system), lots of new shops and a small but growing expatriate population. Nanjing has many international fast food chains – Starbucks, KFC, MacDonald’s and so on – and several international large stores: Metro and B&Q, Carrefour from France, Lotus from Thailand. It is possible to buy most things that you would buy in the west. It is also possible to order specialist items from suppliers in both Nanjing and Shanghai. China’s first drive-through 24 hour MacDonald’s is opposite our gate.
Our city is also interesting because it is Chinese! Nanjing used to be the capital of China, and is a historic city, with an ancient city wall, old government buildings, pagodas and temples. Nanjing is famous for being a green city. The Purple Mountain (Dong Jiao) national park area is a beautiful forested area, surrounding the tombs of the Ming Dynasty. It is a Mecca for weekend hikers. Nanjing’s major streets are lined with plane trees, which in summer provide an arch of green shade spanning the thoroughfares.
There are western style restaurants for those wanting to eat as at home. Naturally, Chinese restaurants abound, offering cooking styles from different regions of the country. Particularly interesting are Muslim cuisine from the west of China, and Sichuan cuisine from the south west, in addition to Nanjing’s specialties. Keçi Guli on downtown Nanjing offers a dish called Numb and Sore chicken – suffice it to say that it is not the chicken which feels numb and sore the morning after you have eaten this dish. Korean and Japanese restaurants are also popular, and very good value.
People like to shop at the markets for trinkets, small furniture items, clothing and handicrafts. They have friends over to dinner, they eat out in restaurants, they attend the Multiplexes when there is an English Language movie, they buy DVDs on the street, at cheap prices. Going to the gym is popular, as are mountain biking, normal cycling in the city’s many bike lanes, jogging, tennis and basketball.
Travel to other parts of China from Nanjing is easy. An expressway links Nanjing to Shanghai (3.5 hours), and the new Bullet Train to Shanghai, leaving every 20 minutes at peak times, takes between 1 hour 55 minutes and 2 hours 15 minutes. You can travel overnight by rail to Beijing or Xian, and many other destinations. Nanjing’s modern airport serves all domestic destinations, and also has regular flights to Seoul Korea, and Singapore.
It is safe for westerners to walk the streets, although sensible precautions should be taken against petty theft – this is a third-world country, and there are a lot of very poor people working the construction sites away from their families in the countryside. City dwellers are generally materially comfortable and educated.
Nanjing has good, but not wide-ranging night life. There are discos and night clubs and karaoke bars throughout the downtown area. There are also popular places for people with young families to go to: the Sun Palace indoor water park, the Xuan Wu Lake wildlife park, the Pearl Springs Safari park, the Dong Jiao fishing ponds and recreation park.
Your apartment will be located in a compound in Qi Xia District (akaYa Dong), on the outskirts of Nanjing. The compound is safe, well landscaped, and has play areas for children. It will be close to the apartments of our other NIS teachers. We still have some staff who live in downtown Nanjing, but from September 2004, policy has been to house staff, at least for the first year, near the school. The apartment is fully furnished and equipped, except for kitchen ware, cutlery and bedding. We do not provide microwave ovens, irons, ironing boards, DVD players or vacuum cleaners. We lend bedding, crockery, kitchen utensils and cutlery to tide you over, while your shipping arrives, and you can keep some of these loaned items.
Most people employ an ayee to clean your apartment, cook, baby-sit, and look after younger children. This costs around US$100 - 2000 per month, depending on the hours and services you need.
There is a medium-sized supermarket and a small supermarket near to your apartment, where most staples are available. This is a quiet neighborhood, but there are several large universities, and 35,000 students, in the vicinity. There is a growing but still small number of small restaurants. A new shopping centre is about 15 minutes’ walk past the supermarket. Commerce in this area targets mainly students. However, with a great deal of residential real estate establishing in the area, from September 2008, we expect commerce will begin to cater to a wider demographic base.
Nanjing Normal University, located one kilometre from our school, has swimming pools, and there are public sessions. The pools are not as hygienic as we would expect in the west. However, we do send our students there for swimming lessons as part of our physical education programme – the pools are swimmable! In addition, the local Ya Dong Compound has a good swimming pool and membership of their super fitness centre is good value. The Zhongshan Golf Resort is 15 minutes drive from school, and has an excellent but expensive pool and fitness centre. The golf course at this hotel is excellent, but expensive. The driving range is good value.
It is true to say that Nanjing is not a glamorous international destination, in the mode of Shanghai or Beijing. It is not as sophisticated a city as those places. However, Nanjing is not a hick town. It is regarded as very sophisticated by Chinese people, but retains its Chinese character. The latter has to an extent been subsumed in Shanghai and Beijing, by western style infrastructure – certainly much more so than in Nanjing.
The expatriate population of Nanjing is smaller than in those cities, which support many international schools. NIS is the major international school in Nanjing. There is one competitor (British) school which enrolls children up to Grade 5 only, at present. Living in Nanjing as an NIS teacher has been accurately described as like living in a village, where NIS would be the village school.
Therefore, if you are uncomfortable with the idea of occasionally seeing parents and students as you go about your personal business at weekends, then Nanjing is not the place for you. The same is true if you need to go to a different night club every night, if you do not like to be stared at, or if you dislike Asia.
People who do well here and enjoy Nanjing tend to be those who like to socialize with a range of people – different nationalities, languages, age groups, gender. Those who simply wish to have friends who are just like themselves will be disappointed by Nanjing. If that is you, you will need a Singapore-type city where you can go replicas of your home country’s entertainment and social infrastructure, accompanied by clones of yourself, for fun.
English is hardly spoken at all in shops, bars, taxis and restaurants. You will likely be completely illiterate. The school helps by providing cards with the names of all the major places in Nanjing. However, we strongly advise you to learn some Chinese, even if just for shopping and transportation purposes.
Most people do not buy cars, which are expensive in China. Taxis are cheap and plentiful. However, it is becoming more common for foreigners to buy cars. Driving standards are vastly inferior to those in the west.
China is not an expensive country. It is perfectly possible to live for your day to day expenses on 25% of salary. Travel would involve dipping into the remaining 75%. It is not possible to give a reliable answer to the question how much will I save? The only answer I can give is the question how much do you spend? Salaries are paid directly to your bank account in China, which the school opens for you. Remitting money is not a problem. You will be wise to carry a major western credit card with you at all times, in case of medical emergency.
If you are attracted by the idea of living in a city which has retained its strong Chinese character, then Nanjing is for you. If you need a more complete westernized backcloth of first-world social and recreational infrastructure, such as that available in Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Kuala Lumpur, then perhaps you should think twice about coming to Nanjing.
I apologise to you if you find my frankness a little brutal – I intend only to paint a realistic picture for you.
Gez Hayden (Director)
Reviewed and updated November 07 2007
|
