Chapter 42 - The Search For An Apartment (3)
Shu Yan has not thought this through. This was 1992, not 2019. The teachers made pennies back then and many single teachers couldn’t even get assigned an individual unit but had to stay in group dormitories. Plus, City Nan has always had a shortage in houses. It would be impossible for her to get her hands on one.
“Would you know where I will be able to rent a place nearby?” Shu Yan didn’t give up and asked again.
“There isn’t a lot of availability nearby,” said the man as he shook his head.
The economy had been improving, and many students have families who made some money doing businesses and wanted to better provide for their children. When the children had more spending money, more of them lived away from home.
Shu Yan was a little bit disappointed. She figured that she was familiar with this area, and there were a lot of teachers around. She could pull some strings and get Ye Jingjing into the City Nan grade school. Once she got into the grade school, going from there to junior and senior high schools wouldn’t be too difficult. Plus, when it came time for the college entrance examination, City Nan University would first accept graduates from City Nan Senior High school.
“You can go to check out the Xiaonanmen area. They have quite a few places for rent.” Seeing the way Shu Yan looked, the guard couldn’t help but recommend.
Shu Yan’s eyes beamed. Of course she knew about Xiaonanmen. In the future that was the busiest business center. But they were probably all old houses back then and most likely joined courtyard where five to six families would live in an area of 20-30 square meters. An entire floor would share one bathroom, never mind about the living environment.
Shu Yan could tolerate a lot, but she drew the line at shared bathrooms.
“Sir, do you know if they have apartment buildings nearby?”
“Sure, there’s apartment buildings! About 1 km north of here, a big boss developed a small section, but they are only for sale, not rental. Those houses have a very imposing style. The area was impeccable. The only problem is that they are very pricey. You should buy one there, I guarantee you they are awesome.” The guard felt that Shu Yan’s tone sounded pretty snobby so he purposely tried to intimate her.
“You said that way?” In her original world, that area was purchased by a school and built a campus on it. She just assumed that it was still bare land there and never thought to go look over there. She hadn’t expected that the land was purchased by a developer and became apartment buildings.
As she had said so herself earlier, as similar as the two worlds were, they were, after all, not the same one. She could use her word as a reference, but shouldn’t assume that they were identical. Shu Yan made a mental note again, thanked the guard, and headed toward Xiaonanmen.
She walked about a mile and saw the tall apartment buildings. There was a small area in the back where they did a great job in afforestation; at least it looked very comfortable from the outside. She found the sales office. Compared to the future, this place barely had visitors inside.
That made a lot of sense if one really thought about it. Back then, many work units would assign living quarters. Many people dedicated themselves to work to get a residential unit. Some people even thought it’s silly to buy your own house.
The other reason was that this location was extremely expensive. Take this area that Shu Yan was looking at as an example, it’s asking for $1,500 per square meter. It might not sound like a lot, but this was 1992. An average person in City Nan made about $300 to $400 / month. Their annual income was around $3,000. Even if they didn’t spend a penny of it, they could buy at most 2 square meters a year. When you looked at it that way, the price was about the same as they were in the future.