My Experience of Moving Provinces in China

My Experience of Moving Provinces in China
Jun 28, 2018 By Jessica A. Larson-Wang , eChinacities.com

Two years ago I packed up everything I had accumulated over five years living in Kunming, Sichuan province, and moved to Beijing along with my husband, infant son and our cat. Moving provinces in China is no small feat, and one that requires a lot of planning to pull off. Here’s how it all went down.

 

Moving across country, whether that country is China or America, is always hard work. Moving provinces in China is something that many expats encounter, especially if they set down roots in the Middle Kingdom for the long term.

The packing

First, there is the question of what to do with your stuff. We had the choice of using trains, planes or automobiles, but finally settled on a trucking service. Then we had to pack up what we wanted to keep and start getting rid of the rest.

We decided to bring our two computers but sold the monitors as they would have taken up too much space in the crate and could be cheaply replaced in Beijing. We left our desks and chairs for the same reason, but brought our baby’s crib, which we couldn’t really do without.

We threw away great heaps of clothing that we hadn’t worn in years (even though parting with certain articles pained me), but brought our wedding quilts as well as the baby’s numerous articles of clothing and toys. We, however, left our foreign-brand Maclaren stroller, a sacrifice that we both resented, but it was so big and bulky we couldn’t possibly make it fit.

We threw in odds and ends, our wedding photos, my husband’s guitars (which took up a lot of space), but left behind most electronics. Deciding what to take and what to leave was hard. I wanted to bring it all, but each extra crate of course costs extra money.

The shipping

Despite our best laid plans, the shipping turned out to be a bit of a nightmare. One of our boxes fell apart on the journey from our apartment to the trucking facility, and when my husband arrived with the rest the staff declared them unfit and proceeded to encase them in heavyweight plastic bags. At this point we were running out of time and simply had to leave things to fate and hope everything arrived in tact.

When our stuff arrived in Beijing around a week later, the boxes themselves had almost completely disintegrated and most of our stuff was free-floating in the clearly much-needed bags. Some things were broken, but thankfully the most important items survived.

Amazingly, the entire shipment of seven boxes cost only about 600 RMB, the low cost perhaps indicative of the rough treatment of our belongings. We spent our first week in Beijing living out of the few suitcases and with our son sleeping on a pallet on the floor. When our belongings finally arrived we were overjoyed to finally have “things” to fill up the apartment and reminders of the home we’d left behind.

Us and the cat

As for ourselves, we flew, knowing that a train journey after packing up our entire house would probably be too much to bare. After a long battle with my husband, he finally relented and allowed me to bring one of our cats, the other having sadly run away a couple of weeks before the move. My husband’s condition, however, was that he didn’t want to deal with it -- moving the cat would be my responsibility.

I’d read online that it was possible to bring animals on certain flights in China, and upon calling our airline I was simply told to arrive extra early at the airport and to have my cat up to date with all her shots and in a proper carrier. When I got to the airport, two hours ahead of my husband and son, a man affiliated with a shipping company offered to arrange my cat’s transfer for around 500 RMB. He took my cat in her carrier and wandered off, assuring me she would be on the same flight as us.

However, when we landed in Beijing we couldn’t find the cat anywhere. Frantic calls back and forth to the company finally revealed she had been placed on a later flight. We decided to first head to our new apartment and come back later for the cat.

It turned out at “later” actually meant the next day, and despite his pre-stated condition, my husband made no fewer than three trips to the airport trying to figure out where the cat was and how to get her. Finally she arrived home, so all was well in the end. It was a little bit stressful to say the least though.

Round two?

Surprisingly for all of us, we’re now planning on moving from Beijing back to Kunming again, but the thought of the hassle involved is almost enough to put a halt to our plans. Moving provinces in China twice in less than two years is no-one’s idea of fun. In all honesty, it’s overwhelmingly stressful, in no small part because it’s China and nothing is ever simple here. 

I also plan on bringing the cat back to Kunming for our return trip, my only hope being that Kunming’s airport is much smaller than Beijing’s, so hopefully the process will be far less complicated in reverse.

The prospect of moving again, while raising my blood pressure ever so slightly, cannot keep us anchored to Beijing forever. I’ve moved several times in my life, albeit normally with less possessions, children and animals in tow, and I’m sure I’ll move yet again in the future. I imagine one day we’ll be moving internationally, a process that will no doubt be even more of a hassle. 

While we humans can get from one place to another in a few hours, the process of transporting your whole life to a new setting is infinitely more time consuming complicated. Moving provinces in China takes a whole lot of patience and flexibility, but you’ll need these qualities for living in China in the first place!

Warning:The use of any news and articles published on eChinacities.com without written permission from eChinacities.com constitutes copyright infringement, and legal action can be taken.

Keywords: Moving provinces in China

1 Comments

All comments are subject to moderation by eChinacities.com staff. Because we wish to encourage healthy and productive dialogue we ask that all comments remain polite, free of profanity or name calling, and relevant to the original post and subsequent discussion. Comments will not be deleted because of the viewpoints they express, only if the mode of expression itself is inappropriate.

ambivalentmace

In the future the train line offers plastic sealable containers that you fill up and truck to the train station and arrange delivery of the plastic tubs at the delivery train station and they take care of everything. A friend shipped 7 plastic tub containers of used clothes donated by foreigners to western china from qingdao for 300 rmb on a slow train in 2012.

Jun 30, 2018 18:47 Report Abuse