Temporary residence in Shanghai

As you are waiting for your real estate company to find a suitable compound or villa in Shanghai, you will need a place to stay for a small amount of time.

Ctrip and Hotels.com

A great idea would be to start looking at one of these two websites:

- Ctrip
- Hotels.com

One of them offers a great variety of all different hotels and hotels in Shanghai

(more than 4000!!! available as we speak)  and the other one is simply just one of the largest websites for Hotels all over the world.

I have used both, but currently as a student I find it easier to find something that suits me on Ctrip.If you want to find a cheap hostel in Shanghai with privacy (your own room + bathroom), that is no problem. The prices, unless you want to live really far away from the city centre, lays around 100-120 RMB each night, which is fair.

Hostel/hotel as a long-term solution

I know a couple of students from my class that actually uses hostel as a long-term solution. Let´s first do the math that explains how little it costs to live at a hostel in Shanghai:

110 RMB * 30 days = 3300 RMB/month.

And that is with all the expenses included. My apartment in Zhongshan Park was available at 3800,- RMB/month just for the rent. Then my rental company would add a 50 yuan monthly internet fee every month, a 7600 RMB deposit, a 450 "one time management fee" in addition to the gas/water & electricity bill on around 300 RMB/monthly.

Spread out on all the months, I would say that each month costed me about 4300 RMB. And that was a room slightly smaller than the hostel rooms you can get for 3300 RMB. Annoying.

You might see now why living at a hostel in Shanghai might be an OK long-term solution for students who want to live like you do in a service apartment compound.

Recommended (and non-recommended) hotel

Even though I´ve been in Shanghai for a couple of years now, I have only stayed at two hotel/hotels here - I have primarily lived in my apartment. Anyway; first I used a hotel chain called motel 168, which I really was not

satisfied with:

- Large rooms with king-size beds
- Bad service
- Non-English speaking staff
- It smelled a bit weird in the hotel reception

Motel 168 is a very famous hotel chain in Shanghai, but I would say it´s mainly domestic tourists living here. A great amount of foreigners can be found during the tourist season (May-August), but you would definitely get a touch of the "real Chinese feeling" by living here.

Shanghai Yifeng Business Hotel

My other place to live was Shanghai Yifeng Business Hotel (which isn´t really a business hotel to be honest). Medium-sized rooms that costs around 110 RMB/day if you order online. A great management that speaks almost perfect English, great amenities and a 8,5 kilometer distance to People´s Square (downtown).


The Shanghai Yifeng Business Hotel is placed on the Pudong side of the Huangpu river, but it is very close to The Bund and the Lujiazui financial district area - which is also why it got its name as a Business hotel (I guess...).

Anyway; this place has my warmest recommondation and you would enjoy both a short-term and a long-term stay here.


Here I´ll add some pictures from the Hotel (brought to you by the Ctrip website) so you can get an idea how it looks like:


The rooms are a bit small and cozy, but bright and with a good view over a busy part of Shanghai. Not too noisy (at least the room I was sleeping at).


Cleaning and bedsheets are done every day by the excellent staff. PS! If you want to communicate with the cleaning staff, you have to know some Mandarin.

Shanghai Yifeng Business Hotel lays in a great area in Pudong, Shanghai with a great amount of local restaurants, bars and shops nearby. In other words: this area has everything you could wish for as a tourist.

Conclusion

I don´t know if you are looking for an apartment compound in Shanghai or simply just a place to stay for a couple of weeks, but I hope I have convinced

There are a lot of real estate
agents in Shanghai.

you about a couple of things by writing this article.

If you are a student seeking a room in a shared apartment in Shanghai; be sure to check the possibility of staying in a hotel/hostel or service apartment as a long-term solution. There are so many possibilities for a cheap amount of money that I would almost say it´s a better solution for foreigners anyway.

A lot of the real estate agents that try to find apartments for foreigners are happy to scam other people ("rich" foreign students) that I find it almost embarrasing.

That being said, there are a couple of real estate companis I would recommend to foreigners - but those don´t operate with the student budgets, which often goes from 2500-4000 RMB/month for a room in a shared apartment.