Appooppanthaadi - 38

The citizens of China can not own land in that country. The government owns the land. Citizens can take land on long term lease and construct buildings that include houses. Every piece of land is government's and they take back from the lesse whenever it needs to do some developmental activities.

A Housing complex in Harbin

Real estate business in many cities is a booming business. So many multi storied buldings are sprouting across the lengths and breadths of the cities. As we look, the buildings grow and take gigntic sizes. The skyline of HarbinCity is filled with tower cranes all over.

Owning a house is one of the pre-reequiste for a boy to get a girl in his life. Girl friends may never commit into a wedlock if the boy doesn't own a house. Alternately, if the girl or her parents are rich enough, then the boy's job is made easy. Due to strict single child policy, whatever the parents have, goes to the single child. The inherited properties of both the parents confluence into a single person. That may be  one of the reasons, we are able to see so many number of black Audis on the road there!

Catchy advertisements on the walls of an upcoming housing comlex

There are so many real estate promoters in every cities. They too, like in our country, give colourful advertisements and conduct property melas in shopping malls to lure customers.

Brainwashing through images and models of palatial apartment buildings is so common in China. The promotors offer all trappings of a modern day life style in these apartments. There is no dearth of customers too.

Prices, like in any other part of the world is unbearable. One sqare meter of an apartment may cost anything around 15000 yuans in Shanghai and nothing less than 5000 yuans in Harbin and always on the rise day by day.

The apartments we hired during our stay in Tianjin city costed us in the range of 3000 to 4000 yuans that included all furniture and electrical and electronic equipment. The house had a big LCD TV, airconditioners in all the rooms, beds, and posh visitors' room. The Harbin house was equally good. The Chinese spend a lot on their houses.

A posh apartment complex in Shenyang

In addition to all expenses to decorate their houses, heating up the house during the winter is another big expene they have to meet every year. Heating the houses is centralised in cities.

Huge quantity of water is heated at certain places by the city autorities and is circulated through the pipes laid all over the city. The users have to pay a fixed amount based on the area of the building to the city authority in advance to avail this facility.

The large  apartment complex in Tianjin (here we lived)

Pipes are rooted to the houses and other buildings. There are radiators installed in every rooms that dissipates the heat from the hot water circulating in the pipes.

Even in the extreme cold weather, we can remain in plain clothes inside the rooms, thanks to the planned heating system in the Chinese cities. This type of a centralised heating system could not be found in Europe. There they heat up their houses using fire woods. Gentle smoke emanating from every chimney at the back drop of the snow white surroundings is a treat to watch in Europe during winter...