During the one-year that I studied at the Beijing Language and Culture University, I lived both on and off-campus. In this post I'm going to look at some of the upsides of living off-campus to give you a better idea of why you might want to do it during your time at BLCU. I hope you find the information useful.
Living off-campus can be cheaper than on-campus accommodation depending on where you decide to stay. For example, if you're living at the Conference Centre or in a single dorm room such as at Dorm 17, you're going to be paying at least 120 RMB per night. This adds up to roughly 3,600 RMB per month. However, if you're in a double room at one of the dorms then you're likely only paying 60 RMB per night or 1,800 RMB per month.
Renting an apartment off-campus can be expensive or cheap. It really depends what kind of place you're looking for. However, I would say that the average apartment in the BLCU area that comes up to an acceptable standard for foreigners should cost around 4,000-6,000 RMB per month. The best idea is to split the cost of an apartment between two or three of you, thus taking the cost per person down to around 2,000-3,000 RMB.
As you can see from these calculations, I would expect the average BLCU student renting off-campus to pay around the same if not LESS than staying on-campus. Using myself as an example, I was staying at the Conference Centre throughout my first semester and paying 3,600 RMB per month for a tiny en-suit room. Then when I moved off-campus over summer I rented a brand-new modern studio apartment with my girlfriend for only 2,000 RMB each. That's a sizeable monthly saving for much nicer accommodation.
Of course, you have some extra charges living off-campus such as electricity, water and gas bills, but these don't usually amount to more than a hundred RMB per month. As such, for a lot of people it can still work out cheaper than living on-campus.
2. BIGGER (and better) accommodation
In almost every case, off-campus accommodation gives you a bigger bang for your buck. Ok, so you don't have the convenience of being on-campus the whole time but who cares? By paying to be on campus you're sacrificing a lot more than you may realise in terms of what you're getting for your money.
For around 5,000 RMB per month at somewhere like Huaqing Jiayuan (near the BLCU east gate) you could share a two-bedroom apartment with up to 100 square feet of floor space. You're bedroom alone will probably be bigger than what you had on-campus (unless you were renting a single dorm room in which case it might not) and that's before you even get onto the living room, kitchen and bathrooms.
Most of these off-campus apartments also come with great furnishing such as flat screen TVs, double-beds, water dispensers (see my post on How To Get A 12L Water Tank At BLCU), quality air conditioners, fridge-freezers in the kitchen - just to name a few. I should mention here that internet service also tends to be substantially cheaper than on-campus.
3. Social advantages
One thing worth mentioning is how living off-campus at BLCU offers advantages for your social life. For starters, there are no curfews imposed on who is allowed to visit you at certain times. With on-campus accommodation, on the other hand, a lot of the dorms enforce visiting hours (some more strictly than others, with places like the Conference Centre not seeming to care at all about who comes or goes) and it is also university policy that no one is allowed to stay in your room other than yourself or your room mate (in the case of staying in a double room).
It is also worth mentioning here that BLCU's on-campus accommodation does not allow boys and girls to share rooms. This means that if you are coming to BLCU with your boyfriend or girlfriend you will have to take separate accommodation. I think this is motivation enough for a lot of couples who want to live together to rent off-campus instead where they can do as they please.
So with these things in mind, if you rent your own apartment off-campus you will have some social perks not enjoyed by students renting on-campus. You can throw parties and have friends stay over whenever you like. If they want to stay the night that's also entirely up to you. No one is going to tell you otherwise (unless you have a disagreeable flatmate).
4. Having your own kitchen
One of the things a lot of students really miss is being able to cook their own meals. I'm not saying this applies to everyone because not everyone cooks, but it's definitely still worth mentioning. By renting off-campus you will get your own kitchen and probably a decent-sized one too.
As far as I know, all of the dorms on campus (the Conference Centre included) offer kitchen facilities, but the truth is not many people use them and they're fairly limited anyway. Generally they will just consist of a few microwaves and hotplates (no pots or pans). I remember the Conference Centre kitchen was pretty unclean too, though the ones I saw at Dorm 17 seemed to be well-maintained and a pleasure to use.
My point is that if you decide to rent an apartment off-campus you will have a kitchen all to yourself and be able to invite friends round for home-cooked meals if that's something you like doing. This therefore also ties in to the social advantages of living off-campus.
5. Exposure to Beijing life
Finally, by living off-campus you will be more exposed to Beijing life as it really is. You will have left the safety bubble of the BLCU campus and gone out into the wild, so to speak. Some things will become more complicated and bring with them a certain amount of stress, such as communicating with your landlord and organising rental contracts, etc., but this should be what coming to Beijing and China is partly about.
You're here to learn about a different culture and how to speak the language after all, so you shouldn't be afraid to make the most of it and venture a bit into the unknown. It's not going to be easy and smooth-sailing all the time but nothing ever is, not even at home. In the end it's all about learning as much as you can in the time you have.
View living off-campus as another opportunity to broaden your China and BLCU experience. You will see another side to life there that people staying on campus the whole time won't get. It may also result in you having more interaction with the locals and probably improved Mandarin over the long-term too.
One last thing...
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Thanks a lot, Nelson, it's appreciated. You've got a great blog there too. Hope you can stick around :)
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