It’s official, we are residents of Shanghai!

Moving to Shanghai is something that we didn’t even think was an option only a few months ago. But life, especially the sometimes hectic pace of expat life, can throw you a curve ball. We outlined the details of exactly why we decided to move in a post last month (check out the link here) so I won’t go through the details all over again.

So know that we are loving our new life in Shanghai, even though it has been only about a week.

Let me take you back a few weeks though, to a moving schedule that was daunting and left no room for error or missteps. And as anyone who has ever lived in China knows, the hope for a smooth experience which relies upon Chinese immigration and on-time flight departures is not a safe bet.

We returned from our glorious trip to Ireland on a Friday evening and set about packing up our life in Shenzhen over the weekend. The following Monday morning, we dropped off our passports at Immigration Services to process our visa cancellation for Shenzhen and went straight to the airport to catch our flight to Shanghai.

In case you are wondering, “why are you cancelling your visa?” well, it’s a complicated story, and one we will save for a separate article. Basically, visas are not transferable within China, so changing cities or provinces means starting the visa process from scratch. Out with the old visas issued in Shenzhen, in with the new visas issued in Shanghai. Oh, China.

For Julie, that flight to Shanghai on Monday was a wrap on life in Shenzhen. For me, I would be returning to Shenzhen on Thursday night to hand over the keys to the landlord, deal with shipping our boxes to Shanghai, and attend a large charity gala where I was a part of the volunteer committee. If you’re doing the math, this left us only two full days to find an apartment in Shanghai, a necessary step considering I had to provide an address to the moving company who was arriving at our place in Shenzhen on Friday.

So we do what we do best: we put our heads down and got to work.

Julie procured the names of two estate agents from work colleagues and arranged for a morning and afternoon house hunting mission on Tuesday. In total, we looked at eleven places in different sections of the Former French Concession neighborhood (Xuhui in Chinese). We knew what metro stations we needed access to for Julie’s commute, so it narrowed our options.

After a long day of house-hunting, we had two apartments on the ‘short list.’ On Wednesday, as Julie headed off to the office, I revisited each apartment and made the final decision. Both apartments were in old lane houses, traditional three-story apartments built in the 1930s. One had an amazing balcony, but a very scary set of stairs. The other had a funky loft layout, but no private balcony and I got bad vibes from the landlord. After much internal debate, I selected the winning place. Nice balcony and steep staircase it would be.

By 4pm that afternoon, I meet up with Julie again to sign the paperwork with our new landlord after negotiating the rent down a significant amount (like a boss).  And just like that, we had a home. More importantly, we had a physical address in Shanghai.

Julie met the landlord on Friday to pick up the keys. We had asked for them to change couches, buy us patio furniture, and remove some excess things from the apartment before signing the lease. Astonishingly, everything was done and installed/removed by the time Julie arrived. Sometimes, the efficiency in China is mind boggling.

Things back in Shenzhen got off to a rocky start. Our moving company, which in reality was just a shipping company since we had boxed up everything ourselves, arrived on Friday only to inform us that the person who was supposed to move the boxes to the truck didn’t show up, and the driver refused to pick up the boxes himself. He said he couldn’t do it on Friday, or Saturday, or Sunday. Monday might work.

Oh, thanks for that. So considerate.

On Saturday I attended the gala, which benefited an organization called Captivating International, which helps impoverished women in rural China gain access to education and vocational training to stop the generational poverty cycle. It was an amazing evening, with over 600 people attending and lots of fun silent and live auction items. We raised over RMB 1.4 million and helped hundreds of women and young girls. It was also a long day, as I arrived at 8am for set up and hopped into a taxi at 3am after too many celebratory drinks with board members and friends.

Back in Shanghai, Julie got the message on Monday morning that our boxes had arrived. Despite our hasty packing and the rather surly moving company, only one ceramic spoon broke during the move. Another miracle.

The next hurdle in moving to Shanghai was wrapping up the flat in Shenzhen. Our landlord was amazing, but in China, getting your deposit back is notoriously tricky. Deposits are typically two months of rent, so it is not an insignificant amount of money. I scrubbed the place clean, praying that she would overlook the chip on the wall and few scuff marks dotted around the place.

Of course, she walked in, took one look at the place and said, “very clean” and sat down to transfer me back the money, through our phones of course (#china). She didn’t even look in the bedrooms, bathrooms, or kitchen. We were lucky to have such a great experience with our first apartment in China.

Last, but not least, I had to pick up our passports on Wednesday. There were supposed to be ready at 5pm and I booked a 8:30pm flight back to Shanghai. If the passports weren’t ready that evening, I would miss my flight. So why did I leave it so tight?

Complicating this whole agenda was a conference that Julie had to attend and speak at. Normally, that is not a big deal, except this event was in Beijing. On Thursday. And I had her temporary travel document with me in Shenzhen, so I could pick up both of our passports at Immigration Services. Without her temporary paperwork or actual passport, she couldn’t pick up the train tickets she had already pre-purchased for a 7am Thursday departure. I simply had to make it back to Shanghai on Wednesday night, or else she would have to cancel her speaking engagement at the last minute.

We walked a tight rope for this whole moving period, and we just had to get this final part right without crushing our Beijing travel and creating a headache for Julie at work. Thankfully, I strolled into the Immigration Services office a few minutes early, and was the only person there. The agent took my paperwork, I paid the visa fee, and just like that, I had our passports. I boarded the metro heading directly to the Shenzhen airport and was graced with an on-time departure.

I walked into our new apartment in Shanghai at midnight, bags in tow, and most importantly, passports in hand. Just like that, our saga had come to a close and we were back together again, officially in Shanghai. The insane, headache inducing schedule we had set up had gone off without a hitch. Our stuff had arrived, our paperwork was sorted (for now), and we had a new home.

Six hours later, the alarm went off. Time for us to go to Beijing. We never stop moving.

Want to read more about Shanghai? We already have a ton of great stuff! Check out this guide to our Shanghai nightlife guide to rooftop bars, a fun Shanghai night market food tour, and a historical walking tour of Shanghai. And of course, more to come!