MTV Cribs: Our sweet oasis in Shanghai

We entered a big, spacious, modern living room, clad in Ikea-inspired furniture and art. Bernard turned to me giddily and just smiled. I just kept thinking it was too good to be true. The SECOND apartment we see cannot be in our price range and look this good! But it was.

Bernard and I have been living happily in our swank ass apartment on the 10^th floor of a busy street in Shanghai across from stores, soccer fields, and three metro lines for about two weeks. We’re happy and comfortable. This is definitely a place we can call home. Knowing that we got to choose our own apartment during our time in China, we decided to take advantage of that privilege and think about things very carefully upon renting:

1) We are going to be spending a LARGE amount of time in this apartment outside of work, considering we don’t plan on traveling that much due to our lack of time off, so we want to REALLY like where we live.

2) We are going to have looooooong days, and some will be really frustrating. And what’s more annoying than being pissed off and going home to a grubby cave that you wish was better?

3) We want to be happy, comfortable, warm, and feel like we LIVE here; not just that we’re here for a year and it’s almost over. No… unlike our previous overseas experience, we wanted this apartment to be OUR apartment.

We happily signed a lease and Bernard says almost weekly how much he loves our place. The location, the size, the bed (omg, the mattresses in China are rocks, but our bed is splendid and I’m SO HAPPY ABOUT THAT!), the kitchen and the fact that it exists, and just the cozy feeling of the place.

Now I will soon upload a video tour of our gorgeous palace, but I currently sound like a frog (pollution sickness… good times…) so until my video, I have provided you with a delightful visual tour of our beautiful apartment in China, complete with commentary. Enjoy:

An Exploration of our Oriental Oasis

Here's our lovely first floor bathroom. It's equipped with your basic toilet, sink, and mirror, but also groovy tiles which are psychedelic and I totally dig them. Also, when you close the bathroom door, it looks like it's just a giant black room so it's all magic! Love it.

See? Pretty cool, eh? I love the Asian inspired art on the wall too. I wish I could take credit for decorating the place, but it came this way! Works for me!! :) 

Here's the shower. It's your standard shower. Thank GOODNESS it's got a heat lamp because it's very cold in our main bathroom! We personalized it with a sweet orange scrubbie and some Jackie Chan shampoo. HAH! Kidding... that shit's expensive yo! 

This thing makes me SO happy. It's a coat rack that looks like a piano! RIGHT?!?!?! I'm in love with it and I really want to take it with us when/if we leave!

Yes, we DO have two floors! Here are the stairs up to our bedroom/kitchen area. Note the sweet poster of the New York subway. Modern chic!

Here's the hallway into our bedroom/kitchen area. To the right is the second floor bathroom.

Here's the second floor bathroom. Cute, eh? Note the tacky, green seat warmer. Now, if you were here in China during the winter months, your ass would approve of that seat warmer, let me tell you! It gets pretty cold and nothing's worse than a cold ass! 

Second floor bathroom sink. It's up a level, which is weird. And it's super short up there. Bernard has already hit his head twice! Poor guy. I like it though. It's unique.

Our bedroom! Behind the sliding doors are the storage area and the kitchen. I love the details on the walls! :) How funky!

The kitchen. Personalized with fridge magnets! :) We've got some sweet gas burners and a handy condiment shelf above the stove. No oven, but I think ovens are just hard to come by in China... unless you have the $$$$. Our fridge is HUGE though, compared to other fridges we've seen that are essentially bar fridges. People do a lot of eating out in China.

The storage space. Honestly, there are so many places to put things, it's lovely. We're organized anyway, but this helps!

Here's a view from our upstairs balcony: Shanghai Stadium.

A downward view of the street below.

It wasn't very polluted when Bernard took this picture so you can actually SEE what we see! It's been so polluted here that we didn't know buildings behind the stadium existed! Brutal, eh?

Take a look at that sunshine. :) Gotta love it! 

A delightful photo of our kitchen plants and sink. It's big and bright and more than we could have asked for in a kitchen. Very happy!

The condiment shelf. The cupboards are pretty small and/or have piping in them, so this little space about the stove is great! It also looks super cool. 

Our living room! The dresser thing beside the TV is a shoe rack! I dig it. It's pretty cold down here though so I cannot wait until it warms up a bit. I guarantee we'll spend lots of time here. There's even a desk space beside the window for office-esque duties. 

A sweet ass picture of our living room. Check out that sweet light thing!! :) It's big and beautiful. And HEY! Notice that couch? It's a futon. Pssst! Come on over. We have space for you. :) (Bring warm clothes!!!) Hah. 

Finally, a picture tour wouldn't be complete without a night shot of a soccer game (wouldn't it be nice if it was hockey?!?!?!?) going on at Shanghai Stadium! We don't need ESPN... we can just watch from our balcony! :) Now, I don't like soccer... correction, it's a terrible *sport* and I kind of hate it greatly, but I like this apartment so much that I actually enjoy seeing the guys playing on the field during the day and night. It reminds me of how lively Shanghai is. Now if only the subway didn't close before 11pm!! Oh well. You can't have everything.

I hope you enjoyed our picture slideshow of our Shanghai apartment. Stay tuned for more blogs when Bernard and I start to feel better. We're (I'm) still being affected by the pollution and displaying cold-like symptoms which makes us (me) want to do nothing ever. At least I went for two walks today! :) THAT'S a lot when you can barely breathe. Aya! Shanghai! :) GOOD TIMES.

Until next time,

Your favourite Wuns