So I was passing down a street in Shanghai recently when I saw this building …
Now you might not think there is anything striking about it – and you’re probably right – however those wooden strips that are covering the facade are new and have somehow managed to turn a pretty average looking building into something a bit more interesting.
I don’t know how much that update cost, but I bet it will more than pay for itself thanks to some easily impressed foreigner being happy to pay a higher rent for an apartment in there.
This is a classic mistake of a new expat.
They look at a building and see something that looks new and modern and so hand over masses of cash expecting everything to work smoothly.
Or should I say, everything to work as they had wherever they lived before.
But the thing is, while the apartment or building may have been updated, the infrastructure providing the utilities probably won’t have been [and even if they have, it will only be in the building and not the whole street] so soon they’ll soon find themselves living in an expensive and beautiful home that is riddled with problems because they failed to remember the rule ‘beauty is only skin deep’.
Or where apartments are concerned, brick deep.
But hey, with millions of people falling for ads that are all image, no substance, I guess we shouldn’t be too hard on the gullibility of your ‘fresh off the boat’ expat.