Job Discussion Forums

[profM]

My very limited experience and information is that hotels in China are fairly expensive. On the other hand I have discovered that there are small unlisted hotels and places that rent rooms in my college city of Changsha near the universities. There are rooms to rent for 10 Yuan a night and hotels for 30 Yuan with air-conditioning and TV. Summer vacation is coming and as a new teacher in China I would like to travel to a few different cities, but I want to know the addresses and telephone numbers of Chinese student rooming houses and hotels in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Xian. Maybe we can develop a comprehensive list of such places. What do you think?

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

There are hostels in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing, Dalian, and a few other cities. Sleeping is pretty cheap (like 20 RMB a night). Maybe start at that?

[profM]

I searched hostels on the Internet several times before even leaving NY for my cozy free digs in ESL Chinaville and came up with U.S.$15 as cheapest in Beijing. Backpacking in Mexico and Central America for almost a decade between schools always led to okay hostels for under $10 and often much less, but I spoke Spanish. Is it possible to find the cheaper rooms in China without speaking Chinese. Since even the Whiner says the cheap rooms exist, maybe I just need to get a student to write out a card announcing my search for low rent lodging and give it to a cab driver when arriving to destination. Thanks. Any addresses and phone numbers for hostels though?

[Roger]

Hotel rooms for under RMB 50 are extremely rare these days; many are dorm accommodation.
The cities you mentioned each have youth hostels, though. You can google and find a list of guesthouses affiliated with the International Youth Hostels Association. The HQs is in Guangzhou or in Hong Kong, and the website should be bilingual.
As an indication: one of the 2 youth hostels in YANGSHUO charges RMB 25 for a dorm bunk in a 9-bunk self-contained (bathroom,shower) facility; for members it is 20 kuai. The rate goes up to nearly double during peak seasons (but I doubt the summer holidays is a 'peak season').
In Guangzhou, you might have to fork out RMB 50 or 60 in a dorm.
In Xiqiao, famous for its park on the outskirts of Nanhai to the west of Guangzhou, the YH is a regular 1-star hotel with the IYH logo that charges you lower room rates if you have a membership card.
In Peking you may have to pay 40 kuai in the downtown youth hostel (near Wangfujinglu, a former air raid bunker).

I haven't tried this for a while, but in the 1990s I would just walk into a college or university and ask for the ZHAODAISUO, and as a teacher I would normally be housed there at RMB 20 to 30 (now maybe double those amounts).

[profM]

Here is an example of the kind of unlisted hotel info I wish we could accumulate for vacationing teachers for Shanghai, Beijing, Xian, etc., etc.:

In Changsha, Hunan, where there are several good universities, there are a couple of hotels near the Central South University campus. I just checked one out and it is nice and clean. The rooms are decent and the price for a room with TV and a fan is 40RMB and for AC it is 50RMB. You would never know the place existed as far as internet info goes and of course there are no phone books here that I know of. So, I got the telephone number of the place from the lady who runs it and it is 731-13107492188. Changsha may not be very popular on the teacher-as-tourist circuit, but Mao's birthplace is not far from here and Changsha is pretty friendly.