Questions about HuangKeDa

[craig]

Hi guys, I am possibly going to be teaching English at HuangHe later this year. How is the teachers' accommodation there? Does it take long to get to Zhengzhou city centre?

[edmason]

Hi,

The accommodation here is actually pretty good. It was built in the summer of 2010. It's less than two minutes on foot from the teaching buildings (School of International Studies or Foreign Languages), 30 seconds from the main cafeteria and the apartment building itself has a Western restaurant on the ground floor.

Everywhere on campus is reachable on foot.

The apartments are modern and come furnished with: single bed (mattress, sheets, duvet, pillows), bedside table, two wardrobes, two desks with comfortable chairs, a flatscreen TV, a desktop computer, air-conditioner, microwave, water cooler, hotplate, double sink and fridge.

Your personal bathroom is more of a 'wetroom': Western toilet, shower, boiler, sink, heating lamps and large mirror.

Internet is free, is slow by Western standards, but decent enough. You have no bills, other than buying water for the cooler (10RMB).

There's a gym and a laundry room, with dryers, at one end of each of the two floors.

I have to say, having heard horror stories on the Internet and seen the old teachers' accommodation here, that having somewhere decent to live here has made settling into China much easier than it might otherwise have been.

Yeah, I sound keen, but honestly with so much else to think about when I arrived in China for the first time, to be a teacher for the first time, having a nice place to live was such a relief.

I've posted pictures of the apartments on my blog here.

[tefler]

I like the pictures.

Thought of being an estate agent Ed?!

There are loads of buses from the campus gate into the city - the 38F starts here and terminates at the train station and takes maybe 25mins.

A taxi's faster obviously - there are plenty - and costs, for example, about 24RMB to get from here to Jing Liu Lu, where you'll find the best bars in the city.

[craig]

Guys, thank you both for your comprehensive answers. They have put my mind at ease. Those apartment pictures are great.

[craig]

Jun 15, 2011 20:29:18 GMT 8 tefler said:

There are loads of buses from the campus gate into the city - the 38F starts here and terminates at the train station and takes maybe 25mins.

One more question - do you mean from Hanghai Rd? I am a bit confused about the location(s) of the campus(es).

[tefler]

Ah, no. I mean from the gates of the south campus which is on Third Southern Circle and Huazhai Road. You can see it here on the Zhengzhou map.

HangKeDa has two campuses: North (older, slightly nearer the city centre) and South (newer).

Foreign teachers live and work at the South campus only. There was rumour of a teacher from Belarus at the north campus, but nobody's ever seen them!

You'd rarely go to the north campus, and anyway most of the College's activities and new students are at the south campus, or are being migrated there gradually.

Nonetheless, there are great transport links into the city proper from the south campus, as I explained above.

Hope that helps,

[craig]

Thanks, I was confused because the contract said Hanghai Rd, but on Google Maps it showed Huazhai Road, as you said.