The agent who helped me find my apartment called me up one afternoon and asked for my help. It seemed that she had another client who was considering buying a 8.3 million RMB apartment near where I lived and she needed to take some pictures of the place. Well, being China, she wasn’t allowed to go inside. She needed a client who looked legit so that the complex would open its door to her. Crazy, huh? So, my instructions were to not speak any Chinese and just look around like a “real rich man”.

There’s not much else to the story other than I checked the place out and snapped a few pictures. I can’t imagine spending that much money for an apartment. Granted, it was very nice, but it wasn’t 8.3 million RMB nice. But, this is Shenzhen and prices here are literally “crazy”, as many locals say.

Another interesting thing about searching for apartments was the guards who take help to secure the grounds of each apartment. They would always tell us, “OK, you have 15 minutes to look around!” Apparently, if agents abused this, they’d be put on a banned list and not be allowed to show any more apartments. When I asked why, the reply was, “Oh, they are afraid that maybe we damage something or do something bad.” I totally don’t get that either. When I mentioned that all agents have their ID cards and asked why they can’t use that, my agent just replied, “This is so easy to make! The bad guy will just make a fake one!”