This document provides money-saving tips from expats and locals living in Beijing. It discusses finding affordable housing outside of the city center, shopping second-hand for furniture, buying seasonal produce, and using sites like Taobao to find bargains. Specific tips included living an hour outside the city to save on rent, having furniture recovered instead of replacing it, making foods from scratch instead of buying pre-made, and setting a strict budget to save money each month. The goal is to help expat families live affordably in Beijing.

1. GWhile jiaozi and pirated DVDs are em-
barrassingly cheap in Beijing, many
living expenses here are surprisingly
high. Rent rates climb every year, international
school tuition costs pile up and that imported
cereal your kids love is three times the price
it is back home. Expat families can sometimes
hurt the most since they don’t have the lan-
guage or cultural skills to find money-saving
deals. The Chinese are known as prudent savers,
so I sought out the advice of expat and Chinese
families alike in order to give readers a well-
rounded view on how to save money in Beijing.
Beat rising rent rates
Rent is one of the biggest expenses for most
expats in Beijing, but it doesn’t have to be that
way. In Yizhuang, a southeastern town in Dax-
ing district, you’ll find many different standards
of living, but the residents all understand that
being located outside of the Fifth Ring Road
gives them a major price advantage. In one ritzy
Yizhuang development “there are many doctors
and even a movie star who live here,” shares
Melody Jung, a Chinese native and friend of one
of the residents who owns a huge, multimillion-
renminbi home. Her friend’s husband travels
an hour and a half to his job in a more central
district in Beijing so he could save on the price
of his home. In another neighborhood down
the road, Chinese local and mother of one, Eva
Zhang, says, “Since there are five seats in a car,
four other people will ride with someone to
their job in CBD, Chaoyang or another district.
They’ll share the petrol fee.” In Eva’s neigh-
borhood, a 90-square-meter, furnished, two-
bedroom apartment costs ¥2,400 per month.
Deals can be found as low as ¥1,600 for a two
bedroom and ¥1,000 for a one bedroom. This
isn’t feasible for everyone, but if you already
have a car or you already have to travel far for
work, looking for an apartment outside of the
Fourth or Fifth Ring might give you a major
price advantage.
If you live in your company’s housing
complex, staying with the company could result
in rent reduction. Lily Min’s husband, Joseph,
has worked with his company for eight years;
the price of their mostly furnished one bed-
room apartment is ¥800 per month. That’s half
the cost from when they originally moved in
several years ago and before the births of their
two children. If your company doesn’t currently
offer this reward for long-term employees, you
could ask them to consider it as part of your
contract renewal package.
Frugality with furniture and more
“When I first got here, I had no idea where to
shop, so I bought a lot of things from IKEA,”
Bethany says. “I have since learned my lesson
and try to purchase everything locally.” Betha-
ny has had her couch for six years. When it was
worn out, she found a fabric vendor at a local
market and “was able to get the couch recovered
for about a quarter of the cost of buying a new
couch.” Since sewing is one of her hobbies, she
enjoyed making new pillow covers to match the
refurbishing work. As for me, I personally didn’t
like the couch options available at IKEA or new
Chinese furniture markets, and I wasn’t willing
to pay for something I barely liked. My husband
and I found a three-piece couch set for ¥700 at a
secondhand furniture market near Happy Valley
Amusement Park. The set needs to be recovered
like Bethany’s couch, but even that will come at
a fraction of the cost of three new IKEA pieces.
Lily agrees. “Buying furniture from a second-
A Kuai Saved
The best money-saving tips
from expats and locals alike
FAMILY
42 | November 13 - December 10

2. hand furniture store can be a good choice,” she
says. “It’s easy to find a secondhand market.”
Lily suggests that a good Chinese friend will be
willing to help expats find a secondhand market
in their specific Beijing district.
As avid Taobao shoppers, Eva and I have
both found success shopping for furniture on
the popular e-commerce store. “I bought this
piece of furniture for [the price of] shoes. It
wasn’t expensive to buy,” Eva points to a tall
cabinet that has plenty of storage space. I pur-
chased bright and artistic-looking chairs that
could have come from IKEA, but cost a mere
¥100 a piece. Aaron Brock, a U.S. citizen and
father of four, takes a different approach to fur-
niture. “Furniture can be rather toxic, literally,
and one must use discretion when shopping;
cheaper is not necessarily better, especially
when it’s about our babies,” he says. He loves
IKEA for the safety, practicality and availability.
He says the key to shopping at IKEA is entering
the building from the exit door.
“Go straight to the discounted,
reduced price section that’s
near the checkout downstairs—
items can be had for 30-80
percent off,” he says. He took
this same approach of safety for
his children when he bought
more Swedish Blueair units,
but some might prefer the do-
it-yourself approach, as found
on the Smart Air website (www.
smartairfilters.com). Smart
Air says its latest product, the Cannon (¥450),
proved through tests to be a better air filter
than even the Blueair unit.
Bethany and Eva purchased bread ma-
chines in order to save money on groceries,
while Bethany includes an immersion blender,
food processor and crock pot just simply be-
cause it makes food preparation easier. “Also,
to help with savings in groceries, a deep freez-
er will be your best friend,” Bethany says. To
save money on these appliances, make sure to
utilize a special feature on Taobao that allows
you to compare prices. Hover your mouse over
any product picture. An opaque orange bar
will appear at the bottom of the product pic-
ture; click on the characters on the right (找相
似) to compare with similar products and click
on the left characters (找同款) to compare the
exact same product. Alternatively, wait until
two months from the end of school semesters
to search bj.58.com, Beijing’s buy and sell
Facebook groups, Yahoo! groups and maga-
zine websites for listings posted by relocating
Beijing residents.
Kuai-wise for seasonal produce
Once you’ve found deals on your furniture and
appliances, use these tips to continue to save
on food. Melody and her husband set a very
small expenditure budget of ¥1,000 per month.
It becomes almost like a challenge to be able to
keep food purchases under this amount. “We
eat breakfast and lunch at our companies, and at
home we eat just soups for dinner,” she says. Of
course, when they invite company to their home,
they’re generous. “But we’re simple; we don’t
need to eat many different dishes by ourselves,”
she says. Her tip for foreigners is “buy vegetables
and fruit in season.” Aaron agrees, “My family
likes to buy locally grown, fresh veggies and sea-
sonal fruit from the local market. The more you
‘must’ have that certain Western item, the more
you’ll pay to eat—providers of these items can
be hard to locate, and expensive to buy.” Aaron
pays ¥10 for fresh pasta to feed his family of six.
When I decide I need a Western item because
of convenience or nostalgia, I typically turn to
Taobao. I’ve found inexpensive Italian spices,
tortillas and specialty pastas I can’t get from my
district’s local markets.
Bethany says the best thing for her
budget is the local farmer’s
market. She uses recipe
websites to learn how to
make foods from scratch;
foods which would have
been much more expensive
at Jenny Lou’s or Sam’s Club.
She can make stock soups,
base soups for casseroles, to-
mato paste, spaghetti sauce,
salsa and barbecue sauce. “A
can of salsa will generally
cost about ¥25 on a good
day,” she says. “I can buy all the ingredients
to make enough salsa for four cans of salsa
for only ¥15.” She uses her deep freezer to
store stock soups, salsa and blanched green
beans, bought in season of course. “A can
of green beans will cost you ... maybe ¥12-
15,” she says. “[The same amount] will buy
you more green beans than your family will
want to eat in a week.” She notes that spices
and seasonings like bay leaves, peppercorn,
whole clove, powdered ginger and cinnamon
sticks are available at local grocery stores.
When a recipe calls for ground cinnamon,
I use my cleaned electronic coffee grinder
to quickly chop up the cinnamon sticks for
a powder more potent than I can find in the
States.
Costco and other online tips
For Aaron, one of the first hurdles to living
in China was figuring out how to shop on
JD.com and Taobao. “[You’ll] need someone
to help you shop and buy initially, as setting
up an account with your card, and navigating
the items ... can be rather tedious and time
consuming,” he says. I like to recommend
Rosewe.com since it allows me to pay with
PayPal and the company ships from China; it
also targets Westerners so the clothing style
is much more similar to styles back home. It’s
an easier online shopping experience to start
with before moving onto sites specifically
for the Mandarin-reading consumer. Eva has
a stockpile of Chinese websites she turns to
for searching out the best deals on makeup,
clothing and random trinkets. She especially
likes Jumei.com for makeup: “The quality of
makeup is very good on this site,” she says.
Eva’s husband, Terry, warns, “It can be more
expensive to shop at supermarkets, like Wu-
mei, than buying the same things online.” I
use multiple Chinese websites to price check
items I’m unsure about before I shop for
things locally.
I may be avoiding supermarkets and dis-
count clubs more often now that Costco began
an online store through Alibaba and TMall
without the normal membership fees. Their of-
ficial store, listed at costco.tmall.com, only had
84 products at press time, but their product list
is likely to grow once Chinese buyers become
familiar with the Costco brand. The product I’m
most excited about is the Kirkland Signature
House Blend coffee; at ¥52.37 per 500 grams, it's
cheaper than any other imported coffee online.
Frugality is reality
When it comes time to spend money, it’s im-
portant to remember to use the same money-
saving tactics every time you need to purchase
an item or service. “[My husband] Mark checks
the prices of what we’re going to buy every-
where, from several different markets and plac-
es before he buys,” Melody says. When Melody
has the urge to splurge, Mark reminds her: “I’m
not a prince; you are not a princess. This is real
life.” Eva relies on humorous mottos like: “If
you want to save money, don’t leave your home.
Spend your time at free parks. Go grocery shop-
ping when you’re full; you’ll spend less money.”
Her husband Terry pipes up, “Set a budget and
stick to it!”
To prove their worth as money-saving
moguls, the interviewees were willing to
share their financial successes anonymously.
One family was able to save to purchase an
apartment in Beijing while giving both moth-
er-in-laws a combined total of ¥66,000 per
year. Another family purchased a ¥200,000
home in another city, with half of the mort-
gage paid. To date they have saved an ad-
ditional ¥50,000. Most impressively, one of
the families has saved ¥620,000. My family’s
goal is to pay off all student debt, now at
¥310,000, within two years. It’s completely
possible if we continue to save money by fol-
lowing these tips.
When I decide I
need a Western
item because
of convenience
or nostalgia,
I typically turn
to Taobao
Vanessa Jencks
is a writer and a
mother of two
Beijing Parents Kids | 43