Physical Fitness Gym*** in Shanghai is running a promotion where you get a 2-month membership for just 59RMB.  When I heard about it, I thought:

•    Either the gym is going to be horrendously filthy and crowded or
•    There are going to be about 100 hoops I have to jump through to get that deal.

Wrong on both counts.

The deal… How to get it

Like most things in China, there’s the way you are told things are and the way things actually are.

•    The advertised end date for this promotion is April 15.  But if you call in to the gym, you are told April 30.  So, sign up sooner rather than later because no one can really say when this gravy train will come to a shuddering halt.
•    Initially I was told I had to have special vouchers to register.  Then I heard that I had to have a QQ account/number (I still have no idea what QQ is).  Then I heard that I had to be able to tuck both feet behind my ears and hum the Marseillaise backwards while whittling out a banjo with my front teeth.  None of these is true.  What you definitely need is your passport and a little bit of your inner actress (for when they ask you why you don’t have all the other stuff).  Be prepared to burst into tears, or at least display a quivering lower lip if it looks like things are not going your way.

Here’s the deal:

• Two months unlimited use of the gym facilities except between 17:30 and 20:00 on weekdays.
• You have to bring your ID (passport) along with you each time you come to work out.

How I went about it:
I had called ahead and been told by one of the trainers that it was basically a free-for-all.  He said as long as I was a new member and brought along my passport, I could sign up.  But when I got there the girl at reception asked me for my QQ ID or voucher, which, of course, I didn’t have.

When I got to the gym, the two guys who were signing up ahead of me also had neither of these.   One was a local who said he’d bring his tomorrow and was allowed to sign up right away.  One was a laowai who got so frustrated with the language barrier that he jacked it in and left.  Not me.  Not for under 1RMB a day.  I stuck it out.

The easiest thing would be to just get your Chinese friend to sign you up for a QQ account if you can’t do it yourself.  Or, if you are feeling particularly rebellious, you can just make up an 8-digit number, which is what I hear a QQ account ID is.  I know someone who went down this route and it worked for her. But they could check the validity of the QQ number while you are standing there and that would be pretty embarrassing for you to be caught in a big fat lie.  Like some sort of big fat liar.  So avoid the deception.  Go instead for the emotional manipulation and be prepared to weep like a little girl if 59RMB over two months seems like too good a deal to pass up.

I admit to going to Physical with some trepidation.  The gym got a solid kicking from City Weekend’s reviewers.   But having said that, how seriously can you take someone who writes in all caps?  Not very, I say.

The Good:

• It was pretty clean.  There were cleaners in the bathrooms and in the workout hall while I was there and I have definitely seen much, much worse.  The toilets were also ok.  The treadmill and the elliptical trainer both felt sticky on the grips (ew!), but, overall, I was pleasantly surprised
• The gym is huuuuuuuge.  There are dozens of every type of equipment.  I was just interested in cardio and stopped counting when  I passed 20 elliptical trainers.
• It was only a third full when I got there – around lunchtime.  So that is a sweet time to go.
• Everything inside is in Chinese and English.

The Bad

• The address that they advertise via Guanxi and local websites is, at best: misleading and at worst, downright wrong.  When you call to ask how to get there, the girl who answers the phone tells you to ask someone on the street. What?!
• It is very, very hard to find a) because they have done a lousy job of signposting it and b) there is loads of construction going on there at the moment.
• It is really warm in the workout area.  And we’re only in Spring.  They’ll have to amp up the aircon once the temperatures soar in summer
• I didn’t see any exercise balls or floor mats so the warm-down, ab-crunch-fakeout was a bit disappointing.
• Not only is getting to the gym kind of confusing, the gym layout itself could do with better signage.  For example there are two receptions (one where you get your key and one where you do the admin stuff) .  Both receptions have people on the phone and receptionists fiddling around with thick reams of paper.   If you don’t know you are in the wrong line, you will wait for what seems like ages before someone tells you where you should be.

How to get there.

Get out of Exit 2 of Huangpi Nan Lu Station and walk down HuaiHai Zhong Lu in the direction of all the construction.

The advertised address is:

1/F, South Tower, Hongkong Plaza, 283 Huaihai Zhong Lu (nr the cnr of Huangpi Nan Lu).

This is not right,  They are on the 3rd floor and the entrance is actually on Songshan Lu (i.e. turn left at the first set of traffic lights after the intersetion of Huai Hai and Huangpi).  When I went today there were loads of building trucks and workers unloading large chunks of cardboard.  They were also blocking the entrance that is just a large doorway (like a garage doorway) with a sign that says “To Cargo Loading Area”.  That is where you need to go in while construction is underway but you won’t see this sign until you are standing pretty much right under it.  So instead, look out for the stop for Bus 109.  Once you are at that stop (on Songshan Lu), you are right next to the entrance.  It is on you right if you are facing HuaiHai Lu.

***This information is based on my visit to the Hong Kong Plaza branch of Physical Fitness.  All references to directions etc. are accurate at the time of writing due to the construction that is currently underway.

Five tips to help you hold on to your sanity and get a fair deal in the Shanghai property search.

1. The estate agent doesn’t care what kind of apartment you want.

This can be the most frustrating thing to come to terms with if you aren’t expecting it. So expect it. You’ll tell him:

• your budget
• the location you want to live in
• he number of bedrooms and bathrooms you expect,
• the minimum square measurements you want
• even the street you want to live on

He, with commission on the brain and a total disregard for your spec in his heart, will proceed to take you on a wild, incredibly hot and rage-inducing goose chase, showing you everything but what you actually asked for.
The way round this: Don’t blindly agree to meet the agent at his office so he can lead you a merry dance. Over the phone, ask him for precise details of each property he wants to show. If they are not exactly what you are after, don’t bother leaving the air-conditioned sanctity of home – he can call you back when he’s found something that meets your criteria.

2. Expat-focused sites AREN’T a good resource for good deals on housing

The apartments advertised on City Weekend, Emoo and Craigslist are invariably pitched at above market value. While these sites, and others like them, might offer ease of search (English listings, English-speaking agents) that’s the only thing they have over Chinese sites or walking into agencies. If you go the local route:

• you will get a much wider range of choice
• you can be a lot more promiscuous in your search by engaging several agents to look for a place for you at the same time
• you can get the local rate; not the you’re-not-Chinese-so-I’m-going-to-assume-you’re-loaded rate

How to do this: A combination of Dict.cn and Google Translate are all you need to get the ball rolling. Without being able to read a single Chinese character, you can still pinpoint addresses that have apartments in your price range by doing simple searches for the street or district name and the Chinese word for either “rent” or “apartment”. Then translate the results into your language. Of course, setting up the appointments is a little trickier. Trickier but still do-able. When my sister first arrived in China and I couldn’t get time off work to look for a place, she had to do it. She’d been in Shanghai about three weeks when I wrote down key phrases for her on a sheet of paper which she produced at each agency she visited. That’s how we found our last place. And, the apartment hunting lexis is tiny – you pick up the key phrases in no time.

3. Don’t be seduced by subway-adjacent properties.

They’re much more expensive than those only served by buses and not at all worth it. For a city that likes to bill itself as a kick-ass metropolis, Shanghai’s metro shuts down at a ridiculously early hour (10pm on average). Instead, find a property near the end/beginning of a popular bus route. One that passes by at least one of your most frequently visited locations.
How to do this – Set aside a weekend to just ride random buses. It’s a great way to explore the city, it’s cheap and it’s useful for harvesting estate agent telephone numbers as you ride through areas you wouldn’t mind living in. As you go, you’ll also learn a lot about the amenities – markets, gyms, supermarkets, bars, restaurants – and figure out what routes serve which subway stations.

4. Be demanding.

This is not the same as being rude or unyielding but there are certain extras that you should go ahead and ask for. It’ll go one of two ways: the landlord will say no (and you’ve lost nothing), or he’ll say yes, and you win. 50-50. I’ll take those odds. I’m a bit of a hoarder so I’m always keen for extra storage space – bookshelves, night stands, laundry baskets, coat racks, shoe stands etc. Right now is a particularly good time to be up front about your requests; it’s definitely a renter’s market.

5. Bargain like you mean it.

Not like it’s an annoying preamble you can’t wait to get out of the way. You see this all the time when you go to the markets: people paying the second price that they are quoted. As they fish out 500RMB for a faux-leather handbag with some historic dignitary’s face emblazoned across it, you hear the self-congratulation dripping from their voices: “Ooh, that’s only $X in real money.” Egads.

If the landlord’s haggling over that last 300RMB, tell him that the 3600RMB he’ll lose over a year by renting it out to you at your price is less than the thousands he’ll lose if the property stays vacant even a single month more. That’s logical and fair. Most people respond to that.