Hi B,
We are moving to Shekou this summer. We a planning on moving to Jingshan Villas. We have been in contact with them. The email address I used is [email protected]. There were some issues with the responses to my emails when I first started sending to Shenzhen. Email coming to me from Shenzhen couldn't get through to me. I had to switch to my hotmail account, and then everything was fine.
I received a list of available villas in Jingshan. There were about 15 or 20 villas on the list. Just to give you a rough idea of price, the cheapest was 14,000 RMB per month (148 square meter), and the most expensive was 41,700 per month (314 square meter). My husband was there last week having look around. You can rent a villa furnished or unfurnished (the prices listed above are furnished villas, you get a 5% to 10% discount for unfurnished). My husband also had a look at Monte Vista, which is just up the street from Jingshan. The houses and newer, bigger and more beautifully furnished than Jingshan, but higher priced (40,000 to 54,000). The facilities at Jingshan, especially the pool, are very nice. Monte Vista has an indoor pool and that's about it. Jingshan is more of an expat community, and Monte Vista is more of a local neighborhood. That's about all I know, and that's second hand info from my husband last visit.
SIS is located in Jingshan Villas. Right now we are planning to send our children there. Their ages are 12, 11, 8 and 3. I didn't look thoroughly at QSI, but the information I found seemed to indicate that most expats send their children to SIS. I am planning to go on a househunting trip in May, and I am most interested to check out the school. In any case, from what I understand, QSI is right across the street from Jingshan, so no matter where you rent you would have a choice of either one.
Right now, the big thing that we are trying to figure out is our transportation. We have big family, so this is a more complicated issue than it would be normally. At first we were going to bring our Land Cruiser with us, we even found a way to import it duty-free. Now it seems that if you are driving a car which you also own and get into some sort of accident, there is a danger of a huge liability. I don't know for sure if that is accurate, but we're hesitant to do it. We are now looking at public transportation, taxis, motor pool or hiring a car/driver. Do you know anything about any of these?
I hope this helped a little. I still have a lot of questions myself. Lists and lists of them.
Dogberta