pros and cons about beijing!!!

[cloritagirl]

hello please tell me the pros and cons about beijing for i am moving there and i have never been. i'm concerned about how its like and are there any good tennis places and the homes and food and air and water. please if you know any thing about beijing write back ASAP.
thank you

[skittles5510]

just came back from a vacation in china, which included Beijing as my first stop. And this is what I think of Beijing: pollution quite bad, lots of people on bikes, crazy drivers, cheap and good food, hardly anyone speaks English!! Wouldn't recommend water or ice; always drink bottled water or specifically for drinking.

[hongkong7]

quick impressions

bastard taxi drivers

great cheap food /great farmstyle yoghurt(never tried the melamine flavour though)

lots of nice cafes/coffee shops

Cantonese language less useful there than English even-would pay to learn Mandarin quickly if living there

great clubs/ nightlife -better than hk

[Rilakuma]

We just moved to Hong Kong from 1 year post in Beijing. I would say Hong Kong is 1000 times better than Beijing. We lived in Beijing for 1 year and 4 months, to a point that we were counting days to the airplane departure from Beijing. And we were willing to drop everything, breakup apartment lease, etc. to get the hell out of there.
To name the few, air pollution , water pollution, noisy pollution from construction and traffic, crowded population, poisoned food, fake products, bad service, crazy driving cars, controled media and internet, etc.
local food and goods are cheap, but the quality is very uncertain. I bought imported goods most of the time, but they are very expensive. I have to pay the extra for the peace of mind.
forget about outdoor sports, unless you want to play tennis in air pollution. picture that you breath lots of air with heavy metal/dust while you exercise. That would cancel out any health benefit you might get from exercise. When I live there, I only do indoor exercise in gym. It makes me miss California so much.
The only good thing in Beijing is the housing cost is half or even the third of housing cost in Hong Kong. For half of the rent, I can live in a very nice apartment in a very nice area.
I visited Beijing for few days before we move there. It was fun to go sightseeing in Beijing. But when we moved there, lived there, it is completely a different story.
If you have further question about living in Beijing, you can ask me.

[Rilakuma]

I forgot to mention a very important thing.
If you work in China and your employer doesn't have tax equalization policy, you will be taxed China income tax.
If your annual income over certain amount(RMB 800,000, about USD 117,000), the tax rate would be 45%.
In our case, we have to pay both China tax(45%) and US tax. OUCH!
Whenever I see the bright new Beijing airport, subway, Chinese space mission, goverment officials drive by in expensive cars,etc., the only thing I think is "hey! that's my tax dollars!"
Also, we got paid in USD. with the US currency weaken day by day, our buying power was getting lower and lower....and the inflation was getting higher and higher.....especially those imported goods(with heavy duty and increasing transportation fuel cost)
In a word, I don't think I was financially better off when I lived in China.