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[Lotus Eater]

There are often comments made about living on campus vs living off campus in private apartments.

How genuinely different is it?

On campus, as far as I have experienced, seems to me to be a pretty good option.  FREE is always good!  Neighbours are usually other teachers, generally other FTs.  This can be a mixed bag, but so can neighbours in off campus 'public' housing - and on-campus FTs usually don't have crying babies or yapping dogs. 

The FAO is responsible for fixing everything (including basic stuff like new light bulbs) and this is good/bad depending on the FAO.  For off-campus, the building manager/owner is responsible for repairs and you may have to pay - and again the good/bad of this will depend on each manager/owner.

Many of the off-campus buildings are in compounds that have guards and gates and people need to be in by a certain time or the gates are locked, requiring alternative arrangements for coming in really late.  On-campus housing also has security guards at the gate of the uni, but in my experience they usually leave the gate open just enough for people to slip through - they have no desire to be woken up at 3:00am!! - and so that appears to me to be little different.

Students do know where you live, but it is rare for students to come uninvited or unannounced, and even though I have students in and out regularly, non-one has ever abused the flexibility.  Being on campus means no transport costs and a very short commute!  With new and old campus situations, the university will provide commute transport - so again, no cost.  Off campus generally means a commute and attendant costs.

On-campus living requires that you treat the apartment with respect - but that is the same with all rented accommodation.  All places will have neighbours complaining if you are too loud etc, so that seems to me to be the same.

So - where do the real differences come in that make people like/dislike the on/off campus situations?

[James the Brit]

For me it definitely has to be off-campus. I wouldn't want people knowing what time I come back to my flat, what I'm doing in my flat or students turning up. If I work somewhere, that doesn't mean that my manager owns me. I'm an adult, I don't need curfews (except if declared by the government).

[dragonsaver]

I live off campus, but JUST off campus.  I see the campus from my windows.  It takes me about 15 minutes to walk to class.

The apartment I am in is owned by a teacher ( a Dean I believe) and most of the apartments in the blocks are/were owned by Chinese teachers.  Apparently at my University they provide an apartment as part of the perks for the Chinese teachers.  Part of the salary that isn't a salary.  After a certain length of time, the teachers buy a bigger/better apartment and rent out the older one.

The staff at my university come and fix things that break and replace light bulbs - except I pay for the light bulbs.  When my toilet broke last year and they could no longer jury-rig a fix, the landlord bought a new toilet and had it installed.  No cost for me.

I believe many of the teachers who live off campus are also in similarly owned apartments.  I am not in a gated community so I can come and go as I want.  The teachers who live on-campus in the Foreign Teacher's apartments only have hot water for 2 hours twice a day.  Those apartments are much smaller than my apartment and only 5 minutes closer to the building we teach in.  

Some teachers want an even better apartment than I have but they have to pay for the additional cost of the apartment (the amount over 1,500RMB).

I am very happy with my apartment.

[Lotus Eater]

For me it definitely has to be off-campus. I wouldn't want people knowing what time I come back to my flat, what I'm doing in my flat or students turning up. If I work somewhere, that doesn't mean that my manager owns me. I'm an adult, I don't need curfews (except if declared by the government).

Curfews would suck - but how many of the on-campus dwellers have them?  I don't.  I come and go as I please. No-one knows (or cares) what I am doing in my apartment, as long as I am not trashing it or upsetting the other residents.

The staff at my university come and fix things that break and replace light bulbs - except I pay for the light bulbs.  When my toilet broke last year and they could no longer jury-rig a fix, the landlord bought a new toilet and had it installed.  No cost for me.

I believe many of the teachers who live off campus are also in similarly owned apartments.  I am not in a gated community so I can come and go as I want.  The teachers who live on-campus in the Foreign Teacher's apartments only have hot water for 2 hours twice a day.  Those apartments are much smaller than my apartment and only 5 minutes closer to the building we teach in.  

Some teachers want an even better apartment than I have but they have to pay for the additional cost of the apartment (the amount over 1,500RMB).

I am very happy with my apartment.

Not having water would suck as well.  Was your apartment arranged for you by the uni?  Is it part of the residential area they have to have for all of the 'old' teachers (ie those employed prior to 1995 that they have a never-ending contract of accommodation for), as well as newer teachers.  Most unis have residential areas for their teachers.  Ours includes on-campus residences (ie near the teaching buildings) for young teachers and I wouldn't want to live in them!  But immediately across the road there is the main uni residential area, with hospital, schools for children of staff, swimming pool etc.  I would also call this 'on-campus', because it is 'owned' and therefore managed by the uni - no-one else could live there without special permission.

[dragonsaver]

I think my apartment 'was' owned by the University but is now owned by the individual teachers who can rent or sell them.  Yes it is probably in the 'residential area'.  The university arranged for the apartment for me as it does for all the teachers - even those that want bigger and better ones.

[Schnerby]

For me it definitely has to be off-campus. I wouldn't want people knowing what time I come back to my flat, what I'm doing in my flat or students turning up. If I work somewhere, that doesn't mean that my manager owns me. I'm an adult, I don't need curfews (except if declared by the government).

I live on campus and I don't have a curfew. I just knock on the gate guards window and they quit playing cards to let me in.

Nobody knows what I do in my flat as long as I don't take a chainsaw to the walls or something crazy like that.

Students only turn up when they're invited (except two girls who are always welcome who text first anyway). There is a locked door to the building stopping anyone from coming directly to my door. They need to use the intercom to contact us and most students don't know the codes to reach each apartment.

My maintenance is taken care of. I have no noisy neighbours. Life here is good!

[babala]

It all depends on the school. The first two schools I worked at tried to enforce a 10pm curfew for all foreign teachers (it didn't work but they tried). At the first school I worked at they locked our building from the inside with a huge bike lock at 10pm. If you wanted in after that time you had to bang on the door and wake the 2 Chinese girls who worked as cleaners/general care of the building. There were 18 foreign teachers and it's not like we all hung out together so on an average Saturday night those girls could get woken up at least 6 or 7 times. The girls rebelled and they would leave you outside banging on the door for 45 minutes sometimes. That behaviour stopped when one of the more crazy teachers threw a chair through the window one night when they wouldn't open the door. The worst thing was ours was the ONLY building they did this to. Every other building was open.

My second school tried the curfew but I told them it was out of the question. At first I was to wake up this woman to open the locked gate around my building but after 2 weeks she complained so they gave me a key. The guards stopped the male teachers though if they tried to bring in a girl. I however could bring my boyfriend over with no problem. The guards did try to chat him up about our sex life though

On-campus I have had people enter my apartment without my permission. One day I came home to 2 workers and one of their girlfriends sitting on my bed watching my TV. Those girls I used to wake up to get in would sneak into our rooms and snoop around occasionally. The good thing about on-campus was that you just had to call the FAO to get something fixed although my old landlord was there within the hour if something went wrong.

It all depends on the school but you do need to ask many questions beforehand. I know some here have said they can't imagine it happening but out of the 3 schools I have lived at, I've had problems at two of them. Forget Meatloaf, 2 out of 3 is bad (for those who get that reference ).

[decurso]

Babala, I would situations like the one you described totally unacceptable. I heard about a uni in Baoding that did the bicycle lock thing, and I was baffled at how anyone could tolerate that. Never mind the obvious inconvenience to both parties, but if a fire breaks out?

 Our north and southwest gates are never locked. Even during the Olympics I could come and go as I pleased, although I wasn't allowed to have visitors from mid July through mid September. It was the same at all Olympic venues, though.

 My home life has a very low profile as far as the school and my neighbours are concerned. The guards don't gossip or for that fact even know my name or which building I live in. The landlady is hardly ever around and nobody from the uni ever really comes to my apartment. I can basically do whatever I want.

 My last apartment they locked the gate at midnight. I asked for a key and got one later that day. I would never accept a curfew or being locked in/out of my home.

[babala]

decurso, you're lucky about the gossip thing. I had a few good guy friends and we used to hang quite a bit. My boyfriend had been away for a month and when he came back he came over to my place. We were walking through the gate and the guards made a comment about how he must be "her new one". Needless to say that killed the romance out of that homecoming as I had to spend most of the night explaining 

[The Local Dialect]

I prefer living off campus. Right now my school pays for my off-campus (right next to campus, but still not on campus) apartment. For private apartment complexes, the whole locking the gates thing was a lot more common 5 years or so ago than it is now. When I first came to China I had several apartments, on and off campus, that tried to lock the gates on you at a certain time, usually requiring you to either climb the gate or bribe the guard. At one of my apartments the guard was a real dick and started greasing the top of the gate, I guess so that we'd fall and break our necks if we tried to climb! My roomates and I got into a huge shouting match with him the night we discovered the grease, which eventually ended up with the police coming down. Moved out soon after that.

However, that was the last apartment I've had where the gates were locked at a certain time, and that was back in 2005. I like living off-campus mainly because I like choosing my own place and having options. I don't like my employers knowing where I am at all times -- for instance, the FAO or other Chinese teachers checking up on you when you call in sick, or being aware of how late you stayed out the night before. Since I tend to stay in one city and not move from place to place too much, I also like my apartment to be a bit more permanent. I'd rather not necessarily have to move out if I decide I don't want to renew my contract, as that's just one more hassle that would possibly keep me tied to a less than ideal situation.

Finally, I have a family, and on-campus apartments tend to be smaller and not as well suited to having kids running around (I would be the FT with the crying baby that'd you'd complain about in fact).

Mostly though I just like my privacy.

[Ruth]

Currently I live in on-campus housing.  It's an apartment in a block where all the FTs are now housed.  As Lotus Eater said, free is good.  My home is quite far from the student dorms and I've not had an issue with students showing up unannounced.  I don't believe anyone monitors my comings and goings.  I have no curfew.  The gate to the uni is a bar that rises and falls over the entry road.  If I were walking in, there would be no problem.  Driving in, the bar magically opens, we wave at the guard and go on.

[Raoul F. Duke]

Conditions do vary a lot from place to place, for sure.
Barring such horrors as curfews or utilities limits, for me it mainly comes down to privacy. Like others above, I don't want my employers or my students knowing all my coming and going, or who my company is and how long they stay. I like to pick who knows my address. I like my work and my home to be in two separate and distinct places. And I definitely don't want some staff member pounding frantically on my door at 7am because some other teacher called in sick and they want me to roll out of bed and come cover their class.

[contemporarydog]

I lived in both, although not strictly as the off-campus apartment was also owned by the school.

Campus life

Upsides

If you're in a shared 'Foreign Teacher House', you'll likely make a lot more friends than any other way.  I was in such a house, and after we had CD Jr, I was very glad of it, as I couldn't really go out larging it because of the baby, but there were still lots of people around.

Very short 'commute' to work (unless you have the bad luck I had and find you're being sent to the 'branch school' and have to get up at 7.10 to catch the school bus. 

No bills. This may or may not apply to an off-campus apartment.  Depends on the school.

Guaranteed free internet.

You've got the entire school grounds as your hideaway at weekends.  Our school was always empty on Sat/Sun and I really dug this, especially in the hot summer months, could go out and lie on the grass on the training field.

It's not necessarily smaller accommodation, though, the special family flat our school gave us was absolutely huge.  You could skateboard around the front room.

Downsides

You will get no privacy.  I remember the school headteacher coming to see us in our upstairs flat just totally randomly and unexpected.

You might have on-campus internet, but check whether this is really your own internet or if you are sharing the school connection.  If it's the latter, it will be frustratingly slow during the day and may well get switched off in the evenings.  This happened to me before and they denied it for at least a year before they finally got ADSL just for the FTs' house.

Curfews as others have said.  At my first place they said we had to be in by 10.30 and couldn't knock on the gate.

Luckily my mate and I found that we could go out, then come back later and just climb over, but it's hardly the most desirable thing is it? 

Office hours.  I know that technnically a school can have office hours whether the teacher lives in Campus or off it, but if someone's on campus, it's much easier than if they're off campus to go blundering up to their door at 8.35am because they aren't in the office yet (even though their first class is in the afternoon).  The office will invariably provide little to do while in the office, though, and if you pass the time yourself (and it's blatant) they'll tell you not to do it.

Off campus:

Upside:

You obviously get tons more privacy.  Because ours was school-owned, we could still get things fixed when we wanted it, but they never, ever just turned up at our doorstep, in fact the only school people to ever visit my flat were the maintenance people

Because of that, it will be much easier if you want to invite students or groups of students for lessons.

Downside:

It might be on the 9th floor or something.  Schools in China are notorious cheapskates.  My Dalian place was on the 7th floor (in Chinese/American, 6th floor in British).

Lonely at times.  If you've got a good social life going on, then fine, but if you're like me and don't get much chance to get out, on campus living can be good, and feels a bit like being back at Uni at times.

Bills.  Can add up if you aren't careful

No free internet (although you won't have any connectivity problems)

[Schnerby]

All the FTs in my building have normal door locks then one of those metal thingies so you can put a padlock on it. I do that when I am out for the day so maintenance etc can't get into my room. They never have, but I guess someone has a key.

I'm glad I live on campus. I can have students come and go (at my discretion) and because there is a thick door downstairs stopping people getting inside the building we can also hide away if necessary.

I have no office hours or anything. Nobody bothers me and maintenance have only came when the FAO has made an appointment with me.

I have no curfew. I wouldn't stand for that.

It wouldn't be ideal for everyone, but I like it.

[Lotus Eater]

Downstairs has a big door with bells and anyone coming to visit has to ring the bell for the apartment they want to visit.  Then my door is also a 'bank vault' type, with a spy hole, so I can check who is there before I open it.

No curfews, and even if the security gates are almost closed at night, they are still wide enough for a person to walk through.

No teacher or Department head etc has ever rocked up at any time to ask for extra classes etc.  If someone is sick here, the class has that lesson off, and generally the teacher makes it up another week - so there is never a change in the timetable.

The FAO will come in if I am not there for maintenance, but will always call and ask permission first - same as with their yearly safety checks. 

No office hours, so no problems like that.

I have had no problems with privacy and frequently have people over to stay - mixed ages and genders.  I have friends living in private apartments and they tell horror stories about their neighbours, and they also figure that the neighbours keep a pretty good eye on what they do.  Foreigner gossip among the locals is good gossip!! 

There is always one FAO person 'on duty' at night, on weekends and during the holidays - even if all they ever do is sleep and watch TV.  This person is available in case of any hassles with equipment, and for the time when keys get forgotten.  It's embarrassing to wake someone late at night, but I always know that someone will be able to help if I rushed out without my keys.   

No rent to pay, no security deposits to pay out and later to argue over.  Equipment provided including computer, laser printer, furniture, bedding etc.  Definitely a perk of working in China!