Caught in the housing trap

The average price of a home in Beijing grew from 56,000 yuan a square meter in October to 63,000 yuan a square meter in March, an increase of 9 percent. SONG NIANSHENG/LONG WEI/CHINA DAILY, KUANG LINHUA/CHINA DAILY

One of her fellow senior students at the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth got a position there after graduating with a master's degree, but she quit recently and began working for Homelink, the largest real estate agent in China, selling houses, which "really shocked me," Zhu said.

"It's not easy for a student with only a master's degree to get a position there. She is outstanding, but the salary is too low, especially when you look at soaring housing prices."

For Zhu, continuing soaring housing prices point to class solidification in Beijing, meaning that the less well-off will be excluded.

"It has become normal that graduates from Peking and Tsinghua universities cannot afford a house in Beijing. There are many good universities in the city, but not every graduate can stay here. The bar is rising."

Those aged above 30 who have started thinking about starting a family but cannot afford a house will have to move to other cities, Zhu said.

Moving around

In 2015 Zhu Hangtian, now 33, resigned from his position as an administrative staff member at a university in Beijing to take up a position at a superconductivity research center at the University of Houston in Texas. However, the two-year contract for that position ends in October, and Zhu has begun to fret about his future.

"Perhaps I will try to stay in the US because housing in Beijing is just too expensive. There seems to be nothing you can do about it.

"In Houston, even on an ordinary kind of salary you can buy a house in several years and maybe another later, and I hope to live with my parents at least in the same city to look after them. But in Beijing it's completely impossible."

If he chooses to work in Beijing, then his parents may have to stay in their hometown in Henan province, he said.

Du Debin, a researcher at the School of Urban and Regional Science at East China Normal University in Shanghai, said the attraction of cities such as Beijing and Shanghai is their abundance of creativity, educational institutions, the opportunities for doing research, the availability of skilled people and progressive companies.

The resulting demand to live in those cities then helps push up the price of housing there. That benign cycle turns malignant as housing becomes unaffordable for many, and talented people are forced to live elsewhere.

"In that case, it turns out to be a good thing for the development of other cities, as with the economic integration in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei," Du said.

"But you can gauge whether housing prices in a city are too high by looking at how many skilled people are coming to it and how many are leaving. If more are coming than going, then housing prices are not too high."

Rental services

Unlike people like Gwen Zhu and Zhu Hangtian who are preoccupied with the bleak side of high housing prices, many young people from other cities who are living in Beijing are philosophical about the issue.

"I love movies, cooking and museums," said Liu Zhenhui, 30, who works for an internet company.

"A lot of other people in Beijing happen to love these things, too. So we form different hobby groups and you can meet like-minded people everywhere, which I think doesn't happen so much in other cities.

"I know I can't afford a house, so I just don't think about it. You might as well just enjoy life. But I do think house rental services in Beijing need to be better managed. Otherwise, our rights cannot be guaranteed."

Cecily Shi, 30, who works for a video game company in Beijing, said she had to move early because her landlord decided to sell the two-room apartment she rented.

Shi moved to Beijing from Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region 13 years ago to attend university and has worked in the capital since she graduated. She has seen many good friends leave Beijing, she said.

"If one day housing prices are so high that I cannot even afford to rent, I will leave Beijing, but I don't think this will happen."

Housing in her hometown of Nanning, capital of Guangxi, is not exactly cheap either, she said.

"But when I compare the two, Beijing is a city where I feel free," said Shi, who is single. "You can meet all kinds of people, make good friends and live however you like without being watched and pressured by parents and relatives."

Housing may be expensive, she said, but for many young people it has many attractions, such as tolerance, the possibility to compete on an equal footing with others, a colorful life and better job opportunities.

For Bill Li, 23, it was pollution rather than the cost of housing that was a big issue for him after he came to Beijing in 2014.

He came to the capital seeking an internship with an internet company and says he was ambivalent about the cost of housing.

"I don't care about housing prices at all. I feel no urgency to buy a house at all, especially in Beijing."

Eventually he decided to move to Hangzhou, Zheijiang province, after graduating because of a cough he could not shake off, he said.

"But if I got a chance, I'd love to go back to Beijing because of the great friends I've made there. ... If I get married I don't mind renting a house if my wife is OK with it. I know a couple whose rented house looks very cozy. So why not?"