Li rents a two-bedroom apartment with another lodger, paying a monthly rental of 3,000 yuan ($385).

"When I'm not busy, the anxiety of not owning a home starts eating away at me. Then I feel like I want to escape from Beijing," Li said.

For Li, housing is not something he associates with capital, rather it is about a sense of belonging. "A rented apartment is nothing but a reminder of your identity as a traveler in the city," he said, adding that he is unsure whether he can afford to settle down in Beijing before he turns 40 in seven years' time.

Two visitors at a housing exhibition discuss what they should buy. [newsphoto]

According to a Beijing-based business magazine, the average price of housing in Beijing was 8,000 yuan ($1,025) per square meter in 2006. The cost of a medium-sized (90-square-meter) apartment was 745,200 yuan ($95,500), including tax and other fees.

A typical 20-year mortgage would cost a new homeowner around 4,000 yuan ($513) a month at the current interest rate, accounting for almost 86 percent of the income of an average family of 2.8 people.

Many young people are renting apartments and some have to find flatmates to share the bills.

Wang Peng, a French editor with the Foreign Languages Teaching & Research Press, shares monthly rental of 2,000 yuan ($286) with his flatmate.

"The 1,000 yuan is only 25 percent of my monthly income," said Wang. "This way I have extra money for dating and other things."

But Wang, 26, from East China's Shandong Province, says he doesn't feel at home in his apartment. "I spend 1,000 yuan a month on this place, and it's no more than a hostel where I sleep and shower."

Wang is pessimistic about the property market. He doubts housing prices will drop within his range of 4,000 to 6,000 yuan ($513 to 769) per square meter in the near future.

"I'll give up on Beijing and go back to my home province if the house prices here keep rising like crazy."

Wang said that since he graduated from the China Foreign Affairs University last year with a master's in international relations, only one of his 108 classmates has bought an apartment and that was using his parents' life savings.

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