well, with all this info I have to guess that we have a "management company" ie waters the flowers (and interesting to read what lemon wrote about the mgt company renting out illegal parking spots - id guess same happens us). And also would seem we do not have a residents committee at all, which is really wierd. So if the building needs a new roof, tough luck for the guy on the top floor? :)
In our case some water pipe was blocked on the street. all the apartments flooded one by one. meaning, first the guy on top had water flowing up out of his toilet. So he got some guy to clean the pipe (HIS pipe) for 150. Few hours later the next floor down got flooded, another 150. And so on every few hours until every apartment was flooded and derived of 150. Then somebody came and unclogged the pipe on the street. No serious damage, but wtf?

Root cause, cooking oil.

great post, thanks!

We have an apartment in KM and theres a wuye. I always thought the wuye was an owners association but seems like their only responsibility is watering the flowers and some cleaning.

So I'm trying to find out, to no avail so far, if theres usually anything like an owners association in apartment buildings in china/km. Like, for example, a group that can discuss renovations to shared utilities and facilities.
Any knowledge on this topic, anyone?

thinking about selling up and getting out for good. We're looking at a gross profit about

1million, but no idea what that amounts to after taxes, fees etc and how to get it out of china.

if we were to do the opposite, ie sell in europe, we'd realize a taxbill of about 30%. How does it work in China? I realize that any stories in this forum are anecdotal :)

"learning native Chinese" in my view is not a sufficient reason to educate a child in China. I am trilingual and in my youth it did allow me to apply for menial jobs in a few countries. fruit-picking and table-waiting etc. For professional and international life, really fluent English, even with a thick scottish accent, is infinitely more important than any number of tribal languages.

Anyhow, google and tencent already have instant universal translators on the way so languages are obsolete and only interesting for historical reasons.

education is a huge scam and a waste of money, the only exception is Hogwarts (my alma-mater). Otherwise, I'd say find the cheapest possible (ie move to europe if possible).

And i almost forgot the reason i began to write in the first place: connecting to an earlier post, i saw a tv reality-show from china where indeed the teachers (default profession in china for anyone who isnt capable of anything) took every opportunity to single out the foreign kid. That child clearly had behavioral issues and probably did not turn out to be a happy camper. He was a ginger, too, poor little fella.