Advice on quantity of things to take to China

[fenlan]

As some of you know, I am planning to start a course in China in time for the March semester - and I received an offer on my house in England today, freeing up some cash to take with me. Now, I love book, and have many hundreds of books, and cannot survive for a year in China without my books on Russian, Finnish, Swedish, Irish, Old Norse, Ukrainian, Afrikaans etc - it is just a hobby to read them - but I think I might alarm a Chinese university by turning up for a one semester course with 2-3 crates of books. I am going to leave most of my things in England, but I need to take 2-3 crates of books if I am going to spend 10 years or so in China. Do you think I could take that much? Or would the customs people baulk at letting it through? Should I take 2 suitcases first off, and stay in a dorm for 2 weeks, and then move to a flat, and send the rest by cargo freight, by which time I would have a spare room to put it? Also, it is cheap, I think, to freight stuff to China. But what about the return journey in 10 years time? Is it still the case that flights bought in China are inexorbitantly expensive? Does that apply to cargo freight? Any advice on this will be very gratefully (and politely ) received.

[gato]

How about just first shipping over just what you'd likely use in the first year or so, then ship the rest later when you're sure you're going to stay in China for the longer term. That's what I'm doing. I shipped about 80 books through US postal a few weeks ago.