
Life Inside Hong Kong’s ‘Coffin Cubicles’ - johnchristopher
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/proof/2017/07/hong-kong-living-trapped-lam-photos/
======
ksec
In Hong Kong, Currently living in one of those ( Slightly larger ones, 90 Sq
Feet ). Ask me Anything.

P.S: " almost no developable land remaining" is utter Bull Shit. I wouldn't
say we have lots of land, but more then enough to solve the crisis we are in.
If the government thinks we are in a crisis anyway. We have a dysfunctional
government, and real estate monopoly controlled by a few billionaires. And
then there are lots of complicated Chinese Political power frighting going on
behind the scene.

~~~
trevyn
\- Do you personally see your living situation as a problem or lifestyle
choice? There are some other comments here that if the price is reasonable,
this doesn't actually seem like a terrible way to live for a minimalist.

\- Is noise an issue? I see privacy and physical space as competing needs --
I'd rather have a small private space than a large shared space. (open-plan
office, anyone? ;) If sound insulation is poor, I could see that negatively
affecting the sense of privacy.

\- What's up with the units built out of metal in the photos? That seems like
an unusual choice of residential building material.

~~~
ksec
For me Definitely it is a problem. If you are taller then 6Ft, good luck
finding a place that you dont have to curl up to sleep, or you paid a little
bit more to find a larger place with longer then 6 fts leg room.

For some reason in 2017 we still dont have mini hot water tank that could auto
heat up the water at selected time. We have to wait 20 - 30 min getting the
boiler to boil the water before taking a shower. And it is a problem when you
have to work 10 to 12 hours+ for 6 days a week. And if you are in cold Winter,
your shower will only last 3 to 5 min. But they say having a long hot shower
is simply a luxury. At least you dont have to share the bath room.

You dont get decent Internet connection either. So definitely no fibre optics
despite it is very cheap in HK. You could get a 1Gbps FTTH connection at
~$30USD. Or if you dont need the speed, a 200Mbps for ~$20USD.

But if you live in Cublics or Rooms / Flat, you are lucky if you could get
ADSL, because some Landlord now dont even wire the telephone line. And the
6Mbps Connection, ( Speed depending on quality of the copper ) cost $30 - $40
or higher depending on location. And because they are old and poorly
maintained you get heavy drop connection every time there is heavy rain or
typhoon.

So if you want a decent / fast Internet connection to have at least ANY form
of entertainment, like Youtube, you need to get unlimited LTE connection which
cost $50+.

But they say fast Internet connection is a luxury, you dont need that.

Since those / some Cubics are built in old buildings some with restaurants at
ground floor, you are bound to get big fat mouse, insects or more then usual
cockroach to visit your home.

But they say having a insect free home is luxury.

Noise is definitely an issue. You can hear your next's bed room TV if they are
loud, and worst is properly your fridge sitting right next to you making a
grin noise every once in a while. Small Rooms and Flats are better, but
Cubicles, ( those make with wood and metal ) privacy is non existence.

No idea on the usage of metal. But It isn't "residential building material",
they are just metal cube or separators within a larger concrete room.

------
finolex1
One of the main contributors to this state of affairs is geography: Less than
25% of Hong Kong consists of built up area, the rest is hilly and often
reserved for parks or nature reserves.

Most people are squeezed into a small area on the island and Kowloon
peninsula. This is why population density can range from as high as 56,000/sq
km in parts of Kowloon to less than 4,000 in the majority of the territory!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong#Geography_and_climat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong#Geography_and_climate)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Districts_of_Hong_Kong#/media/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Districts_of_Hong_Kong#/media/File:Density_of_Hong_Kong_by_Districts.svg)

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throwaway83213
I had a land lord who was from HK. I kept hearing about how HK people had
class and British flair and so on and so forth (as opposed to mainlanders).

I thought he was being deluded. It's rather strange that despite all our
technological progress, general happiness and contentment has went down
(atleast true of the people I know). It's like living to a 125 but spending a
great chunk of it alone in a old-age home, or you know like farm-fed pigs.

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zhemao
The picture of the combo toilet-kitchen made me viscerally upset. That must be
so unsanitary.

~~~
Fjolsvith
Several prisons I was housed in had the toilet in our cell, a couple feet from
our bunks. We used a towel draped over the seat as a lid. This was typical for
a 2 or 3 man cell.

~~~
RBBronson123
Yup-I had that in my brief stint at the Yazoo City Maximum I was in. It had
all the fun trappings of Dante's Inferno: armed guard towers, electrified
fences, not a bird within miles. And that stainless steel toilet/sink right
next to a thin mattress on the floor. breakfast at 4:30 am, as I recall.

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jpelecanos
The images reminded me of Jacob Cheung's _Cageman_ (1992) [0]. Additionally,
this video [1] is a decent supplementary material to the article.

[0]
[https://letterboxd.com/film/cageman/](https://letterboxd.com/film/cageman/)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le6nE6yAwFM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le6nE6yAwFM)

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geff82
I often get the sense that people value land away from the cities not high
enough. Sure I understand why people move to metropols, it is a bit like a
gold rush. But from some idealistic point, not thinking about money, I feel
that the "poor" farmer with a small house and some land is richer than the
person living in a 1000-sqf-3-million-dollar-appartment in downtown Hong Kong.

~~~
lmm
How much joy does that house/land bring them? If you like having a lot of
space then you do you; for me more space would largely just be more
responsibility - I feel more comfortable snuggled in a corner than in a big
empty space, so even when home on my own I'll often choose to hide away in my
bedroom rather than in my main room.

~~~
geff82
I always feel living in even normal appartments is a bit like living in cages
(which of course I did a lot). When travelling a lot, they are great because
you don't have to care about much. But an acre of land or so could always
provide at least for some food in a crisis, while an apartment leaves you
unprotected in the masses. Maybe it's some kind of libertarian logic that
occupies my mind.

~~~
lmm
That... yeah, that seems pretty crazy. Do you even know how to produce food on
your land? (it's not easy in most inhabited lattitudes). What about all the
other things you'd need - water, medical care, cloth and minerals? What kind
of crisis do you even imagine is that likely yet that survivable? It's worth
being prepared for a short-term crisis, but that would be over one way or
another well before your first harvest. Put some MREs and a 10-gallon water
jug in your broom closet and you're not appreciably worse off in an apartment.

~~~
greendestiny_re
>Do you even know how to produce food on your land?

This isn't as hard as it sounds. The nature is overflowing with edibles of all
sorts and we simply have to cultivate it for a little bit.

Two years ago, my father planted two chokeberry (Aronia prunifolia) shrubs in
our backyard. Now those tiny shrubs have grown to 20 times their original size
and yielded about 10 pounds of berries.

Two years before that, we planted 8 tiny grapevines and tied them with pieces
of string to a nearby metal scaffolding. Today, those vines have wrapped
themselves around the front part of the house and provide us with more grapes
than the entire family can eat.

Both aronia shrubs and grapevines grow unstoppably, without any human
intervention. Now, having them fit for commercial consumption is another thing
entirely, and we'd probably have to invest much more money in ensuring larger
yields and so on. Right now, I only spray grapes with some copper sulphate
though I see it's been infected with grape phylloxera, for which there is no
control or cure.

~~~
lmm
Small amounts of food are easy, sure. I assumed they were talking about
growing enough food to live on exclusively, which is a quite different
proposition.

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greendestiny_re
When I saw a couple pictures that showed the interior of one of these
buildings with coffin cubicles, I was appalled with the possibilities of fire
hazard deadly scenarios. In case of any kind of flame or smoke due to faulty
electrical wiring (which causes 95% of all fires), the occupants are as good
as dead.

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tdeck
I'm surprised there's no mention of fire safety in the comments. Not by any
means an expert on that subject, but these places look like death traps in the
event of a fire.

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baybal2
Life in Baishizhou is whole lot better than life of most Hongkongers

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illegal_in_ca
According to Index of Economic Freedom, Hong Kong has had the highest degree
of economic freedom in the world since the inception of the Index in 1995.[0]

Hong Kong is the 32nd largest export economy in the world and the 12th most
complex economy according to the Economic Complexity Index (ECI).[1]

Hong Kong’s unemployment rate was 3.3% as of January 2017 according to Trading
Economics.[2]

I think these metrics Trump the photos.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Hong_Kong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Hong_Kong)
[1]
[http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/hkg/](http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/hkg/)
[2] [http://www.worldstopexports.com/hong-kongs-
top-10-exports/](http://www.worldstopexports.com/hong-kongs-top-10-exports/)

~~~
zhemao
It also has one of the highest levels of income inequality, which is what this
article highlights.

------
TaylorGood
Spent time in HK with a well-off RE developer. Played tennis at LRC, etc. and
was able to understand the city better.

Basically everything below mid-level is these conditions. For average in mid-
level it's like $15m USD. Condos at the Peak are selling for $120m.

The similar thing to this photographer I witnessed is all the helpers that
live on balconies of whom they help. For like $300 a month. They're grateful
for having a decent place to live unlike the photos but still no way to live..

~~~
scandox
Sorry this isn't clear to me. Are you saying every dwelling that costs less
than 15 million US Dollars has conditions like the ones in these photographs?
Or do you mean that all such dwellings are broken up into these type of
divisions?

Additionally do you mean that people rent their servants balconies for $300
per month? As a kind of servant's quarters?

~~~
Hasknewbie
'Mid-Level' is a small upscale neighbourhood on HK island. So the housing
market there is not representative of the rest of HK.

However said rest of HK remains way too expensive, something on the order of
London or NY, but HK being a city-state people don't have the option of moving
to or coming from a significantly less expensive countryside region. There is
no self-selection as in most other major cities and many people are stuck with
low/median income in high-rent zones. What's more as another poster pointed
out most of HK is not constructible (there is a reason for all those
skyscrapers), and the administration is kind of slow at
repurposing/reclassifying existing land, plus they sort of gave up on building
enough social housing (I'd say about a decade ago?) which was key for
relieving pressure.

I think the numbers given were RE-brag, the most expensive apartments in HK
were sold for around USD50M each, so 15M for a Mid-level and 120M for The Peak
seems off.

The 'servant' he's referring to are Oversea Worker housemaids, who have a
different status than immigrants, and he's right that they're not having an
easy life (USD300 is I think their average monthly wage?). By law they must be
live-in, but said law is rather light on specifics and protections, so many do
not have an individual room and sleep in their employer's living room.
"Sleeping on the balcony" is quite harsh and rare (who in HK has a balcony
anyway?) but it can happen -- again, very little legal protection. According
to local NGOs dealing with OW, at least 10% are abused one way or another.

~~~
ximeng
USD 550 is minimum wage, 300 is a random number. 15MM HKD up to 120MM HKD is
more realistic for what you pay in mid levels / the peak, i.e. his numbers are
off by a factor of 8...

~~~
Hasknewbie
Thanks for the correction, I didn't know the real number.

Regarding the RE numbers, it looks a lot like a USD/HKD conversion blunder
then ("Wait, 120 millions in _dollars_? That's huge." "Yeah mate, in dollars
(lobs ball)." ).

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miguelrochefort
To be honest, I'd love to live in such a space. It's more than enough for my
needs, and I would save a lot of money on rent. I hate that the government
somehow prevent me from doing so.

~~~
kjksf
The government (I assume US) doesn't prevent you.

I don't know where you're located, but e.g. in SF you can live in so-called
hacker houses where for 1/3rd of regular 1 bd rent you can share a room with
one or more people.

Or you can cram as many people as you like into an apartment by sharing a
lease with many people.

You can have your dream of cheap, squalid living in US.

~~~
trevyn
Privacy is important, larger shared room != private tiny room.

