Life Inside Hong Kong’s ‘Coffin Cubicles’ | Hacker News Reader

Life Inside Hong Kong’s ‘Coffin Cubicles’

nationalgeographic.com

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.

What's stopping you from moving to a less expensive city in China? Lack of jobs? Family members to take care of?

Culture, Language barrier. Hong Kong speaks Cantonese, and Mainland China speaks Mandarin.

In many ways, that is like telling people from UK to move to France, Germany or other less expensive city in EU. And even so, the Cultural and Value barrier between different Counties in EU is properly less then HK and China.

- 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.

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.

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/Districts_of_Hong_Kong#/media/...

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.

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

Why would it, if you keep it clean? (And are not dumb.)

You would be surprised, but toilets tend to be the cleanest places nowadays.

However the one depicted is unsanitary for sure.

Not to be "that guy", but citation needed?

The absolute risk from accidental liquid contamination or aerosol intuitively seems unavoidable to me...

Little poo in the food never hurt nobody

Especially not if it's your own poo. You might keep reinfecting yourself with some bacteria or parasites that would otherwise have a slim chance of staying in the body, but the human immune system is pretty well-equipped to handle that.

Having your own toilet in your own kitchen is probably more sanitary than separating toilet and kitchen, but sharing them among multiple people.

There are all sorts of bacteria that are no problem in your lower GI tract, but would be massively dangerous elsewhere (your lungs, for instance).

The toilet seat is typically cleaner (in terms of bacteria) than the office desk. Certainly aerosol contamination is a risk, but that can easily be solved with a protocol of leaving the lid closed. And that's all assuming that bacteria are outright bad; it's becoming more apparent that too little exposure to bacteria is dangerous as well (can lead to auto immune disorders). Obviously I'm not suggesting living in faeces, but a bit of pragmatism can make something like this not a problem at all.

And it's easy for a kitchen without a toilet attached to become disgustingly unsanitary.

They should at least put the lid down!

They left it open for the photo, and put some fresh food on the table next to it to drive the point home.

"Confucious says man who puts chicken and peas in soup very unhygienic".

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.

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.

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/

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

>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.

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.

The problem is that Hong Kong is a city-state: you can't move away from the city. Your only (and much more complicated) option would be to emigrate out of Hong Kong, but people having low wages are precisely the least likely to succeed at that.

There are some major health related issues to living near farm fields though, especially for children. Depends on the agricultural methods.

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.

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.

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

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 [1] http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/hkg/ [2] http://www.worldstopexports.com/hong-kongs-top-10-exports/

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

Don't Be naive about HK's economic freedom. The monopolisation of real estate and the rigidity of the political system means actual competition to the elite families is minimal.

This is essentially the result of what happens when a country prioritizes "economic freedom" (investor supremacy).

It's actually a result of colonialism. The british and the elite hong kongers lived like kings and took the lion share of land/wealth and relegated the ordinary hong kongers to poverty.

Those pictures show that economic freedom, a high export rate, a complex economy and a low unemployment may not be good goals to optimize for.

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..

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?

Minimum wage for foreign domestic helpers is around 550 usd per month. They legally need to live with you and you also need to provide them with food. They are allowed one rest day per week and employer must pay for initial travel to and from HK. They should have reasonable comfort and privacy, although in practice many don't get this, hence stories of helpers sleeping in bathrooms or balconies.

'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.

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...

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)." ).

Maybe you should have played less tennis and schmooze with the well off RE developers and actually looked at how normal people live. It's not just 15MM USD Mid-Levels condos and EVERYTHING else is a coffin cubicle. That is preposterous.

> Basically everything below mid-level is these conditions.

Hyperbole.

> Basically everything below mid-level is these conditions. For average in mid-level it's like $15m

I've spent some time in HK, and this really is just completely and utterly false.

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.

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.

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

No, you would hate it. Not even having enough room to stretch your legs will drive a person insane.

I lived in a 16m^2 1-room apartment for 2½ years, and while it was doable, I would absolutely hate to live in something even smaller.

How does government prevent you from that? In most western countries it is illegal to build super tiny flats and for good reasons, but nobody prevents you from renting a 3-5 m^2 room (or a closet) in a shared flat and live there. Or get a van/trailer, which is kinda popular now.

> The maximum number of persons living in a habitable room cannot exceed one person for each nine square metres of habitable room floor area.

http://www.toronto.ca/311/knowledgebase/35/101000038235.html

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