A million people live in underground nuclear bunkers in Beijing (2017) | Hacker News Reader

A million people live in underground nuclear bunkers in Beijing (2017)

nationalgeographic.com

130 pointsJerry253 comments

A million people living in bunkers? That means one of out twenty. That just doesn't pass the smell test.

The linked NYT article [1] says it's "well over 100,000" which is a whole order of magnitude lower. But more importantly, it also seems to conflate what is a true bomb shelter, versus what are merely regular basement apartments:

"Nearly every apartment building in the Digua Shequ center’s neighborhood has a former shelter or a basement... If you get rid of these basement units, where will the migrants live?... A lot of landlords have spent money renovating the spaces they lease, so they don’t want to stop renting out basements..."

I mean, c'mon -- people live in basement apartments in Manhattan too, it's not that bad. And then, yes, I could maybe believe that 1/20 people in Beijing lives in a basement apartment if the average building is 10 stories tall with a single-story basement. And that then a much smaller number live in the actual bomb shelters that aren't just basements.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/world/asia/beijing-bomb-s...

https://www.google.com/search?q=%E5%8C%97%E6%BC%82++%E5%9C%B...

Might want to check your math on this one.

> I mean, c'mon -- people live in basement apartments in Manhattan too, it's not that bad.

The underground space discussed by the OP article were actually designed/built/maintained as shelters for nuclear war. They are not fancy Manhattan apartments, you can't get it connected with broadband/water through official channels. If someone lives there, their kids can't even go to local public schools, as they are never considered as local residents.

There are of course actual basement apartments in Beijing, but a 70 sqm basement apartment can has a price tag of $1.5 million USD [1]. That is something for the middle class, not those people mentioned in the OP article.

[1] http://www.sohu.com/a/229312750_100070963

I'm not disputing they exist... I'm disputing that a full twentieth of the population of Beijing lives in them, which the article claims.

That number doesn't sound plausible and it's not linked to any credible source or methodology.

These are not normal basement rooms. Builders in China are required by law to build these bunkers that can withstand air strikes.

E.g. http://www.sz.gov.cn/yjzhzx/ywgz_54281/rmfk/201711/t20171121...

Those bunkers are actually owned by the government. Using those bunkers for other purposes are against the law.

https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E4%BA%BA%E6%...

You can even find the build code for those bunkers with keyword GB50038 (Code for design of civil air defence basement)

A lot of the ant tribe lives in the basements of otherwise luxury apartment buildings, there is also a large network of older bunkers within the 2nd ring road.

Law doesn’t mean much in China, just if the officials are in the mood to crack down on it or not.

This has got to be a subsidy to China's construction industry. I can't imagine any circumstances where a modern war would require this kind of infrastructure.

“In Beijing alone, roughly 10,000 bunkers were promptly constructed...Now when night falls, more than a million people—mostly migrant workers and students from rural areas—vanish from Beijing’s bustling streets into the underground universe, little known to the world above...Local laws require a minimal living space of 4 square meters (43 square feet) per tenant, which, in many cases, go ignored.”

Something about this story doesn’t add up — many bunkers are less than 43 sq ft per tenant, but somehow the average number of people living in a bunker is ~100 (1,000,000 people / 10,000 bunkers)??

Bunkers with Bunk Beds?

I’m not saying it’s physically impossible, but it’s awfully hard to believe that THAT many people are willing to live in such abysmal conditions.

They are “migrant workers and students from rural areas”. They are willing to live in such abysmal conditions for a few years because it holds the promise of a strong quality of life improvement after that.

They are fucked, as they will graduate to the world of "996" and still live a dismal life. Such are the ways in cultures with a steep "power gradient." If all persons are not created equal, then someone deserves steak eggs while another deserves beans and shit. All one have left is connections, and no measure of hard work will make the graduate from a farm family the peer of the graduate from a family of Party princelings.

Living comfortably is a luxury, even in many developed countries.

Americans are used to plywood or even paper board wrapped big houses.

The picture in the original article is an exaggeration of the real condition. There are bunkers with much better condition than what the picture shows and still very cheap to live in. I have lived in those bunkers for short time about 15 years ago. It wasn't worse than than a typical university dormitory except no windows.

It isn’t that much of an exaggeration. I’ve seen where the ant tribe lived in my own apartment building near Sanyuanxiqiao, it was very similar to the article.

I've lived in accomodation with less than 4 m^2 per person.

I lived almost a year in a ~3.5x3.5m hostel room with 3 bunk beds (so 6 people total). Basically enough space to fit beds and nothing else, that's about 2 m^2 per person.

It's actually not as bad as you'd think. You basically use the room as a place to sleep, the rest of the time you were in the hostel you'd just hang around the common areas.

It's definitely not for everyone. If you're more introverted and need your alone time it would be horrible.

Same here. The Flying Pig, in Amsterdam by the park. But not for a year. And eight per room, as I recall.

You probably had a window at least. It becomes really bad room is windowless in a musty basement. But people still live in those conditions.

If you're just using it as a place to sleep the window really doesn't matter.

If you're on a normal rhythm, it's night when you go to sleep and the window doesn't add much. If you do night shifts, having no windows in the day is down right merciful.

As long as I can have a fan to blow up some air (like those you can clip/mount somewhere to save space), I'll be fine without a window.

I spent a night in a climbers shelter in the Andes, in very bad weather. It was maybe 50sqm with about 50 in it. No windows, one door, which hapless arrivals tended to close during the night. Bunks up to inches from the ceiling (in my case), which was slimy and dripped. Concrete walls wet from breath. Hard to move without whispered negotiations. It was one of the most unpleasant nights I have spent. Difficult to avoid panic whenever the door closed. There is a lot to be said for windows in close quarters.

Wow this sounds like an incredible experience, have you blogged about it or can you share some links on what the climb entails? Thanks!

Have you tried it before? I had a hotel room for one night like that in xian and couldn’t stay a second night there.

More to the point, musty and moldy is bad for your health.

This. I've lived in a 3.3 meters square "goshiwon" in Seoul, Korea, for about a year. After escaping the coprorate air-conditioned cubicle world back home, these were really the best days of my life!

I'm sure they would choose something better in a heartbeat if it were a viable option for them.

Quite a lot of people are stuck with "Accept this crap situation, go to some other worse option or kill myself."

Plenty of cultures believe in an afterlife and/or that your actions impact on the reputation of your family or both. Suicide is often deemed shameful, it is a black mark on the family and you won't get into heaven or similar.

Thus, many people feel suicide is not really an option, leaving them with this crap or some worse option.

It's not much of a choice.

>it’s awfully hard to believe that THAT many people are willing to live in such abysmal conditions.

for example : https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4585230/Shocking-pi...

i don't think the keyword is "willing", more like "forced"/"have no choice"

You should see the cages people are willing to occupy in Hong Kong. Once you cross the border into the PRC, some people are willing to live in even harsher conditions.

I don't think there is a hard limit as to what humans will endure to survive or to make money to send home. Oddly, the question falls to "how low can I go to keep my life" instead of "how high can rise above my current situation."

Where the fuck are people who stand up and say, "we are humans, not rats, and we refuse to live like rats."

> Where the fuck are people who stand up and say, "we are humans, not rats, and we refuse to live like rats."

Some are in re-education camps, some in prison, some live on in a fashion as their organs were donated to more conformist subjects.

These bunkers has multiple rooms. It is not uncommon to have 8 people living in one room, and a large bunker site can have 20+ rooms. A bunker site can have living area similar to a 20 room motel, underneath a much bigger building on top (at least when they are inside the city).

Since these bunkers were built, they were build for war, some of them have very thick gas tight door to complete seal the environment from outside.

Citation?

Think about how many apartment buildings are in Beijing. All of these have basements, each basement level has multiple rooms, and most apartment buildings have multiple levels of basement. A million people easily could be sheltered under that context.

>>Local laws require a minimal living space of 4 square meters (43 square feet) per tenant, which, in many cases, go ignored.”

60m2 is a really small apt, considering the place that the kitchen, hall and bathroom take. But according to code, 15 people can live there all fine and dandy. Wow!

Of the pictures at the top of the article, almost every bedroom captioned as being in an underground bunker had a window visible in the frame. One of them had something that looked like the door to a residential apartment next to that window. Another one had nice mouldings between walls and ceiling, which is not a detail I would expect in a bunker. To add to that, basement establishments are not exactly rare in Asia's big cities. I'm very skeptical of this story.

>window visible in the frame

Take a closer look. These windows are not windows to the outside. They're windows to hallways inside of massive bunkers. You can even see giant steam/water pipes in some of the pics (say pic #1). Also, notice the window frames... they are not the types of window frames that would last even a week when exposed to outside elements like snow, wind and rain.

Large pic #1: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/photography/P...

It reminds me of the sci-fi novelette Folding Beijing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding_Beijing

Beat me to the punch.

Thanks for the referral!

Here's a link to the story, translated to English: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/folding-beijing-2/

This article made me ponder the utility of, as a nation, having an independently functioning portion of your economy and society underground at bunker depths, as a component of national security.

If the shit ever did really hit the fan, and you had something on the order of 10+% of your population entirely self-sufficient underground, these would be the survivors and they'd already be entirely acclimated to, and prepared for, the situation.

It's some food for thought...

Wikipedia page on this place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City_(Beijing)

Wikipedia page states that is 85 square km.

Also another much longer and detailed Vice article of it: https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/nnmk8b/chairman-maos-unde...

Some of the bomb shelters are above ground, as shown in the photographs, which is part of why the "million people underground" thing is just hyperbole. It doesn't make this an uninteresting article.

One of above-ground shelters is architecturally a little strange, with steel security cages built over first, second, and third story windows where you'd ordinarily just put a railing or balcony. It looks cool but I wonder what the actual purpose of it could be.

Can someone explain why Beijing is so expensive as far as rents go? I’m surprised given how sprawling it is.

Imagine a city with so much housing demand that there are literal laws about who can and cannot move there for the sake of population control

Also, a lot of the people in the bunkers are not supposed to be there in the legal sense above, which is why they end up there.

The Hukou (户口) system that you’re talking about wasn’t established because of demand for housing in Beijing. It’s not really clear why it was established and has origins that date back hundreds of years. It essentially serves as a social control mechanism and to promote people living, and thus laboring, in rural areas. Though it dates back to immigration control between states in “China”. (When they were different sovereign entities.)

They’re all migrant workers and are allowed to be in Beijing without Hukou. Hukou Just establishes certain privileges like home ownership and school access.

The best way to think about Hukou for Americans is that Hukou is like if California required a Texan or Floridian to get a Visa or become a “California Citizen” before working there, buying a home there, or using public services there.

It seems Hukou is being used to somewhat control the urbanisation plans CCP have been implementing. They create “Hukou free” regions like Shenzhen for periods of time to cause mass migration and economic growth.

But it’s also created this strange “illegal migrant” issue in all the top tier cities (PK, SH, GZ, etc).

I've been caught in Beijing traffic exactly once, and it's not something I'd ever want to deal with ever again.

I think any person who can pay to avoid it absolutely will. Chinese traffic makes American traffic seem completely smooth.

Low population density - it's the only city in China of this size with something resembling American suburbia. A lot of semi-rural, and low-rise building separating the urban core with all govt buildings from new districts.

Too bad the excess in housing in China isn't being utilized to solve this issue.

there's something on that page that autoplays. can't find it to stop it on mobile, so unable to read.

Yes, yes this weekend is a perfect time to pull my copy of City Of Darkness off the shelf.

Or the Imperial Radch series—the undergarden.

We're over here playing Fallout Shelter; they're over there living fallout shelter.

I hear 1BR underground bunkers are going for above asking price in Mountain View.

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