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Meet China's Morlocks: 1 Million Beijing Residents Live Undeground
For an estimated 1 million Beijing residents, dubbed the "rat tribe", living above ground (or in ghost cities) is a luxury they simply cannot afford. As NPR reports, with even the tiniest apartment costing a fortune (and 21 million people fighting for space), there has emerged a new 'affordable' housing option... below the city's bustling streets. Thanks to building codes that force the creation of basements and bomb shelters under new residences, there's a lot of underground space (1 - 3 floors down) that is illegally - but affordably - used for habitation. With the Shanghai Composite stock index up over 40% year-to-date, creating wealth and trickling down, how can this be possible?
[In Beijing] it is possible to find more affordable housing. You'll just have to join an estimated 1 million of the city's residents, and look underground.
Below the city's bustling streets, bomb shelters and storage basements are turned into illegal — but affordable — apartments.
...
Annette Kim, a professor at the University of Southern California who researches urbanization, spent last year in China's capital city studying the underground housing market.
"Part of why there's so much underground space is because it's the official building code to continue to build bomb shelters and basements," Kim says. "That's a lot of new, underground space that's increasing in supply all the time. They're everywhere."
She says apartments go one to three stories below ground. Residents have communal bathrooms and shared kitchens. The tiny, windowless rooms have just enough space to fit a bed.
"It's tight," Kim says. "But I also lived in Beijing for a year and the city, in general, is tight."
With an average rent of $70 per month, she says, this is an affordable option for city-dwellers.
But living underground is illegal, Kim says, since housing laws changed in 2010.
And, in addition, there's a stigma to living in basements and bomb shelters, as Kim found when she interviewed residents above-ground about their neighbors directly below.
"They weren't sure who was down there," Kim says. "There is actually very little contact between above-ground and below-ground, and so there's this fear of security."
In reality, she says, the underground residents are mostly young migrants who moved from the countryside looking for work in Beijing.
"They're all the service people in the city," she says. "They're your waitresses, store clerks, interior designers, tech workers, who just can't afford a place in the city."
But it's rare to get a glimpse below. Property owners can be strict about whom they let in. But Beijing-based photographer Chi Yin Sim found a way. She's documented life under the city in a collection called China's "Rat Tribe."
"I started to try and find ways to get down there because I was fascinated by the fact that there was a universe beneath our feet," Sim says.
The first basement-dweller she met was a young woman, a pedicurist at a salon, who lived with her boyfriend.
"I was just like, 'Can I come and visit?' And she was like, 'Sure, come and visit us,' " Sim says.
The couple lived two floors below a posh Beijing apartment complex.
Sim's photos show just how tiny these units really are. The couple sits on their bed, surrounded by clothes, boxes and a giant teddy bear. There's hardly any room to move around.
"The air is not so good, ventilation is not so good," Sim says. "And the main complaint that people have is not that they can't see the sun: It's that it's very humid in the summer. So everything that they put out in their rooms gets a bit moldy, because it's just very damp and dank underground."
...
But despite the laws against living underground, and the discomfort and shame associated with it, Kim says it's still a very active market. For hundreds of thousands of people, it's the only viable option for living in, or under, Beijing.
* * *
So much for that urbanization route to responsible growth... it's too late. Global hot money has squeezed an entire generation of service workers out from ever achieving the American/Chinese dream.
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Not every broke young person is in the US or Europe.
Progress: When everyone strives to live in a college dorm room
Bring those chicks to the surface and put Hillary and Yellen in the holes.
Morlocks are supposed to be ugly.
That little Chinaman is still curling more weight than Obama did in those godawful photos from last year. And his girlfriend is hotter than the Wookie, too. By a ton.
Isn't that Han from 2 Broke Girls and One Broke Restaurateur?
na han is korean .
Greetings from Beijing all. The air in the underground photos actually looks cleaner than above ground here.
Also, Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please.
The Chinese spent a LOT of time underground in California and other points west in American history ~150 years ago working for railroads and such. And during that time they were referred to as "Chinamen" as well as other things far worse than that.
Very little of what I post in my comments is by accident.
It's only fair.
At least those kids aren't in mommy's basement.
They're making it.
China style.
Excellent point!
Young adults start at the bottom everywhere. My first home was a trailer. It's a question of where you are going. I scrimped and saved for 5 years and cheap housing was critical. Got an advanced degree at night studying in my hovel, then with down payment in hand, I got my first mortgage.
Since all young adults lived similarly there was no shame, unless it was obvious that you were headed nowhere.
Would I go back? Not exactly. Give me my old brain in my young body and the answer is 'yes'.
But ... but ... but ... I thought Communist China was a Capitalist success story!
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-28/what-can-hong-kong-and-cuba-tea...
Whoops! Sorry. My mistake. Hong Kong is not mainland China. That explains why everything is made in Capitalist Hong Kong and not Communist China.
Maybe, if only the Chinese workers would allow themselves to be paid less money then they could afford to live in one of those 64 million empty apartments.
Whoops! Sorry again, I seem to be channeling Mises Institute. Someone must have spiked my SSRIs.
One million living underground while 64 million apartments lie empty above ground? Doesn't Communist China know how to solve that problem? Can someone please send them 1.4 billion copies of Dr Zhivago? I mean, they've already got several copies. Maybe we just need to convince them to watch the damned thing!
Hk is also part of china .
Thanks for clarifying. I knew they were related somehow. Either way, my main point remains.
Lol, for those of you junking this poor guy... He isn't trying to be politically correct about the use of the word Chinaman. It's from a line John Goodman delivers with perfection in The Big Lebowski. One of my favorites.
If you haven't seen the movie in awhile you should, it only gets better with age.
+1 I can not belive dude is getting junked over a Big Lebowski reference. Come on. "Im I the only one here who cares about the rules, over the line smoky."
Not to mention one of the only two Jeff Bridges movies worth seeing.
The other: "How to lose friends and alienate everybody."
obvious why immigration works so well. lots of unhappy people around the world look for an escape route. even half the american dream looks from outset better than one of those underground rooms.
I think the chinaman comment really tied the thread together. But it's a compliated case - a lot of ins, a lot of outs, a lot of what-have-yous.
@kubera9
Haha, brilliant!
Boss is the proper name going forward. Get in the box and STFU whitey, you're saving the planet.
When they stop referring to non-Chinese as Laowai, we stop with the Chinaman.
The Dude abides.
Alas, alas, and alas bis, please note that a facility the English grammar and sentence structure is not nearly enough good to the writing make clearness.
Do not bringing a new grammar to substitute a fabricated version of reality to reality. The grammar of reality contains factual elements, so in giving reference of Oriental Asian-American, the Chinaman terminology is betterly correct.
Those people are smart! Position yourself low to get the most trickle down you can slurp!
YOU TWO ARE ON FIRE!!
Reminds me of some apartments in Manhattan.
Note the new regulations that mandate the building of basements or bomb shelters.
Now I ask you, why the fuck would anybody be planning for the future with Bomb Shelters?
And lookit how good Moe... er, I mean Mao treats 'em. That one chick has a roll of toilet paper, the couples all have computers for porn an' furry-beast games and the guys all practice KillWhityeGijin in da bazmint.
Workers paradise
Betcha every last one of the bros in Ferguson would switch places in an instant.
The brother, uncle, cousin of an elected official specializes in manufacturing bomb shelters.
I dont know about you folks but I would much rather have those hard working folks as my neighbors than the Obama free shit army. I would feel a lot safer with them also.
That's a shitty either or choice. I can come up with much better options.
I dont know about you folks but I would much rather have those hard working folks as my neighbors than the Obama free shit army. I would feel a lot safer with them also.
So true. While petty thievery is very rampant, one almost never need be concerned about violent crime anywhere in China. On the whole, the Chinese are a tough, hard-working and dignified group of people.
I'd rather be in the country getting completely obliterated by nukes than live like this.
You don't have to wish everyone gets obliterated to stop your personal suffering dude. Put a chili pepper between you cheeks and hang yourself upside down by your feet. You will feel like a new man with purpose.
Where did I wish for that?
I said given the choice between this type of situation or being destroyed by nukes, I'd take the latter.
What's going on here in those places isn't living. It's eking out an existence. It's slavery.
how on earth does bog roll on a bed imply they are better off than fergisonites?
It also looks more like Falun Gong and those guys are already in jail awaiting for their end as a transplant victim to an obese, diabetic in a State near you who applied for a foreign organ transplant on Alibaba with a two week turnaround.
US and Europe are the rich (and imperial) parts of the world mate. Has been the case for a few centuries now.
Having said that, the gap seems to be closing.
Still, the places were they live don't seem so awful and I am guessing not too expensive either. Come here in London where people pay a fortune every months to live in a tiny room along with 5 other strangers in a "house" built for 2.
The west is like a teenage chick that wants to die because no one showed up for her party. She'll get over it. If not then there's always another chick to live out the dreams.
I was there about 10 years ago when I had to do some IT work for ML.
I changed $300 at the airport, thinking that plus the credit card, would hold me for the 4 days.
Jumped into a cab at Heathrow, and headed to 'The City'.
That 45 minute cab ride was $150, and quite a SHOCK. Micky D's after that.
The other shock was finding out that Big Ben really does sound like my wall clock.
The US isn't rich, it is heavily indebted, and well on the way to HIPC status (heavily indebted poor country), with a penchant for wasting money on the most inane chicom crap. No one in the US goes to the expense of building bomb shelters anymore, unlike Europe.
However, this article did give me some ideas, since I have some time, extra furniture and electronics, and about 1000 ft2 in my US bomb shelter, the Swiss shelter just doesn't have the ft2 to live in if I want to rent out the house above...
Time to hop across the pond...
We turned some "folks" into moles.
God this is sad. I remember seeing video and photos of Russia after the USSR fall and when Soros fellow dual citizen tribesmen were looting Russia. The people were so poor they were living in subways and begging. This is also going on in the USA. Sad sad stuff.
The f**king Chinese have zillions of empty buildings. Try moving some of these people there.
Awarding housing according to need would be Communism. And Communism is inefficient many say.
Yeah - believe me - I thought about that before I posted. A real conudrum. I bet they have tens of millions empty apartments and people living in tiny underground hovels. The state building all that shit or the elites of the PR Army oligarchs is not capitalism that is for sure.
Did private capital really build all those empty apartments? I don't think so.
No private capital. The newly rich oligarchs of these ex-commie countries where tied to the old commies in charge. If you made some serious $$ off of your connections within the old system, you'd GTFO of there also.
"The f**king Chinese have zillions of empty buildings. Try moving some of these people there."
True enough, but there are no jobs as the empty cities have no economy. You can't really move to a city with no economy.
http://www.globalsecuritieswatch.org/Addendum-China%20Ghost%20Cities.pdf
grossly exaggerated. i live in beijing and have never heard about or seen anything to this effect. beijing home prices are sky high but rental prices are dirt cheap unless you're in the middle of the city. the idea that there is enough room for a hundred thousand people, much less an order of magnitude larger, to be living in bomb shelter-like conditions is fucking absurd.
the real problem is that due to the need to obtain a hukou, a residence permit, to live and work in beijing, many people like this are undocumented and have problems signing leases or getting jobs, for example. but like i said, the idea that there are a million people living underground is absurd.
I can't believe the down votes for your comment. Above ground apartments in Shanghai are likely to be a room similar in size with a bathroom and kitchen area shared by 4 or 5 other apartments. Plus the smog. The girl with the toilet paper roll on her bed is typical. You carry your own toilet paper to the communal bathroom.
Apartments in Tokyo that young people can afford are not much bigger.
I'd give Barack Obama's left ovary for that chick in the first photo.
That is a dude.
Make it both ovaries then.
Make it all 3 from the lab grown mutant.
Yeah,
Not sure why the down votes. I mean the source was NPR, which isn't exactly the tip of the iceberg when it comes to journalistic integrity.
I gave him a down vote for the irony in,
"many people like this are undocumented and have problems signing leases or getting jobs,.."
They must be racist against undocumented Asians.
about half of the populations of beijing and shanghai, which chinese people typically tell me are around 30 million each, are chinese people from second and lower tier cities who dont have residence permits, or a "hukou, to live in beijing or shanghai. the government tried to slow the migration of people from farming "villages" (which are often cities with 5 million people) to big cities by requiring difficult to obtain permits. obviously didnt work very well. they are illegal aliens in their own country.
What's with all the stuffed animals? If I'm living in a Samsung refrigerator box I wouldn't use any space for plush toys.
“Humid and Moldy”…. Animal dung imported from Chernobyl.
I’d be the Magic Mushroom King of Beijing in no time.
There is a huge amount of water that needs to evaporate when you pour concrete walls a couple feet thick, and if you don't do the foundation water proofing and drainage exactly right it only compounds the moisture problem. Since the Chinese are known for building quickly and taking shortcuts their bomb shelters are probably moldier than most. On the bright side if you don't mind a room temperature of 55° F year round, then there is no need for heating and cooling...
Well at least its not their parents basement like it is here.
At least they are working and making their own way as best they can and living within their means.
You mean they don't get EBT cards, welfare or SSDI?
those are chinese mexicans.
Those people are WAY better off than The Projects in America, even a lot of non-Projects in NYC, Boston, Baltimore & the like. That's a pretty sweet setup, for a mega-city. $70/Month???? I would have jumped on that when I was in D.C.
That girl at the top is just adorable. Given a shot at a good home, she would probably make one heck of a wife. She looks lonely.
They are living in confined space up to 30’-0” below grade.
Agreed. The china doll should live in the smog above ground.
The one in 6th photo from top is hot.......Should be living above ground.
She is. Note the window. They don't put windows in underground bomb shelters for several reasons.
You guys need to get out more....
Uh, or not.
I have to agree with that.
That girl at the top is just adorable. Given a shot at a good home, she would probably make one heck of a wife. She looks lonely.
You don't know Chinese women--they are NEVER lonely--there are 10 women for every 15 guys in China and they can always, easily find company. If you want one be aware, the only bulge in your pants she's interested in is the one in your back pocket.
Better question is, why are there so many fucking bomb shelters? What are they expecting to happen?
It was Mao, there was a MAD Cold War going on. Besides, what Mao supposed to do with 1 billion peasants other than dig holes?
I've lived in worse.
Me too, I lived in Meacham Park, MO. I'm white.
Advantage monoculture.
You lived in Meacham? and your white? WTF- Kirkwood is like a block away.
Shit's gettin' real when China is mandating "bomb shelters" as part of building code.
The instinct to reproduce is one powerful mutha.
I don't get it.
I don't get how China's population got so large over thousands of years.
a lot of fucking
Or a little fucking, very often.
The bomb shelter is just so they make their foundations stronger so they dont fall over like some of them have....bu 70 a month is a great thing...some hotties there too...
Hotties...maybe... but where do they wash their skank?
apparently deus ex's hengsha upper/lower city was based on reality
Question.......restrooms? I dunno, not that bad I suppose, not your parents basement, cool in summer, warm in winter. Not expensive, probably quiet, but not for the claustrophobic. Have you seen the old above ground high rise hellholes in Chicago before they tore them down and moved all the residents to the suburbs?
Hope they have some candles or something cause if the power goes out it'll be dark as fuck down there.......
Bomb shelters in new buildings must be a sign that the Chinese think Obama will 'invent' some new terrorist group, claim it is operating in Beijing, and will send in the US drones!
The US market just gave the negro and his US economic recovery data the middle finger today, coming to China soon.
Makes me think about Gibson's Sprawl and the coffin hotels where you lease a box you can't even stand up in.
I'm calling semi-BS on this story. I am not disputing a large underground population, but there was evidence of tobacco use in only 1 photo. Chinese are very heavy smokers, so I would expect to see some cartons of cigs around in all those pics instead of just a single person smoking.
The picture with the two lesbians in the pink room was interesting to me, they have a shopping bag hanging on their wall? Why?
Hildabeast will be opening more tent cities to accomodate the US explosion in homeless
Currrently shopping for Secretary of Latrine
Hillary Clinton to speak in Atlantic City next year - Likely contender for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination will speak to conference of camping industry professionals Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State and likely contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, will speak at the American Camp Association conference in Atlantic City next year, according to a wire service release. The New York and New Jersey Tri State CAMP Conference... http://nj-ne.ws/2RLM2T
Wouldn't it be ironic if these people were the only survivors in the event of an atomic attack.
How can it be possible? Maybe trickle down economics works the same way in China as it does in the US.
don't forget the Obamaville's that have popped up around the U.S.
The second girl with the teddy bear. I would so give her an above ground place to live in my house and ill even throw in a green card.
GOOD EYE!!
I thought I was the only one who recognized it was a guy.
I'd love to share some q99x2 with the morlock in the top photo.
NPR missed that at first. I'm sure they added their racial superiority touch to the article as well. China is rising and if there are more of them than others they can use easily use that identity as a political tool bitchez. I don't trust NPR any more than I do the CIA.
the communist utopian dream is alive and well it seems
Detective John Spartan encounters a burger grill in the underground world...
Lenina Huxley [grimacing]: Just don't ask them where the meat comes from...
John Spartan: Huxley, what's that supposed to mean?
Lenina Huxley: Do you see any cows around here, detective?
John Spartan [to vendor]: Que es este carne? [What is this meat?]
Hamburger stand vendor: Este carne es de rata. [This meat is from rats]
John Spartan: Rat?? This is a rat burger? [vendor smiles, nods]
John Spartan [chewing, considering]: Not bad! Matter of fact, this is the best burger I've had in years!
Hamburger stand vendor [nods, smiling]: Gracias, Senor!
John Spartan: You're welcome. See ya later...
Lenina Huxley-- so hot.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-15/new-york-disneyland-wall-street...
New York has its share of coffin size apartments and God knows how many subterranean and sewer dwellers there are. Check out above link
At least they are working for themselves and doesn't live on gubernement tits, looting everything like the FSA in the West do...
The problem also, is that everyone want to be in the "Urban life" while abandoning the rural life even if you put yourself in a shittier situation than before.
Typical Asian, wrong priorities.
Smartphone, computer, internet, clothes.
Cover the bare bulb? Human living quarters?
No way - that would cost MONEY...
I thought that Toronto was the only city where half the population lived in the basement.
I stayed overnight at one of those places with 2 sisters who shared a room. One of the best nights in my life!
Pretty small but oh so cheap. Air and humidity was totally fine at least at that time. Was even considering to move there myself to save some money, live more central and get more chinese social life.
Well instead I moved away from Beijing due to the hard winters and smog.
If anyone got problem with humidity, buying a dehumidifier would be way cheaper than paying rent for an overground apartment.
Now of course for anyone who plans to spend more than 1-2h at home every day apart from sleeping time this might not be that good of a sollution.
I don't care about Political Correctness, but I would so live with hot chinese chicks in the 5. and 6. image. Matter of fact, we would never leave Morlock world and fuck each others brains out.
This so called "Chinese-horror-underground" is nothing if you compare it to the 20.000 children in Romania and also in Bulgaria that live in the fucking sewage system - UNDERGROUND.
http://youtu.be/P7FQCKJzldI?list=PLE7848C8431948212
I recommend watching the documentary "Children Underground". It will haunt you.
THIS IN GOOD OLD EUROPE. The EU is doing a lovely job to protect its citizens against mobs, corruption and poverty. FUCK THE EU AND THE MULE THAT SHE RODE IN.
Are birth control pills available and legal in China ?