How bad does housing suck if you’re poor and live in Shanghai, China? This much:
“Shanghai’s landlords are quite ingenious, managing to convert even the smallest spaces into rentable rooms at high prices.”
Bathroom with a ladder to a crude loft above it? 600 yuan. (Exchange rate is currently running just above 7 yuan to the dollar.)
At least that had air-conditioning. For 300 yuan, you can get a room barely big enough for a small bed with two hole punched in the wall for ventilation.
For the same price, you can get a bathroom with a bed in the crawlspace right behind the toilet. “After using the toilet, the smell lingers in the room. Also don’t turn the shower head [over the tiny sink] on too high or it’ll soak the bed.”
One room is a twice-coffin size crawlspace off a balcony for 1,500 yuan.
But wait! For a mere 50 yuan, a guy rented a 0.3 square meter crawlspace he can’t fully lie down in. “Some local netizens from Shanghai commented that a closet could not be rented for 50 yuan, the price being at least 120 yuan.”
“This design is really thoughtful! Knowing you’d have to squat to cook noodles, they smartly place a toilet right here, complete with a door!”
“Here’s another place for 500 yuan rent combining living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom all in one!” Complete with cardboard box bed in the entry. “There’s a simple induction cooker for cooking, but it’s a tight squeeze for anyone a bit larger, though there is an exhaust fan. This stove is too far from the toilet. It’s inconvenient to cook while you are using a toilet, but when you shower you can easily stir fry at the same time.” No AC, but the landlord said they could add it for 200 extra yuan rent…
Of course, those exciting bed-in-toilet apartments are only available to people who can afford to pay any money for rent. Many can’t. “There are also groups known as Knights of the Bridge Underpass. In big cities, you can deliver food without renting a place. We found a bridge where several delivery guys and girls live.”
We’ve covered problems with youth despair in China before, including both the “lie flat” and “let it rot” movements.
“How do you deal with water and electricity?…First you can use water from public toilets, but this water is only for washing and laundry, not drinking.” To be fair, they show sinks in public toilets, so I imagine that’s where they’re getting their water, but it’s China, so who knows?
“Drinking water is bought from villagers nearby.”
“Electricity can be sourced from the batteries of delivery ebikes, which are rented for 300 to 400 a month. You can swap many each day, then connect an inverter to the battery you get 220 volt household electricity, and that solves that problem.” (220 volts was evidently standardized by the nationalist government in 1930.)
There’s a video blogger who lives in his solar equipped van, and he seems much better off than any other housing option covered in this video.
“It’s not just Shanghai. Nearly all major Chinese cities host these workers, often labeled as a low-end population. These include delivery workers, ride share drivers, factory or construction site laborers, or college students from out of town.” During America’s industrial boom, working in a factory allowed you to buy a house. Thanks to China’s factory boom, factory workers can enjoy living under a bridge.
“Working odd jobs, they hustle in every corner of the city, typically working over 10 hours a day without a single day off. The city’s prosperity doesn’t touch them. Their daily focus is simply on earning more money.”
The situation is slightly better in Beijing, which has 3 square meter apartments for 2000 yuan, and Shenzhen offers “urban villages” (I think we’d call them apartment complexes) with 1 bedroom apartments for 700 yuan a month.
In Guangdong, the so-called “Shango Gods” have completely given up on life and just live under bridges.
“The unemployed crowd together both men and women in an area filled with unbearable odors.”
“They work one day and rest for a week. A day’s pay can be 200 yuan, enough to sit in an Internet cafe for a week. They eat steamed buns, buy three or four to last the day.”
“In many cities, there are many of these so-called Shango Gods who have completely given up on life. ‘Already seeing no hope. This kind of life is actually pretty good. Wherever you go, just find a place to lie down and don’t think about anything, because no matter how hard you try, without connections it won’t work.'”
America is hardly free of homelessness or tiny apartments. But America’s homeless population is overwhelmingly mentally ill alcoholics and drug addicts living off handouts whose plight is catered to by a Homeless Industrial Complex that rakes off graft pretending to help them, not able-bodied young people willing to work but unable to afford even the meanest accommodations. And the smallest New York City apartments you can find on YouTube all look lightyears better than the horrors seen in Shanghai.
Communists have long bragged about working for the proletariat, but in Communist China, the actual proletarians have been reduced to living under bridges.