Hong Kong’s Secret Dwellings

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 6 April 2017

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Last summer the emergency services rescued two children from an out-of-control fire in an old industrial building in the commercial area of Hong Kong. The children were living with their mother inside a storage unit in the building. For Assignment, Charlotte McDonald explores the reasons which would drive a family in one of the wealthiest cities in the world to live illegally in a place not fit for human habitation. It's estimated that around 10,000 people live in industrial buildings - although the true number is not known due to the very fact it is not legal. Hong Kong consistently ranks as one of the most expensive places to rent or buy in the world. Already around 200,000 have been forced to rent in what are known as subdivided flats. But now attention has turned to those in even more dire conditions in industrial blocks. From poor government planning, the loss of industry to mainland China and exploitative landlords, we uncover why people are choosing to live in secrecy in neglected buildings.

Charlotte McDonald reporting Alex Burton producing

(Photo: Construction workers on site in front of a building, in Hong Kong)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is the BBC.
0:04.0	Hi, I'm Charlotte. I've been to Hong Kong a few times and for me it's a really vibrant city with a great skyline of skyscrapers against tree-covered mountains. It has
0:13.7	rooftop bars, manicured parks and great infrastructure and that's why it
0:18.2	surprised me last summer when a friend told me about a story she saw on the
0:21.8	news. Two teenagers were rescued from a fire in an old factory in the middle of the night and she said that probably they'd been living there and that really shocked me.
0:31.0	So I decided to find out more. The entire floor was engulfed by smoke and they could see nothing.
0:48.0	They can see nothing.
0:50.0	The entire team over. We hear someone calling for help.
0:55.0	Suddenly we hear someone calling for help.
1:01.0	I laid down on floor and tried to gain my strength back, but I noticed that I have no more
1:07.8	air in my ceiling there, more and more smoke getting into the leaf lobby and I feel so desperate and scared.
1:17.0	Last summer late at night, a huge fire raged in an old factory building in the Chung Sharwan
1:29.1	area of Hong Kong.
1:31.1	I'm Charlotte McDonald, welcome to assignment on the BBC World Service.
1:35.0	From the street passes by could see flames engulfing units on the eighth floor of the
1:40.0	10-story building. Three firefighters went into tackle the blaze, which was being
1:44.8	made worse by piles of goods that were being stored in subdivided rooms,
1:49.1	partitioned by makeshift wooden walls. But what the men were not expecting to come across late at night
1:55.0	in an old industrial building was a pair of teenage siblings.
1:59.0	By the time we lack them to the staircase on egg floor. They suddenly collapsed.
2:08.2	With almost no oxygen left in their tanks, the firemen's training and protocol
2:12.2	dictated that they should have returned to their colleagues outside and sent a new team of firemen in.
	...

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