‘I haven’t died yet, but I already live in a coffin’: reports from residents of apartments five times smaller than a cell in Hong Kong

Coffin apartments: what micro-dwellings in Hong Kong look like inside “An elderly man once told me: ‘I haven’t died yet, but I’m already living in a coffin.’” The memory comes from social worker Lain Shan Sze, who has been traveling the alleys and buildings of Hong Kong to visit the so-called coffin apartments for 30 years. The house’s nickname was given by the residents of the cubicles measuring less than two meters long and just over half a meter wide, spaces so tiny that they are five times smaller than a solitary cell in a Hong Kong prison. Inside these boxes, life unfolds, compressed between metal walls and 40°C heat. A resident shows the insects he kills and leaves on the wall; another, Simon, who has lived in the micro-apartment for 3 years, says he has seen “a lot of people arrive and leave”. There, people eat, read, dream and survive, each trying to maintain some semblance of dignity amidst the hardship. “We’re just random people in the same place”, sums up one of the men. “It’s like we don’t want to be enemies or friends.” The Fantástico reporter visited one of the apartments, but was expelled by the owner. One of the residents, cleaner Wai-Shan Lee, said she had never seen the owner so angry. In an interview with Fantástico, she said that she ended up there after losing her mother and breaking up with her brother. Lee says he misses home, childhood, air. “Living there is devastating”, he confesses. “I miss my home, I really want to go back to the world of when I was little.” For Lee, the dog Bibi became his daily companion, and perhaps the only breather between windowless walls. Hong Kong has more than 4,000 skyscrapers, but also a crowd living in clandestine rooms. The most vertical city on the planet displays the brutal contrast between luxury and poverty, skyscrapers and coffins. A housing crisis deeply linked to low wages. It pays very poorly and the worker has to spend more and more to support himself. For social worker Lain Shan Sze, the residents’ plight sums up an era in which the basic right to have a home became a privilege. “Many coffin apartments are not registered, do not have a license, are not within the law”, summarizes the social worker.

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