Entertainment

10+ Shocking Photos Reveal What Its Like To Live In Hong Kong’s ‘Coffin Cubicles’

Published

5 years ago

October 13, 2019

Jack William

Hong Kong has become the least affordable housing market because about nearly 7.5 million people lives there and no land remains developable, creating a dreadful side effect of so-called ‘coffin cubicles’.

The United Nations has condemned these coffin apartments its areas is about 15 to 120-square-foot (roughly, 1,5-12 m²) can be the size of a toilet, a kitchen, or a balcony as “an insult to human dignity”, but according to the statement from ‘SoCO’, for some 200,000 people it’s still the only alternative.

National Geographic photographer ‘Benny Lam’ decided to illustrate this issue with his series “Trapped”, and he describes his experience of photographing said living conditions and said, “That day, I came home and cried.” Benny seeks to illuminate the stifling local apartments that stand outside the reach of Hong Kong’s attractive neon glow.

“You may wonder why we should care, as these people are not a part of our lives,” Benny wrote on his Facebook page. “They are exactly the people who come into your life every single day: they are serving you as the waiters in the restaurants where you eat, they are the security guards in the shopping malls you wander around, or the cleaners and the delivery men on the streets you pass through. The only difference between us and them is [their homes]. This is a question of human dignity.”

Lam explains, “From cooking to sleeping, all activities take place in these tiny spaces.” There’s also clarification from one of the residents there named Wong Tat-ming, 63, who couldn’t continue his work as a taxi driver after sclerosis spread into his leg, and now Wong has to live in an 18-square-feet room for about $307 (HK$2,400) a month.