Posted on 12/25/2010 11:23:19 AM PST by DeaconBenjamin
As Beijing's real estate prices rise, those who cannot afford the rent go underground -- literally. Hundreds of cellars and air-raid shelters are rented as living spaces.
For 27-year-old Dong Ying, Beijing is a city of dreams. Two years ago, the sports teacher relocated to the Chinese metropolis. Here, she hoped, her wishes for a more interesting life would be fulfilled.
She goes from fitness club to fitness club every day, working as a trainer. She pedals, she bends and straightens and ensures that the affluent city residents stay in shape. To reach her students, she spends four hours each day in the city's subway.
She earns 3,000 yuan ($450) per month, far more than she would have earned in her hometown. "I am happy," says the young woman. "I love my work, and I feel free."
But there is a flaw in her lifestyle. Dong Ying lives underground. The only accommodation she can afford is a tiny room in the cellar of an apartment building. Every month she pays $68 for the room. Other tenants live even further down, on the cellar's second level, where the rent is even cheaper.
A bed, a small cupboard and a desk just fit into Dong Ying's room. A communal toilet and bathroom are at the end of the hallway. Anyone living here must eat out every day because any kind of kitchen is prohibited for safety reasons. Still, Dong Ying is positive: "The house management is OK. The corridor is clean."
Dong Ying is one of hundreds of thousands of Chinese sentenced to a life underground -- migrant workers, job seekers, street vendors. All those who can't afford life above ground in Beijing are forced to look below.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
Small, but clean and safe.
Tell her stay our of Detroit, Camden, Central LA, Harlem, Roxbury, South Side of Chicago, North Philadelphia, East Baltimore, and Northwest Washington DC.
Georgetown? Embassy Row? Connecticut Avenue? I would say SE, SW, and NE before I would say NW.
Pretty cool fallout shelter / office. Sort of a “Dr. Evil” 60’s Post-Modern style.
Wow!
Wonder if the place was decommissioned as a bomb shelter why they kept those emergency generators. Maybe it was too expensive to cut them up and haul them away?
I’m pretty sure that’s the same fallout shelter/office used by Wikileaks’ Web host.
Creation of good basements and sub-basements is a real art as much as a science. Out in the western US, there are few good residential basements, because few contractors know all the ins and outs.
Disasters happen when someone tries to build a basement just based on zoning standards, because every one needs to be different, if you want them to last and not be maintenance heavy. Any and every type of water in the area, soil types, earthquake activity, sometimes electrical grounding, conduits, sewage and fresh water plumbing, primary and emergency vertical lift, toxic gases and ventilation, even insects, molds, and roots have to be taken into account.
And then, if you want more than just a basic basement, it can get complicated.
So, keeping theirs makes sense. The gensets were likely in pristine condition and low hour.
So I guess, if one is having an elaborate basement built, one is best advised to go to a commercial contractor to handle the subterranean element?
From what I’ve heard, some contractors practically specialize in basements, needing more skilled and semi-skilled workers than surface contractors. They also have to be more heavily insured, because it is often much harder to fix mistakes after the fact underground.
And, to top things off, as far as the surface contractor is concerned, the basement is their foundation, so what they do is reliant on the quality of the construction beneath them. But the two are not disconnected, so they share sewer, water, electrical, air ducts, stairs and lifts, and likely other stuff as well.
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