I never really understood this aphorism until I went to China. I was raised on corn-fed American beef which sweetens the taste of the meat considerably. You really don't know the difference until you taste it. In that spirit, I'm launching this thread for news items related to eating bitter in China.

Hong Kong housing crisis puts poor in cages
Associated Press
Updated 10:41 pm, Thursday, February 7, 2013


Cheng Man Wai calls a 16-square-foot cage home. Hong Kong's skyrocketing housing prices have forced about 100,000 people in the former British colony to live in squalid conditions. Photo: Vincent Yu, Associated Press

Hong Kong --

For many of the richest people in Hong Kong, one of Asia's wealthiest cities, home is a mansion with an expansive view from the heights of Victoria Peak. For some of the poorest, like Leung Cho-yin, home is a metal cage.

The 67-year-old former butcher pays $167 a month for one of about a dozen wire mesh cages resembling rabbit hutches crammed into a dilapidated apartment in a gritty, working-class West Kowloon neighborhood.

The cages, stacked on top of each other, measure 16 square feet. To keep bedbugs away, Leung and his roommates put thin pads, bamboo mats, even old linoleum on their cages' wooden planks instead of mattresses.

"I've been bitten so much I'm used to it," said Leung, rolling up the sleeve of his oversize blue fleece jacket to reveal a red mark on his hand. "There's nothing you can do about it. I've got to live here. I've got to survive," he said as he let out a phlegmy cough.

An estimated 100,000 people in the former British colony live in what's known as inadequate housing, according to the Society for Community Organization, a social welfare group. The category also includes apartments subdivided into tiny cubicles or filled with coffin-size wood and metal sleeping compartments, as well as rooftop shacks. They're a grim counterpoint to the southern Chinese city's renowned material affluence.

Forced by skyrocketing housing prices to live in cramped, dirty and unsafe conditions, their plight also highlights one of the biggest headaches facing Hong Kong's unpopular Beijing-backed leader: growing public rage over the city's housing crisis.

Leung Chun-ying took office as Hong Kong's chief executive in July, pledging to provide more affordable housing in a bid to cool the anger. Home prices rose 23 percent in the first 10 months of 2012 and have doubled since bottoming out in 2008 during the global financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund said in a report last month. Rents have followed a similar trajectory.

The soaring costs are putting decent homes out of reach of a large portion of the population while stoking resentment of the government, which controls all land for development, and a coterie of wealthy property developers. Housing costs have been fueled by easy credit, thanks to ultra-low interest rates that policymakers can't raise because the currency is pegged to the dollar. Money flooding in from mainland Chinese and foreign investors looking for higher returns has exacerbated the rise.

Leung, the cage dweller, has little faith that the government could do anything to change the situation of people like him.

"It's not whether I believe him or not, but they always talk this way. What hope is there?" said Leung, who has been living in cage homes since he stopped working at a market stall after losing part of a finger 20 years ago. With just a seventh-grade education, he is only able to find intermittent casual work.

Many poor residents have applied for public housing but face years of waiting.