China Daily News

The China Daily News is a national newspaper written in English.


I have commented on this paper in the past. I enjoy reading it. Typically where I have been and in particular where I am now, it is a bit more difficult to obtain, and generally is a few days to a week old. The business section is usually old news by the time I read it; but the remaining section of the paper is always entertaining. From stories across the country I can pick up all kinds of interesting tidbits to discuss with my Chinese friends ranging from serious issues of dealing with the economy and/or politics to humorous stories that make most anyone raise an eyebrow.

Some of my favorites in the past have been about the man who deliberately filed a false police report about being mugged knowing all the while his fabrication would be discovered and he would have to go to jail but considered going to jail a better alternative than going home to his wife. Another was a story about Michelle Obama’s shoes coming from a Chengdu manufacturing company.

Recently there have been several stories about “fake peas” being sold in Changsha (the big city 40 km north of Xiangtan). These “peas” were really some type of soybean dyed green and the green dye not only smelled very bad when boiled, but was making people sick.

On a personal note, the story about famous Hot Pot restaurants in Chengdu using “Kitchen Waste Oil” in their Hot Pot dishes was a definite memory involving some pain. While dining in what may arguably be the best Hot Pot restaurant in Chengdu with my brother last April, I asked my host, Lin Yan, if this restaurant was one of “those” places using waste oil? She turned with a horrid expression on her face; slapped my arm and said “You are not supposed to know about that! How do you know that?” When I told her I read it in the China Daily, she was very surprised. She then whispered to me “I called this place in advance to make sure they were not one of them and they told me no.” I laughed and said “what did you expect them to say?’ At any rate, we had a grand dinner that night despite the potential risk.

Just yesterday there was story from Guangzhou about Rat Dishes which was espousing the delicacy of this, um, somewhat unusual dish. The story contained a quote from someone that “one serving of Rat equals three times the nutrition of Chicken” and that Rat sold for something like four times the cost of pork. Hmmm. Even so, I sure I am not that adventurous.

I could go on and on and as you can see, its easy to stay on top of local headlines of social value by picking up even an old copy of the China Daily News.

But that is not the purpose of this story.

The real purpose is to describe an incredibly interesting article about a new form of housing for the migrant worker in and around Beijing these days.

Migrant workers are those Chinese who, typically, are farmers who leave their farmlands in distant cities and travel to the large cities in hopes of finding work at a higher wage rate than they can get from farming. Bear in mind that “higher” is a relative term and their lifestyles are far below what we as westerners would consider sustainable. Wages of $2000 Yuan ($300 USD) could be the norm.

With this huge influx of migrants in the cities such as Beijing, there is a severe shortage of affordable, decent housing.

One solution is being pursued by a western Architect.

His goal is to build “micro-apartments”. These micro-apartments are (hold your hat, here) 1.5 meter wide by 2.0 meter long and 1.5 meter high one room dwellings. For the metrically challenged – that is a room roughly 5 feet wide, 6.5 feet long and 5 feet tall! The photograph showed a young man sitting on the floor with his back against the wall reading a book with his feet folded up against the far wall and at the far end of the room sat his computer with a small window just above to the outside. The bathrooms are a common room down the hall. Imagine how many of these apartments you could install in the same footprint as a typical apartment complex. These micro-apartments lease for 200 Yuan/month ($30 USD). Naturally, the man-on-the-street quotes were glowing in appreciation which should give you some idea of either the propaganda arm of the Chinese media or an indication of how bad the alternative is.

The western architect’s challenge is to design the outside façade to be appealing form a street view and he is using a traditional Chinese look of row houses popular in the early 20th century. From the article, these places are renting like the proverbial hotcake.

Now, why would this interest me so much?

The western architect is none other than Atlanta’s own John Portman!



And you thought I couldn’t pull this together in the end.