9 ms·

A million people live in underground nuclear bunkers in Beijing (2017)

130 points by Jerry2 8y ago

rayiner 8y ago
I hear 1BR underground bunkers are going for above asking price in Mountain View.
myself248 8y ago
Yes, yes this weekend is a perfect time to pull my copy of City Of Darkness off the shelf.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- bredren 8y ago
  Or the Imperial Radch series—the undergarden.
lanrh1836 8y ago
Can someone explain why Beijing is so expensive as far as rents go? I’m surprised given how sprawling it is.
- cgb223 8y ago
  Imagine a city with so much housing demand that there are literal laws about who can and cannot move there for the sake of population control Also, a lot of the people in the bunkers are not supposed to be there in the legal sense above, which is why they end up there.
  - sabalaba 8y ago
    The Hukou (户口) system that you’re talking about wasn’t established because of demand for housing in Beijing. It’s not really clear why it was established and has origins that date back hundreds of years. It essentially serves as a social control mechanism and to promote people living, and thus laboring, in rural areas. Though it dates back to immigration control between states in “China”. (When they were different sovereign entities.) They’re all migrant workers and are allowed to be in Beijing without Hukou. Hukou Just establishes certain privileges like home ownership and school access. The best way to think about Hukou for Americans is that Hukou is like if California required a Texan or Floridian to get a Visa or become a “California Citizen” before working there, buying a home there, or using public services there.
    - onethought 8y ago
      It seems Hukou is being used to somewhat control the urbanisation plans CCP have been implementing. They create “Hukou free” regions like Shenzhen for periods of time to cause mass migration and economic growth. But it’s also created this strange “illegal migrant” issue in all the top tier cities (PK, SH, GZ, etc).
- fiblye 8y ago
  I've been caught in Beijing traffic exactly once, and it's not something I'd ever want to deal with ever again. I think any person who can pay to avoid it absolutely will. Chinese traffic makes American traffic seem completely smooth.
- baybal2 8y ago
  Low population density - it's the only city in China of this size with something resembling American suburbia. A lot of semi-rural, and low-rise building separating the urban core with all govt buildings from new districts.
sbenitoj 8y ago
“In Beijing alone, roughly 10,000 bunkers were promptly constructed...Now when night falls, more than a million people—mostly migrant workers and students from rural areas—vanish from Beijing’s bustling streets into the underground universe, little known to the world above...Local laws require a minimal living space of 4 square meters (43 square feet) per tenant, which, in many cases, go ignored.” Something about this story doesn’t add up — many bunkers are less than 43 sq ft per tenant, but somehow the average number of people living in a bunker is ~100 (1,000,000 people / 10,000 bunkers)??
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- cgb223 8y ago
  Bunkers with Bunk Beds?
  - sbenitoj 8y ago
    I’m not saying it’s physically impossible, but it’s awfully hard to believe that THAT many people are willing to live in such abysmal conditions.
    - GuiA 8y ago
      They are “migrant workers and students from rural areas”. They are willing to live in such abysmal conditions for a few years because it holds the promise of a strong quality of life improvement after that.
      - nutcracker46 8y ago
        They are fucked, as they will graduate to the world of "996" and still live a dismal life. Such are the ways in cultures with a steep "power gradient." If all persons are not created equal, then someone deserves steak eggs while another deserves beans and shit. All one have left is connections, and no measure of hard work will make the graduate from a farm family the peer of the graduate from a family of Party princelings.
hyeonwho4 8y ago
Of the pictures at the top of the article, almost every bedroom captioned as being in an underground bunker had a window visible in the frame. One of them had something that looked like the door to a residential apartment next to that window. Another one had nice mouldings between walls and ceiling, which is not a detail I would expect in a bunker. To add to that, basement establishments are not exactly rare in Asia's big cities. I'm very skeptical of this story.
- Jerry2 8y ago
  >window visible in the frame Take a closer look. These windows are not windows to the outside. They're windows to hallways inside of massive bunkers. You can even see giant steam/water pipes in some of the pics (say pic #1). Also, notice the window frames... they are not the types of window frames that would last even a week when exposed to outside elements like snow, wind and rain. Large pic #1: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/photography/PROOF/2017/February/atomic-rooms-china/22-atomic-rooms-faccilongo.jpg https://www.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/photography/P...
zachguo 8y ago
It reminds me of the sci-fi novelette Folding Beijing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding_Beijing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding_Beijing
- selimthegrim 8y ago
  Beat me to the punch.
- samcheng 8y ago
  Thanks for the referral! Here's a link to the story, translated to English: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/folding-beijing-2/ https://uncannymagazine.com/article/folding-beijing-2/
crazygringo 8y ago
A million people living in bunkers? That means one of out twenty. That just doesn't pass the smell test. The linked NYT article [1] says it's "well over 100,000" which is a whole order of magnitude lower. But more importantly, it also seems to conflate what is a true bomb shelter, versus what are merely regular basement apartments: "Nearly every apartment building in the Digua Shequ center’s neighborhood has a former shelter or a basement... If you get rid of these basement units, where will the migrants live?... A lot of landlords have spent money renovating the spaces they lease, so they don’t want to stop renting out basements..." I mean, c'mon -- people live in basement apartments in Manhattan too, it's not that bad. And then, yes, I could maybe believe that 1/20 people in Beijing lives in a basement apartment if the average building is 10 stories tall with a single-story basement. And that then a much smaller number live in the actual bomb shelters that aren't just basements. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/world/asia/beijing-bomb-shelters.html?_ga=1.4562097.385821338.1462107904&_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/world/asia/beijing-bomb-s...
- AFascistWorld 8y ago
  https://www.google.com/search?q=%E5%8C%97%E6%BC%82++%E5%9C%B0%E4%B8%8B%E5%AE%A4&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X https://www.google.com/search?q=%E5%8C%97%E6%BC%82++%E5%9C%B...
- RandomInteger4 8y ago
  Might want to check your math on this one.
- dis-sys 8y ago
  > I mean, c'mon -- people live in basement apartments in Manhattan too, it's not that bad. The underground space discussed by the OP article were actually designed/built/maintained as shelters for nuclear war. They are not fancy Manhattan apartments, you can't get it connected with broadband/water through official channels. If someone lives there, their kids can't even go to local public schools, as they are never considered as local residents. There are of course actual basement apartments in Beijing, but a 70 sqm basement apartment can has a price tag of $1.5 million USD [1]. That is something for the middle class, not those people mentioned in the OP article. [1] http://www.sohu.com/a/229312750_100070963 http://www.sohu.com/a/229312750_100070963
SubiculumCode 8y ago
Too bad the excess in housing in China isn't being utilized to solve this issue.
forkLding 8y ago
Wikipedia page on this place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City_(Beijing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City_(Beijing) Wikipedia page states that is 85 square km. Also another much longer and detailed Vice article of it: https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/nnmk8b/chairman-maos-underground-city https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/nnmk8b/chairman-maos-unde...
justin66 8y ago
Some of the bomb shelters are above ground, as shown in the photographs, which is part of why the "million people underground" thing is just hyperbole. It doesn't make this an uninteresting article. One of above-ground shelters is architecturally a little strange, with steel security cages built over first, second, and third story windows where you'd ordinarily just put a railing or balcony. It looks cool but I wonder what the actual purpose of it could be.
yegle 8y ago
These are not normal basement rooms. Builders in China are required by law to build these bunkers that can withstand air strikes. E.g. http://www.sz.gov.cn/yjzhzx/ywgz_54281/rmfk/201711/t20171121_9904486.htm http://www.sz.gov.cn/yjzhzx/ywgz_54281/rmfk/201711/t20171121... Those bunkers are actually owned by the government. Using those bunkers for other purposes are against the law. https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E5%85%B1%E5%92%8C%E5%9B%BD%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E9%98%B2%E7%A9%BA%E6%B3%95/1226515?fromtitle=%E3%80%8A%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E5%85%B1%E5%92%8C%E5%9B%BD%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E9%98%B2%E7%A9%BA%E6%B3%95%E3%80%8B&fromid=11178372 https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E4%BA%BA%E6%... You can even find the build code for those bunkers with keyword GB50038 (Code for design of civil air defence basement)
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  A lot of the ant tribe lives in the basements of otherwise luxury apartment buildings, there is also a large network of older bunkers within the 2nd ring road. Law doesn’t mean much in China, just if the officials are in the mood to crack down on it or not.
- jmole 8y ago
  This has got to be a subsidy to China's construction industry. I can't imagine any circumstances where a modern war would require this kind of infrastructure.
netflixByMail 8y ago
I wonder if they get Netflix by snail mail.
RandomInteger4 8y ago
We're over here playing Fallout Shelter; they're over there living fallout shelter.
newnewpdro 8y ago
This article made me ponder the utility of, as a nation, having an independently functioning portion of your economy and society underground at bunker depths, as a component of national security. If the shit ever did really hit the fan, and you had something on the order of 10+% of your population entirely self-sufficient underground, these would be the survivors and they'd already be entirely acclimated to, and prepared for, the situation. It's some food for thought...
retube 8y ago
there's something on that page that autoplays. can't find it to stop it on mobile, so unable to read.

130 points by Jerry2 8y ago

rayiner 8y ago

I hear 1BR underground bunkers are going for above asking price in Mountain View.

myself248 8y ago

Yes, yes this weekend is a perfect time to pull my copy of City Of Darkness off the shelf.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
bredren 8y ago
Or the Imperial Radch series—the undergarden.

lanrh1836 8y ago

Can someone explain why Beijing is so expensive as far as rents go? I’m surprised given how sprawling it is.

cgb223 8y ago
Imagine a city with so much housing demand that there are literal laws about who can and cannot move there for the sake of population control Also, a lot of the people in the bunkers are not supposed to be there in the legal sense above, which is why they end up there.
- sabalaba 8y ago
  The Hukou (户口) system that you’re talking about wasn’t established because of demand for housing in Beijing. It’s not really clear why it was established and has origins that date back hundreds of years. It essentially serves as a social control mechanism and to promote people living, and thus laboring, in rural areas. Though it dates back to immigration control between states in “China”. (When they were different sovereign entities.) They’re all migrant workers and are allowed to be in Beijing without Hukou. Hukou Just establishes certain privileges like home ownership and school access. The best way to think about Hukou for Americans is that Hukou is like if California required a Texan or Floridian to get a Visa or become a “California Citizen” before working there, buying a home there, or using public services there.
  - onethought 8y ago
    It seems Hukou is being used to somewhat control the urbanisation plans CCP have been implementing. They create “Hukou free” regions like Shenzhen for periods of time to cause mass migration and economic growth. But it’s also created this strange “illegal migrant” issue in all the top tier cities (PK, SH, GZ, etc).
fiblye 8y ago
I've been caught in Beijing traffic exactly once, and it's not something I'd ever want to deal with ever again. I think any person who can pay to avoid it absolutely will. Chinese traffic makes American traffic seem completely smooth.
baybal2 8y ago
Low population density - it's the only city in China of this size with something resembling American suburbia. A lot of semi-rural, and low-rise building separating the urban core with all govt buildings from new districts.

sbenitoj 8y ago

“In Beijing alone, roughly 10,000 bunkers were promptly constructed...Now when night falls, more than a million people—mostly migrant workers and students from rural areas—vanish from Beijing’s bustling streets into the underground universe, little known to the world above...Local laws require a minimal living space of 4 square meters (43 square feet) per tenant, which, in many cases, go ignored.” Something about this story doesn’t add up — many bunkers are less than 43 sq ft per tenant, but somehow the average number of people living in a bunker is ~100 (1,000,000 people / 10,000 bunkers)??

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
cgb223 8y ago
Bunkers with Bunk Beds?
- sbenitoj 8y ago
  I’m not saying it’s physically impossible, but it’s awfully hard to believe that THAT many people are willing to live in such abysmal conditions.
  - GuiA 8y ago
    They are “migrant workers and students from rural areas”. They are willing to live in such abysmal conditions for a few years because it holds the promise of a strong quality of life improvement after that.
    - nutcracker46 8y ago
      They are fucked, as they will graduate to the world of "996" and still live a dismal life. Such are the ways in cultures with a steep "power gradient." If all persons are not created equal, then someone deserves steak eggs while another deserves beans and shit. All one have left is connections, and no measure of hard work will make the graduate from a farm family the peer of the graduate from a family of Party princelings.

hyeonwho4 8y ago

Of the pictures at the top of the article, almost every bedroom captioned as being in an underground bunker had a window visible in the frame. One of them had something that looked like the door to a residential apartment next to that window. Another one had nice mouldings between walls and ceiling, which is not a detail I would expect in a bunker. To add to that, basement establishments are not exactly rare in Asia's big cities. I'm very skeptical of this story.

Jerry2 8y ago
>window visible in the frame Take a closer look. These windows are not windows to the outside. They're windows to hallways inside of massive bunkers. You can even see giant steam/water pipes in some of the pics (say pic #1). Also, notice the window frames... they are not the types of window frames that would last even a week when exposed to outside elements like snow, wind and rain. Large pic #1: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/photography/PROOF/2017/February/atomic-rooms-china/22-atomic-rooms-faccilongo.jpg https://www.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/photography/P...

zachguo 8y ago

It reminds me of the sci-fi novelette Folding Beijing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding_Beijing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding_Beijing

selimthegrim 8y ago
Beat me to the punch.
samcheng 8y ago
Thanks for the referral! Here's a link to the story, translated to English: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/folding-beijing-2/ https://uncannymagazine.com/article/folding-beijing-2/

crazygringo 8y ago

A million people living in bunkers? That means one of out twenty. That just doesn't pass the smell test. The linked NYT article [1] says it's "well over 100,000" which is a whole order of magnitude lower. But more importantly, it also seems to conflate what is a true bomb shelter, versus what are merely regular basement apartments: "Nearly every apartment building in the Digua Shequ center’s neighborhood has a former shelter or a basement... If you get rid of these basement units, where will the migrants live?... A lot of landlords have spent money renovating the spaces they lease, so they don’t want to stop renting out basements..." I mean, c'mon -- people live in basement apartments in Manhattan too, it's not that bad. And then, yes, I could maybe believe that 1/20 people in Beijing lives in a basement apartment if the average building is 10 stories tall with a single-story basement. And that then a much smaller number live in the actual bomb shelters that aren't just basements. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/world/asia/beijing-bomb-shelters.html?_ga=1.4562097.385821338.1462107904&_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/world/asia/beijing-bomb-s...

AFascistWorld 8y ago
https://www.google.com/search?q=%E5%8C%97%E6%BC%82++%E5%9C%B0%E4%B8%8B%E5%AE%A4&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X https://www.google.com/search?q=%E5%8C%97%E6%BC%82++%E5%9C%B...
RandomInteger4 8y ago
Might want to check your math on this one.
dis-sys 8y ago
> I mean, c'mon -- people live in basement apartments in Manhattan too, it's not that bad. The underground space discussed by the OP article were actually designed/built/maintained as shelters for nuclear war. They are not fancy Manhattan apartments, you can't get it connected with broadband/water through official channels. If someone lives there, their kids can't even go to local public schools, as they are never considered as local residents. There are of course actual basement apartments in Beijing, but a 70 sqm basement apartment can has a price tag of $1.5 million USD [1]. That is something for the middle class, not those people mentioned in the OP article. [1] http://www.sohu.com/a/229312750_100070963 http://www.sohu.com/a/229312750_100070963

SubiculumCode 8y ago

Too bad the excess in housing in China isn't being utilized to solve this issue.

forkLding 8y ago

Wikipedia page on this place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City_(Beijing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City_(Beijing) Wikipedia page states that is 85 square km. Also another much longer and detailed Vice article of it: https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/nnmk8b/chairman-maos-underground-city https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/nnmk8b/chairman-maos-unde...

justin66 8y ago

Some of the bomb shelters are above ground, as shown in the photographs, which is part of why the "million people underground" thing is just hyperbole. It doesn't make this an uninteresting article. One of above-ground shelters is architecturally a little strange, with steel security cages built over first, second, and third story windows where you'd ordinarily just put a railing or balcony. It looks cool but I wonder what the actual purpose of it could be.

yegle 8y ago

These are not normal basement rooms. Builders in China are required by law to build these bunkers that can withstand air strikes. E.g. http://www.sz.gov.cn/yjzhzx/ywgz_54281/rmfk/201711/t20171121_9904486.htm http://www.sz.gov.cn/yjzhzx/ywgz_54281/rmfk/201711/t20171121... Those bunkers are actually owned by the government. Using those bunkers for other purposes are against the law. https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E5%85%B1%E5%92%8C%E5%9B%BD%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E9%98%B2%E7%A9%BA%E6%B3%95/1226515?fromtitle=%E3%80%8A%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E5%85%B1%E5%92%8C%E5%9B%BD%E4%BA%BA%E6%B0%91%E9%98%B2%E7%A9%BA%E6%B3%95%E3%80%8B&fromid=11178372 https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%B8%AD%E5%8D%8E%E4%BA%BA%E6%... You can even find the build code for those bunkers with keyword GB50038 (Code for design of civil air defence basement)

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
A lot of the ant tribe lives in the basements of otherwise luxury apartment buildings, there is also a large network of older bunkers within the 2nd ring road. Law doesn’t mean much in China, just if the officials are in the mood to crack down on it or not.
jmole 8y ago
This has got to be a subsidy to China's construction industry. I can't imagine any circumstances where a modern war would require this kind of infrastructure.

netflixByMail 8y ago

I wonder if they get Netflix by snail mail.

RandomInteger4 8y ago

We're over here playing Fallout Shelter; they're over there living fallout shelter.

newnewpdro 8y ago

This article made me ponder the utility of, as a nation, having an independently functioning portion of your economy and society underground at bunker depths, as a component of national security. If the shit ever did really hit the fan, and you had something on the order of 10+% of your population entirely self-sufficient underground, these would be the survivors and they'd already be entirely acclimated to, and prepared for, the situation. It's some food for thought...

retube 8y ago

there's something on that page that autoplays. can't find it to stop it on mobile, so unable to read.