This post was written back in 2017, but things have not changed much since. If anything, things have gotten worse as those who could, in the lower strata of society, attempted to move to the UK. In Hong Kong, besides the glamourous life of Central, there are a lot of elderly people who try to make ends meet by collecting and selling cardboard to recycling companies, commonly called the “cardboard ladies”. A feature was published on them in the South China Morning Post in 2014.
Recent Developments
In 2017, the plight of the cardboard ladies made the headlines when an old lady got arrested by the HK authorities for reselling cardboards at 1 HKD. The old lady got charged by the Food and Environment agency of Hong Kong with unlicensed hawking and obstruction of public places. She was released on a bail of 30 HKD. This bail may seem very low, but it left her with only 34 HKD in her pocket!
This brought around an outcry of the public and eventually, the department agreed to drop the charges against the old lady. This served however as a revealer of the huge economic divide in Hong Kong, where a “bail” of 30 HKD (the price of a coffee for many of us) may be enough to disrupt totally the life of an elderly lady.
The cardboard ladies, illustration of a huge economic divide
While Hong Kong is generally seen as a prosperous city, the prosperity has not reached every class of the population. There are people who are still economically struggling, especially in the lower income classes. When they reach retirement, cost of living and cost of housing take their toll.
Articles written on the subject of the “cardboard ladies” tend to point out that these elderlies came from mainland China to Hong Kong in the 1960s, and often missed out on the economic boom of the later years in mainland China. Insufficiently educated, these elderlies struggle to find proper jobs and often end up having to do odd jobs to merely pay the rent and survive. Of course, health care is mostly free and estates are heavily subsidized, but there is no margin for a mistake. Hongkongers, themselves, tend to dismiss the phenomenon as “elderlies proudly not wanting to demand aid”. It mistakes the fact that these people have nobody to take care of them.
The “cardboard ladies” are just one example stressing how the city is becoming increasingly unlivable for less affluent classes, especially as in 2026, rents have started again climbing in what was already a highly unaffordable market.
Update on 14/07/2017: Bloomberg published an article on the Cardboard ladies : https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-12/china-s-property-boom-passes-by-migrants-to-hong-kong
You can watch their video below: