谭建威（音译）家的天花板很高。但不幸的是，这间单人房的长度或宽度都赶不上它的高度，里面挤着他、太太和12岁的儿子。房间大约35平方英尺，后墙上固定着两张双层木床，一台不大的黑白电视机摇摇欲坠地摆在架子上，还有一个小小的床头柜。整个房间让人感觉更像是一个储藏室，而非住所，堆满了杂七杂八的东西：衣服、缺了口的杯子、被褥、一台电扇、一卷白手纸。来客要么紧贴着门站着――这也是屋里唯一没有使用的空间――要么（像我一样）挨着谭建威坐在双层床的下铺。
谭建威是一名退休的灯泡厂工人，上世纪60年代从中国内地来到香港。香港估计有10万人像他这样，居住在隔间大小的公寓里。有些耳背的80岁老人Dai Yun-po和63岁的Kong Siu-gau的家，距离谭家乘计程车（如果你支付得起的话）很近，他们的居住条件更是骇人听闻。手头拮据的退休建筑工人们睡在用铁丝网围成的笼子里，顶棚低到直不起身子来。在这里，他们必须与其他十多名"笼民"挤在一间斗室里。我到的时候，他们全都在站着看电视（因为没有坐的地方）――播的正是最新一期《福布斯》(Forbes)亿万富豪榜。如果Dai和Kong是条狗的话，动物权益保护人士多年前就会为他们鸣不平了。
诚然，这些都是香港贫困现象中的极端例子。但作为一个以摄人心魄的港口景致和发财机遇闻名的城市，香港有许多悲惨境遇值得一谈。香港拥有700万人口，人均年收入接近3万美元，其中123万人口生活在贫困线以下，收入还不到低得令人绝望的工资中位数的一半。香港的收入再分配可谓是敷衍塞责，如果撇开这点儿有限的影响，香港的基尼系数（Gini coefficient，用以衡量收入不平等性）是亚洲表现最糟糕的（甚至比印度和中国内地还差）。
许多香港人每月的生活费仅有数百美元，在这个屡屡创下全球最高租金纪录的拥挤城市根本不够用。Kong笼屋的月租金为160美元。由于没有做饭的地方，他在外卖上的花费远不止这个数。
香港普遍存在的贫困现象，基本上不太为人所知。若不是政府补贴住房容纳了四成的香港居民，情况会糟糕很多。实际上，数千名养老金领取者要靠捡垃圾来维持开支。作为亚洲最为繁荣绚烂的城市之一，怎么会出现这种情况？至少有三方面的原因。
首先，与其它地区一样，香港受到了中国内地低成本竞争的重创。上世纪80年代，香港迅猛发展的经济吸引了很多内地人前来。香港社会服务联会(Council of Social Service)的蔡海伟(Chua Hoi Wai)估计，香港制造业当时大约有100万个工作岗位。随着这些岗位逐渐流入内地，这一数字已降至20万。工人的月工资水平，也从激动人心的80年代的1300至2500美元，降至700美元。蔡海伟表示，工资中位数10年都不见涨，而中高收入人群的薪酬却直线上升。
其次，香港地价一直被人为保持在高位。地产大亨和私人业主在香港不民主的立法会有着相当大的影响力。香港政府每次只拍卖极小一块地，因为再没有什么比负资产更让那些有权有势者恼火的了。建造新的公共住房、并低于市场价出售的计划已遭冻结。著名政界人士梁振英(C.Y. Leung)形容香港人正被分为两类：拥有房产的人和没有房产的人。
第三，香港拥有小政府的传统，信奉"积极不干预政策"(positive non-interventionism)。尽管人们赞扬自由市场的理念，称其为香港作为金融中心获得成功的关键，但如果你住在一个笼子里，积极不干预政策对你就没什么好处。这样做的结果就是没有公共养老金、失业救济金、或者伤残津贴。迄今为止，也没有最低工资。政府支出占香港本地生产总值(GDP)的16%左右。现在，你知道瑞典人把另外的34%花到哪儿了吧。
民主活动人士、大学讲师张超雄(Fernando Cheung)表示，许多香港穷人都是来自内地的移民。他们当初逃离了贫穷、动荡和专制，习惯了被当作"客体，而非主体"。这使得他们能够吃苦，很容易满足。
谭建威就符合他的描述。谭建威不后悔从内地逃到香港，尽管他现在一贫如洗，生活条件很糟糕。但在偶尔回广东省后，他的确意识到自己阔别了半个世纪的祖国越来越富裕。他承认，那里大多数人比他生活得好。"就连他们的厨房也比我的家大，"他表示。但让我感到不可思议的是，他的语气中全无艳羡之意。
译者/何黎
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001031893
Tam Kin-wai's home has a high ceiling. Unfortunately, the single room he occupies with his wife and 12-year-old son is higher than it is wide or long. At about 35 square feet, it has space for two wooden bunk beds fixed to the back wall, a small black-and-white television balanced precariously on a shelf and a little bedside table. Every inch of space in what feels more like a storage cupboard than a place of abode is piled high with clutter: clothes, chipped cups, bedding, an electric fan, a roll of white toilet paper. Guests can either stand just inside the doorway in the only vacant space, or (as I did) sit beside Mr Tam on the lower bunk bed.
Mr Tam, a retired light-bulb maker who came to Hong Kong from mainland China in the 1960s, is one of an estimated 100,000 people in the territory who reside in cubicle-sized apartments. A short taxi ride away (if you can afford it), Dai Yun-po, a hard-of-hearing 80-year-old, and Kong Siu-gau, 63, live in even more shocking conditions. Retired construction workers fallen on hard times, they sleep in cages with mesh walls and ceilings too low for them to stand up. To do so, they must join a dozen other caged men in a communal area. When I arrived they were all standing � since there were no seats � watching a television programme about the latest Forbes list of billionaires. If Mr Dai and Mr Kong were dogs, someone from animal rights would have taken up their case years ago.
These are extreme examples of Hong Kong poverty to be sure. Yet a territory better known for its breathtaking harbour-front skyline and its money-making possibilities has plenty of misery to go round. In a city of 7m people with an average per capita income of nearly US$30,000, 1.23m live below the poverty line, earning less than half of a desperately low median wage. The city's Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, is the worst in Asia (worse even than India and mainland China) before the limited effects of the city's half-hearted income redistribution are counted.
The few hundred US dollars a month that many people live on do not get you very far in a cramped city-state with some of the world's highest rents. Mr Kong pays US$160 a month for caged enclosure. Since there are no cooking facilities, he spends a good deal more on take-away food.
Widespread poverty is a largely untold story of Hong Kong. Were it not for subsidised public housing, where 40 per cent of Hong Kong residents live, conditions would be much worse. As it is, thousands of pensioners pick through garbage to make ends meet. How could things have come to this in one of Asia's most prosperous and glittering cities? There are at least three reasons.
First, Hong Kong has been as badly hit as anywhere by low-cost competition from mainland China. In the 1980s, when many Chinese were drawn to the territory's booming economy, there were an estimated 1m manufacturing jobs in Hong Kong, according to Chua Hoi Wai of Hong Kong's Council of Social Service. That number has fallen to 200,000 as jobs have seeped across the border. Factory wages have fallen from US$1,300-US$2,500 a month in the heady 1980s to as little as US$700. The median wage has not budged in a decade, says Mr Chua, while those of the mid- and top-earners have soared.
Second, land prices are kept artificially high. Property tycoons and private property owners wield huge influence on an undemocratic legislature. The government auctions off parcels of land sparingly, since nothing upsets the powerful more than negative equity. A scheme to build new public housing for sale at below-market prices has been frozen. C.Y. Leung, a prominent politician, describes Hong Kong as being divided into those who own property and those who do not.
Third, Hong Kong has a tradition of small government and a credo of "positive non-interventionism". A free-market philosophy lauded as key to Hong Kong's success as a financial centre, positive non-interventionism has little to offer if you are living in a cage. The upshot is no public pension, no unemployment benefit or disability allowance. As yet, there is no minimum wage. Government expenditure is around 16 per cent of gross domestic product. Now you know what Sweden spends the other 34 per cent on.
Fernando Cheung, a pro-democracy activist and university lecturer, says many of Hong Kong's poor are migrants from mainland China. They fled poverty, turmoil and tyranny and are used to being treated as "objects, not subjects", he says. That makes them stoical and undemanding.
Mr Tam, the retired light-bulb maker, fits his description. He has no regrets about fleeing mainland China for Hong Kong despite the poverty and poor living conditions in which he now finds himself. But he does note, on occasional trips back to Guangdong province, that the country he left half a century ago grows every day richer. Most people over the border now live better than he does, he admits. "Even their kitchen is bigger than my house," he says, in a voice miraculously devoid of envy.
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