In Beijing, where housing prices shoot up like rockets, I was a 28-year-old programmer forced to look for the cheapest place to live on 58.com after the rent on my shared apartment suddenly went up.
At last, I found an unbelievably cheap listing: an old, shabby apartment, 800 yuan a month, utilities and Wi-Fi included, renting out “half a bedroom.”
The landlord was a woman in her fifties whose eyes always held an indefinable, pleading look. She had divided the master bedroom from the smaller bedroom with a whole row of solid-wood wardrobes taller than a person. I was renting the half behind the wardrobes.
There was only one condition: I absolutely could not move those wardrobes...
