Chinese girl grows up in secret cellar as poor family hides illegal expansion to tiny home

A cupboard in small bicycle garage reveals door to hidden underworld undiscovered for a decade until a tip-off to housing authorities

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A family of four in eastern China expanded their tiny home in a bicycle garage by digging a 3-metre-deep cellar underneath it, to create an underground bedroom for a mother and her daughter. Photo: Sina.com.cn

Published: 4:14pm, 31 Aug 2018Updated: 11:11pm, 31 Aug 2018

A mother and daughter in eastern China have been living for the past decade in an illegally excavated basement without windows or ventilation, in the same city district that has garnered large-sum investment from real estate developers in recent years.

Local media reported that the woman and her young daughter, now 18, were sleeping in the secret cellar, while her husband and one of her parents, 70, occupied the ground floor of their home in an 8 square metres (86 sq ft) bicycle garage in Suzhou, Jiangsu province.

The street of dilapidated houses in China’s eastern province of Jiangsu, where a family has been living in a bicycle garage with a secret entrance into a hidden underworld. Photo: Sina.com.cn

The family dug out the illegal basement two years after buying the space in 2006, after finding the garage too small for them to live in and store their belongings.

“Top floors can be expanded upwards, but we live in a ground floor garage. There’s no choice but to expand downwards,” the woman, surnamed Tang, told the Yangtze Evening News, which described her as the dwelling’s owner.

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The family home is located in the same Suzhou district of Gusu that has received large-scale investment from national developers in recent years, raising housing prices across the second-tier city west of Shanghai.