[News Terms] Chinese Workers' One-Room Converted 'Pangchang'

'Fangcang (方艙)' refers to the temporary quarantine facilities that symbolized China's strict 'Zero COVID' prevention policy. The term means 'square cabin.' These facilities were designed to isolate infected individuals or close contacts, modeled after the US military's field container hospitals.

In the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Chinese government quickly set up hundreds of thousands of hospital rooms(?) in large stadiums, exhibition centers, and gymnasiums of schools across major regions to demonstrate control over the virus. However, these rooms faced criticism from Chinese netizens as 'death prisons' because they consisted of beds placed closely together without curtains or partitions.

The Chinese government quickly built the 'Fangchang (方艙)' on the outskirts of Beijing in just 20 days to quarantine over 40,000 Beijing residents, and has now converted it into studio apartments for rent.
[Photo by South China Morning Post (SCMP) website capture]

In response, the Chinese government built proper single-person rooms called 'Fangcang' on separate sites, using container-style temporary buildings equipped with restrooms, showers, TVs, and heating and cooling systems. This is why clusters of temporary buildings made from thousands of shipping containers appeared in major Chinese cities.

However, after the pandemic, the issue of recycling temporary quarantine facilities like Fangcang, which were mass-produced due to COVID-19, became a headache across China. Converting them in any way incurs costs. The solution proposed by the Chinese government is to repurpose them as worker accommodations.

Recently, the Chinese government has been converting some Fangcang units into studio apartments for low-wage workers. On the 3rd, Hong Kong media South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that a building in Beijing, which served as a temporary COVID-19 hospital during the pandemic, has been converted into studio apartments available for rent at 1,200 yuan (about 220,000 KRW) per month since last September.

Located 10 km from Beijing's gateway, Shoudu International Airport, and 30 km from the city center at Tiananmen Square, this building is constructed by stacking containers like Lego blocks on a site the size of 20 soccer fields. Although it is on the outskirts of the city, it is much cheaper than studio apartments in downtown Beijing and is well-equipped with private bathrooms, air conditioning, and other amenities. Out of a total of 520 studios, 400 have already been rented, mainly by delivery workers, construction workers, and job seekers.

A resident, Mr. A, told SCMP in an interview, "If you don't mind that this place was once a medical quarantine facility, it's a decent place to live." This facility was built in just 20 days in July last year when the Omicron variant was spreading, and it quarantined over 40,000 Beijing residents. It is known that Jinan City in Shandong Province also converted some temporary COVID-19 hospitals into dormitories for industrial park workers.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.