from Hacker News

The married couples in Hong Kong who live apart

by mih on 9/16/19, 1:27 PM with 59 comments

• by ChuckNorris89 on 9/16/19, 2:13 PM

  I'm from Europe and I also live apart from my long term SO. The reason being our job commutes.

  We work in completely opposite parts of town and due to the city lacking fast public transport and her job lacking flextime she has to wake up way earlier than I'm use to if I want to be productive at work and so far we haven't found a middle ground where one doesn't have to compromise too much.

  Honestly, remote work would ease a lot of modern urban problems like traffic, rents, relationships, childcare, etc. If only our corporate masters would allow it.

  World governments need to start incentivizing employers to offer remote ASAP as infrastructure in the cities is not keeping up with population growth.

• by drakonka on 9/16/19, 4:04 PM

  Aside from the financial aspect I've been thinking about the topic of living together with your long term partner recently.

  I am re-evaluating the whole concept that couples eventually living together needs to be some kind of long term relationship default or goal. I love my personal space and having an apartment to call my own to come home to. I also love having my boyfriend visit, sometimes for days at a time. I'm not completely against eventually moving in together, but am kind of unsure when or why we usually consider it to be some sort of inevitable goal of a successful relationship that is progressing. Can't we just live separately, enjoy our own space, and see each other whenever we want? Maybe gradually the time we want to spend together will increase, and then nothing is stopping us from doing that. And maybe we'll go through a phase where we want more personal time, and then we'll still have the option to do that, too! This way we could see each other simply because we want to, not because we happen to live in the same apartment and don't really have another option anyway.

  Of course this becomes more complicated if the couple chooses to have children, but as someone who intends to stay childfree I guess I just don't see much of an incentive to move in together 'permanently'.

• by pcurve on 9/16/19, 2:02 PM

  "Nearly one in 10 married couples in Hong Kong are not living with their spouses."

  In the US the figure is 7 percent so it's not unusual for couples to live apart. I'm curious if the embedded study written in Chinese accounts for this.

• by Yuval_Halevi on 9/16/19, 1:35 PM

  For those of you who want to get some in-depth statistics about the situation in Hong Kong

  https://www.bycensus2016.gov.hk/data/16BC_Youth_report_2018....

• by mymythisisthis on 9/16/19, 3:21 PM

  We need a 4 day work week with 1 day of mandatory/paid retraining. Unskilled labor can be found anywhere, there are 7.7 billion people on the planet.

  By having programs in place for training we can move people into careers where they can grow and move up.

  German is moving to a 28hr work week for some workers. https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/07/news/economy/germany-28-hou...

• by vivekd on 9/16/19, 2:56 PM

  So the cost of an apartment is $4000 and medium income for new employees is $10000 according to the article.

  Am I missing something - that seems more affordable than most major metropolitan areas. With two incomes that would be more than enough.

• by option_greek on 9/16/19, 5:20 PM

  Living in those tiny flats (29sqft, 5.5sqft) sounds inhumane. I always thought Hong kong as developed. What is the point of all that development if people have to live like this :(

• by chaostheory on 9/16/19, 3:06 PM

  From personal anecdotal data, it’s also common for HK couples to live even further away; as in different countries for years. I’ve know several families from HK where the husband stayed behind just so his family could leave for western countries before the handover years back

• by alistairSH on 9/16/19, 3:15 PM

  How are the parents affording a 2-bedroom apartment? Is there a massive (relative to what we'd expect) income gap between 50-60 year olds and 20-30 year olds? The article mentioned incomes for the younger demographics, but not the older.

• by crimsonalucard on 9/16/19, 4:33 PM

  This makes it easier for people to have multiple SO.

• by rdlecler1 on 9/16/19, 6:30 PM

  I’ll continue saying this until it happens. We need an Elon Musk for housing. Imagine how much capital could be freed up for non rent-seeking purposes if we could fix this broken system. Note I would expect driverless cars to help here as many people may be able to work-commute, and even if you’re not afforded that luxury it may ease housing pressure on those that can not.