Dai Haifei's 6-square-meter "egg house" is attracting lots of attention. [China Daily]

Compact mobile home is one man's answer to city's expensive housing

With the average home in the capital selling for 19,548 yuan a meter in November, a tiny mobile home built by a 24-year-old office worker is creating a stir online.

Dai Haifei built the 6-square-meter pad because he could not afford to buy or rent in the capital.

Dai's new home costs him 6,400 yuan and he has been living in it for nearly two months in a courtyard at Chengfu Road, Haidian district.

Dai, who is one of the millions of migrants who moved to the capital from other parts of China seeking a better life and better job, said he realized his financial burden had become too great.

The Hunan native said he simply could not make ends meet when he became an intern at a Beijing-based construction design company in 2009.

"I rented a home at the very beginning - a small room in an apartment that cost me about 900 yuan per month," said Dai in an interview with local media. "It was too expensive for me."

Dai's father works on a construction site in his hometown and his mother is a cleaner.

"My parents work hard trying to save money for me to get married but they don't know they have to toil for up to 300 years to get enough to buy an apartment in Beijing," he said.

Dai, who ended up becoming a formal employee of the company, figured out his own way to solve the problem - with inspiration from a housing design project at his company's exhibition early this year.

The project, named "An egg given birth to by the city", comprised a series of egg-like movable houses, including a karaoke house, chair house and trader's house.

Dai, who borrowed 6,400 yuan from an older cousin and who got additional help from several friends, decided to make one of his own. He spent nearly two months building his "egg house" in his hometown, a village in southeast Hunan that is around 1,700 kilometers from Beijing.

It then cost Dai more than 3,000 yuan to ship his home from his village to the courtyard outside his company's office.

The home, which accommodates a 1-meter-wide bed and facilities for washing, is mainly made of bamboo and jute bags filled with sawdust and grass seeds.

"When the spring comes, my home will grow grass," he said.

He said he is enjoying having a little extra money in his pocket and uses it for swimming and sauna every day.

The narrow dwelling has also ended Dai's worries about the commute to work - it takes him less than a minute to cross the courtyard.

However, Dai sometimes has to face up to other troubles, such as being asked to move his home because the space in the courtyard does not belong to his employer.

The small home has sparked a heated discussion online.

Nearly 1,000 respondents on news portal 163.com commented on his idea.

Some questioned the security and legality of his home while others suggested it could just be a promotion from the company he works for or a piece of performance art.

Many said they liked his spirit but doubted the idea would serve as a long-term solution.

"It's innovative but sad," said a netizen.

(China Daily December 2, 2010)