When a long and already ill lighted room is subdivided by three or four or even as many as five or six cubicles, the effect is that in only the cubicle next to the window is there any light or fresh air. The others are quite dark and the air is stagnant in them. In addition to the families which occupy the cubicles there are, as a rule, some beds in the remaining portion of the room on which the tenant and family or friends sleep. The amount of overcrowding which this arrangement causes is sometimes to encourage over 20 people to sleep in one room. None of the cubicles, except the front and back, have any windows except in the case of corner houses. Nothing will remedy this state of things but the abolition for all future houses of cubicles unless they have a window to each and the limitation of cubicles in existing houses to top floors, where skylights and special arrangements for ventilation can be introduced and perhaps to corner houses which have lateral windows opening into side streets of not less than twenty feet in width.
19. Plate XII illustrates the arrangement of cubicles in houses in Aberdeen Street and Square Street.
Verandahs.
20. The large masonry verandahs three and four storeys high encroaching on the public streets to the extent of 10 fect on each side lessen the width of the streets and at the same time darken the rooms of the houses, especially of the two lower floors. In all new streets, verandahs encroaching on the public way should not be allowed. Many houses have not these masonry verandahs, but have small balconies of a lighter structure on their own land.
Plate XIII shows a row of houses in the same street with balconies on their own land and another row with masonry verandahs encroaching on the public street. The houses with the balconies get their rooms better lighted and ventilated than those with the verandahs. There is no encroachment on and narrowing of the public way. Masonry verandahs projecting on to the street were first constructed as a concession and privilege. Now it is almost looked upon as a right which permits the builder to construct in a three or four-storied house 2 or 3 extra rooms at the expense of the Government, ., on Government land, because the verandahs become practically rooms of the house. If a builder desires to attach verandahs to his house he should be allowed to do so only on condition that the verandahs do not encroach on Crown land. Similarly so in regard to balconies. The erection of balconies on narrow streets only renders these streets narrower and should be discontinued.
General Statement regarding Design of Chinese Houses.
21. From the foregoing it will be gathered that the Chinese tenement houses in Hongkong differ in style from the European. They also differ from the ordinary Chinese houses in Canton or other Chinese city, where the buildings are not more than two storeys in height and often not more than one. By some gradual process of evolution they have taken on the worst features of both kinds of houses and none of their best. The tenement houses in Hongkong consist of several storeys, each storey containing one long room lighted at each end by a window bat without lateral windows. Each room is subdivided into cabins called cubicles which accom- modate an entire family. The room on each floor communicates, in the rear by a bridge with the kitchen which is separated from the house by a small yard; and in front with a masonry verandah which encroaches on the public street and which being separated by partitions from the adjoining houses is used as an additional room for the house.
The length of room without lateral windows, the kitchen buildings in the rear and the smallness of the back-yard, by obstructing the free access of light and air cause the two lower storeys at least to be dark and badly ventilated. The verandahs in front still further increase this undesirable condition and the cubicles in the
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