For most families the recent heat wave has been just an inconvenience, easily handled by ducking under an air conditioner. But for people like Deng Aixia and her two children, the high temperatures could have had deadly consequences.
They are among the 100,000 impoverished people living in dismal conditions in subdivided flats, where simple luxuries such as air conditioning are often beyond their reach.
And it is their children who are bearing the brunt, new research from the Society for Community Organisation shows.
Pointing to her two-year-old asthmatic son, Deng said: 'The doctor said he seemed to be suffering from heatstroke. But he was only staying home the whole day.'
Deng says her son, due to attend school in September, needs regular medical treatment for his asthma. 'He always seems to be having difficulty with breathing, although he's too young to tell me,' she said.
A study released yesterday by the society dubbed subdivided flats as 'human-flesh steamers', where poor tenants unable to afford hefty electricity bills struggle to survive in unventilated, windowless rooms where temperatures can be even higher inside than out.
In tests at subdivided flats on July 22 - a date marked in the Lunar Chinese calendar as the hottest day of the year - the society found that the temperature in one flat in Sham Shui Po had reached 38.5 degrees Celsius, six degrees above the roadside figure.