Living it down in a cage

If you think a billionaire would choose to live in a cage home only for fun or fame, Johnny Chan Kwong-ming will prove you wrong.

Chan, 39, who was born into a rich family and was educated overseas, is the chairman of an investment company. Yet earlier this year, he agreed to take part in The Battle of Poor Billionaires. The reality TV show by RTHK documents how the rich and famous fare while living rough on the streets or in cage homes with the city's poorest.

'I had no hidden agenda. I just wanted to see the reality in Hong Kong,' Chan says. 'I've done charity work myself, too. But I had no idea what it really meant to live like the elderly in cage homes and to salvage cardboard on the streets.'

So for four days, Chan lived like a scavenger in a cage home in Kwun Tong. He was given HK$10 a day, an amount cage-home residents living on government subsides often end up with after paying for rent and living expenses.

'The smell was horrible. I was woken up by it at night,' Chan says. 'During the day, I went out to observe others and noticed a lot of elderly people were picking up cardboard. So I followed suit.'

That wasn't as easy as it seemed at first. 'It's hard to find cardboard lying around. Some boxes belong to regular scavengers in the district and others go to a recycling company. I got told off when I failed to observe the 'rules',' he explains.

After searching for a few hours, Chan did manage to gather some boxes. He was paid HK$16, which he used to buy bread and apples.