D Do the task and then compare answers with a partner. Check the key on page 184 and think about why you made any mistakes.


Exam tip: When there is a list of words to choose from, the summary is often of a larger part of the passage. You need to identify which part of the passage is relevant and continue to look at the list as you read again. Words in the list that you don’t need are often similar in meaning to words that you need. Be careful not to choose a word quickly because you think you remember a synonym in the passage. Sometimes the words in the list are all the same part of speech and the task checks overall comprehension. Alternatively, the words in the list are different parts of speech and the task tests your grammar too. Always read the summary carefully and look at what comes before and after a space so you know what part of speech to use.


Reading 3: practise completing a summary


A Look at the picture and the title of the passage below. In pairs, make predictions about what the passage will say about the following features of these slum dwellings in Hong Kong.


space furniture and facilities heat / ventilation


‘cage homes’ reveal wealth gap


Seventy-year-old Fai Po-cheng has made the most of the tiny space he inhabits. He hangs the plastic bag of vegetables he has just bought to the bottom of his bed, next to the damp towel he has just finished with. His meagre collection of clothes is stuffed under his pillow. He sleeps in the top bunk in what is rather optimistically referred to as a ‘bed space’. To say that conditions are cramped in this 18-square- foot portion of an apartment that Fai shares with 20 other men is something of an understatement.


Fai’s home is one of Hong Kong’s infamous ‘cage dwellings’ – small, dimly-lit apartments that have been subdivided into even smaller units in which there is no room for anything much apart from a bed. Here people live in cages, roughly constructed from rusty steel mesh with a sliding door at one end that allows them to crawl in and out. There are no windows; for ventilation he relies on the draught from holes between the walls and ceiling. The filthy communal kitchen has a wet, broken concrete floor.


Chinese rule was reinstated to Hong Kong in 1997, but behind towering office blocks and plush shopping malls, the city’s poorest residents have been abandoned by the economic boom. Some of Asia’s richest individuals may be residents of this international hub, and the city boasts commercial and retail establishments that rival Paris and New York, but out of a seven million population, an estimated 1.25 million people live well below the poverty line.


120 Pathway to IELTS 6.0 Hong Kong’s


Hong Kong has had a rough economic ride since the end of the colonial era, and the cage dwellings are just one example of worsening deprivation. Only 35% of the 3.6 million working population pays income tax, and the top 100,000 earners contribute 60% of salary tax. The vast building which houses the cages was built in the 1940s to accommodate a wave of Chinese refugees fleeing the civil war on the mainland. Apartments were partitioned into smaller and smaller units to meet the demand. Around 100 cage homes remain, and are home to some of the city’s poorest and most downtrodden. Apart from the astonishing lack of space, residents – frequently elderly and in many cases physically or mentally ill – must tolerate extreme temperatures and relentless filth. They share their living quarters with rats, lizards and cockroaches.


The cages are a feature of Hong Kong that more affluent city-dwellers prefer to ignore, perhaps even deny, shamed that the economic downturn has forced so many vulnerable people into such unacceptable hardship. Recent statistics suggest that a small but significant percentage of the cage-dwellers are new tenants. These people may have jobs but their salaries are low, and they are often referred to as ‘the working poor’. Closer integration with China has resulted in more Hong Kong companies moving to the mainland


cleanliness B Read the text below and on the next page quickly and check your ideas in Exercise A.


6


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