After paying visits to two illegally sublet apartments and talking with people who had lived in such places, I thought I was well prepared to spend a night living in one myself.

I was wrong.

With its blaring pop music, endless stream of pedestrians, trendy bars and neon lights, the area around the Wudaokou Subway Station is one of Beijing's liveliest. Yet when the door of the dark apartment I had arranged to stay at opened, I found myself in a very different world.