I once stayed in a two-bedroom apartment occupied by 45 people for two days to experience the life of those living in illegal shared housing. The dirty toilet and laundry room, the wet floor, smelly air, dim lighting, general household mess and potential safety hazards are still quite fresh in my memory.

It was the worst living environment I had seen up to that point in my life. However, just recently, I visited the "home" of Quan Youzhi, a 66-year-old woman from Shangqiu, Henan province.

Quan`s home is a hole in the ground - a utility compartment three meters below street level providing access to underground heating pipes. When I moved the metal cover on the compartment, all I could see were some dirty quilts on the ground. Full of curiosity, I couldn`t help entering without an invitation.

I had to be quite careful in climbing down with a ladder, which was actually seven pieces of rebar fixed into the wall. Eventually, I reached the final step and dropped the last half-meter to the floor.

It was dark inside the compartment. The dim light from my cell phone was sufficient to illuminate the entire space, which was revealed to be no more than three square meters.

On the ground was a thin mat and on top of that were some quilts with soil on them. Some rusty pipes made the small space even more cramped. Besides the bedding, I found only a few candles and two coats.

The living conditions in the hole were a lot worse than the illegal shared housing, which, though dirty and crowded, at least had all the necessary facilities for daily life.

People living in such a hole must have a miserable life. Together with several journalists from other media outlets, we waited outside the compartment. At around 9 pm, she came back.

Quan told us she has been living in the place for 20 years. I guess she has never had so much attention.

We journalists soon found ourselves sitting in her home, all ears to her miserable life story. She spent a great deal of time telling us of the help she had received from kind-hearted people, though she was frequently led away by questions about her sufferings.

She told us of her ongoing game with the chengguan, or urban management officers.

"They blocked off the hole by welding the cover shut. … I bought a saw and cut it free after they went away," she said, suddenly smiling like a naughty child.

Quan gets up between 4 am and 5 am and spends the whole day collecting plastic bottles, stopping work at 9 pm.

"One hundred bottles can be sold for 8 yuan," she said, adding that she can usually make about 20 yuan a day.

Even when she was talking about her troubles, she kept smiling all the time.

She pointed to her belongings one after another, the objects of her daily life and the clothes she wore, telling us which kind-hearted person had provided each one.

Despite her sad situation, she still wants to repay one kind-hearted woman who paid her hospital bills when she was seriously ill.

"She paid 10,000 yuan for my medical fees," she said. "She`s not my daughter. I have to pay her back."

However, while I was moved by the old woman`s thankful heart, I was also shocked by the unethical behavior of some of the journalists in our group.

When Quan was on her way to the washing room in a nearby park, she suddenly bent over to pick something up. It was a plastic bottle. None of us noticed it. She quickly emptied it and put it into another underground compartment that she used as a storeroom. After collecting bottles for 20 years, she was obviously quite skilled at her job.

However, as she did this, a female journalist who was just next to her laughed and even turned to look at me.

I didn`t know how to respond. I turned my eyes away from her, and thought to myself: "Can`t you have just a little bit of respect?"