My aunt and her husband were senior engineers

Lived in the alley for 30 years from the 1970s to 2000. Factory workers all live in the alleys, cadre or not.

Imagining that, engineers senior grade, party cadre, with no bathroom, no indoor kitchen and sink but an outside hut for cooking. Life is pure suffering but they didn't even realize it, numbed, supressed. It's like the life of the enslaved laborors.

They didn't know how to live better, with no expectations and no hope of improvement, until the master assigned them an apartment in the suburbs. Then they would die in there.