Wu Zhenrong begins every morning by folding his futon into the corner of his room, just below the window that provided a view half blocked by a brick wall. Before he spends his day writing on his computer his musings on Chinese politics, he would walk hunchbacked to an alley floored in uneven concrete and roofed with wooden planks that he calls his kitchen, to boil a kettle of water for his sugar-filled morning instant coffee.