Ozu's signature feature is the low angle, which is usually (but not always) shot with a camera set close to the ground. Every shot of the film uses it. While many writers have identified it as the point of view of a child, a dog, a god, or a person sitting Japanese style on tatami, David Bordwell convincingly argues that its position is actually proportional, meaning the height always changes as long as it stays lower than the object being shot. This makes all the lines in the frame follow generally the same pattern from shot to shot.
Hou does place his camera close to the ground at times, however, this is almost exclusively in scenes set inside Japanese architecture. As a former Japanese colony, Taiwan has had many Japanese style buildings, or rooms with tatami mats. In City of Sadness Wen-ching's home has several of these rooms, and scenes set here use a camera relatively close to the ground. Because people sit on the floor in these spaces, it only makes sense to lower the camera so it doesn't look down on them. In this sense, Hou is actually similar to most Japanese directors, who also place the camera at a low angle when shooting in traditional Japanese spaces.