In the middle of a newly built main road in Wenling city in east China’s Zhejiang province sits a lonely, five-story row house, its scruffy edges rising up from a huge circle in freshly laid pavement.
The Chinese duck farmer’s home has become a "nail house" because Luo Baogen said no to authorities who wanted his property. He now tries to keep them from bulldozing his family’s home.
A nail house is a Chinese buzzword for a house that belongs to a “stubborn-as-nails” person, who refuses to move to make room for development.
Luo Baogen's house is now a nail house, because ” he refuses to budge from his home, even though his entire neighborhood has been demolished to make way for a main thoroughfare leading to a newly built railway station on the outskirts of the city. The new road to the railroad station has been completed, but is not yet been opened for traffic.
Baogen and his wife are the lone holdouts. They hold a 24-hour vigil in their home to keep their house from being bulldozed. Developers shy away from bulldozing homes with people inside.
This story begins in 2007, when city planners decided that Baogen’s village of 1,600 had to be moved to make room for a new business district anchored by the train station. Most of his neighbors agreed to the government-offered compensation and moved away. However, Baogen had just completed his house at a cost of about 600,000 Yuan ($95,000) when the government first approached him with their standard offer of 220,000 ($35,000) to move out, and so he refused to sign the agreement allowing his house to be demolished.
Since then, the government's offer has risen to 260,000 Yuan ($41,000), but Baogen cannot afford such a large loss on his home.
What is unusual in this case is that Baogen’s house has been allowed to stand for so long. Usually local authorities in China take extreme measures, such as cutting off utilities or moving in to demolish the house when residents are out for the day, but Baogen has told local reporters that his electricity and water are still flowing. He and his wife sleep in separate parts of the home to deter partial demolition.
His home has become the latest symbol of resistance in the frequent standoffs between Chinese homeowners and local officials, accused of offering too little compensation to vacate neighborhoods for major redevelopment projects.
So, what does Baogen want? Simply put, he wants a new house on a two-unit lot with modest interior decoration.
For the time being, Baogen holds tight to the land certificate for his nail house, and the land dispute continues.
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