In Guangzhou’s Yuexiu district lie the remains of what Chinese people colloquially call “villages within a city” – clusters of decrepit old housing bordered by colorful office buildings and towering housing complexes. While the land under these towns is wholly government-owned, residents must sign contracts to give their homes over for demolition and receive compensation.On September 6, a standoff with police ensued at the top of a building in the urban “village” of Yangji, when a husband and wife refused to comply with a court ruling forcing them to relocate. The husband stood at the top of his home, threatening to immolate himself with gasoline, as demolition crews waited nearby to receive the go-ahead to tear down his home. Finally, the head of the Yuexiu courthouse and a representative from the company in charge of the area’s renovation entered the building to speak with the couple, convincing them to leave the building after re-negotiating the terms of their forced removal.

Global Post reports that Premier Wen Jiabao spoke out against rampant property destruction and redevelopment in China today:

“No one is paying attention to the legal rights of farmers in some places, and they are forcefully destroying homes and moving them out,” Wen said, according to a translation from AFP of the Beijing News report on a meeting in Beijing to discuss preservation of historic and cultural relics. “We are destroying the real and building up the fake.”

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: forced demolition, Guangzhou, nailhouse, property rights
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Called “the Blood-Stained Housing Map,” the project uses Google Maps to plot violent housing evictions and land grabs across the country. The result bears an eerie, and sobering, resemblance to the Guardian’s own Google Maps chart showing deaths recorded in the Wikileaks Iraq war logs.

The project actually consists of two maps: a “revised” version edited by the founder that shows only verified cases (above), and an “open” version [] that anyone can add to or edit.

A graphic Wikipedia of land-grab thuggery, the open version, which launched Oct. 8, has so far attracted more than 340,000 views and just over 90 contributions (below). Users have used a variety of icons to delineate different types of property-related violence: Volcanoes for mass protests, beds for when property owners were killed, and flames for when those resisting eviction lit themselves on fire. (Other icons appear to have been randomly selected.)

The project consists of an “open version” which anyone can edit, and a “revised version” (above) which has been checked by the editor for accuracy.

Read more about land disputes and forced evictions via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: forced evictions, land disputes, land rights, nailhouse
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Nail Household vs. Demolition Team, released by Mirage Games in August, is set in a cleared pit, empty except for a lone three-story house marked “chai” — the Chinese word for demolition.

The goal? To defend your house against guards and gangsters brandishing knives and bouncing on jackhammers. The characters you can play include a woman in curlers who throws sandals at encroaching attackers, a pot-bellied man who drops dynamite from the roof, and an old man with a shotgun.

When you win a level, the woman appears, pointing a finger at the Forbidden City, the symbolic center of the government’s power. When you lose, the house collapses in a cloud of dust.

The game is the latest example of how chai is bleeding into Chinese pop culture. Earlier this year, Li Chengpeng drew attention for “Avatar: An Epic Nail House Textbook,” which compares the plight of James Cameron’s Na’vi to the people who live in “nail houses,” so named because they stick out of construction sites like a nail out of a plank of wood.

The game is available here.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: forced eviction, land disputes, nailhouse, property rights
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According to the Qianlong network, an elementary school teacher in Ninghe county, Tianjin, had her classes suspended after refusing to relocate from her building to make way for a development project. When the Party Committee Secretary from the County Education Bureau was working [to convince her to move], he said: “In China, you might say you won’t move, but you certainly will be moved. This is all I have to say (to you). This is precisely why we are so powerful in the world.”

Refusing to sign her name

In Lutai Village, Ninghe County, Tianjin, two backhoes ceaselessly brandish their iron claws. Amidst the piles of debris, the Bank of China business and residence buildings (hereafter referred to simply as the “Bank of China buildings”) look like a remote island. Across the street, a luxury tower, though still incomplete, towers up steeply. At the beginning of March, residents of the Bank of China buildings hurriedly packed up and moved. The government had given them a deadline of March 27, saying that if they had not moved by the deadline, the demolition would proceed anyway.

The Bank of China buildings are situated on the busiest commercial street in Lutai Village. On March 12, a reporter from Liaowang Eastern Weekly learned from Tianyida Realty in Lutai that homes in this area had a value of 6,000-7,000 yuan per square meter, with some even reaching a price of around 8,000 yuan per sq. m.

Zhang Xiling, an English teacher at Shizhuang Central Elementary School in Dongjituo Village, Ninghe County, Tianjin saw that she would have to become a “nailhouse owner” (dingzihu 釘子戶; i.e., a homeowner who refuses to relocate to make way for a development project). She had long prepared herself for such an event.

Towards the end of October, 2009, this ordinary elementary school teacher met with her most senior supervisor for the first time: the Director of the Ninghe County Education Bureau, Yu Zhihuai. The purpose of his visit was obvious: urge her to relocate and make way for demolition. From then on, Zhang Xiling met with a series of ever more important officials, including Zhang Yangxia, Assistant County Director; Song Lianqi, Director of the County Land Management Center; and Liu Guangbao Party Secretary of the County Education Bureau. These officials talked with Zhang Xiling more than 20 times. After each discussion, Zhang became more steadfast in spirit. She ran down to the village and purchased a recording device, secretly recording each of the conversations. And, starting from the day she was informed of the required relocation, she began to keep a daily diary.

(...)
Read the rest of Local Official to Nailhouse Owner: “Whose Sky Are You Living Under?” (998 words)

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: forced demolition, local power, nailhouse
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Bedecked with posters, slogans and flags, the city-centre shack had been attracting attention from neighbours and passers-by.

The Yu family were refusing to move because they said the compensation being offered was far too low.

It was not immediately clear where the family is now living. Family members were not answering their phones.

Later, the local government admitted it had taken matters into its own hands after negotiations with the Yu’s broke down.

“Because they had unreasonable requests and refused to relocate… they were forcibly moved,” said a statement posted on a government-run website.

© Japhet Weeks for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, nailhouse, redevelopment
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A Beijing family are refusing to move from their city centre home, despite a court order threatening to throw them out.

Family members say they are not being offered enough compensation for the home they bought 60 years ago.

Their campaign is attracting large crowds, who gather at the tumble-down shack in the heart of historic Beijing.

It could pose a problem for officials, who want to avoid embarrassing incidents ahead of the Olympic Games.

Yu Pingju, one of 14 family members who live in the house, said it was bought before the Communists took power in China in 1949.

Read also Threatened China household stares down wrecking ball by Lindsay Beck, and With posters and flag, Chinese family fights eviction by AFP.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, demolition, nailhouse
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Beijing is full of patriotism these days. National flags adorn cars and “I [heart] China” t-shirts are in fashion. But it’s hard to match the display of one small store in central Beijing. A national flag flies high above its roof, next to a white Olympic flag. Below hang a pair of Communist Party hammer-and-sickle flags, and much of the wall space is covered by images of Chinese leaders including Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao. But the display isn’t so much about patriotism as it is defiance.

The store, which is also a residence, is a nail house—the Chinese phrase for residents who refuse to capitulate to the wrecking ball, leaving their house sticking out like a nail. It’s a fairly common phenomenon, but some nail houses can, because of their circumstances, become more than a local story. The most famous case was of a house in the southwestern city of Chongqing last year, where some extreme excavation left the structure looking more like an island than a mere nail. The dramatic images, plus a media-savvy homeowner, elevated the Chongqing house into a national case.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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There have been many “nailhouses” making headlines in China lately. But this one is different, and it seems to defy any power in Shenzhen, including the city government.

Actually these are not houses; they are a group of mansions, or luxurious villas at the Yinghu district in Shenzhen . They are part of an illegal construction that have come under “pressure” to dismantle or move. But things are moving very slowly, or not moving at all, to be exact. Numerous evictions from local government law enforcement officers have come to no avail. More than that, orders to stop building have been repeatedly defied, and construction keeps on going like nothing happened.

Then Shenzhen’s mayor Xu Zongheng publicly vowed to crack down with serious punishments on those who refuse to listen. Still, a group of more than 40 law enforcement officials left without any result. And none of the identities of the mansion owners or the builders have been disclosed. The name list of these rich men and woman have remained as guarded as national secrets over the past fours years of “evictions”.

But elsewhere, other evictions of nailhouses have had quick results, but only when carried out against those without any power. Recently a Shenzhen district government bulldozed the shed of many pig farmers, on a plot of land thousands of meters in size. These farmers’ shacks were also illegal structures, but the forced eviction triggered an outcry over the violent law enforcement incident. When it came to dismantling the property of the poor and powerless, the government demonstrated immense power and efficiency.

But when it comes to dealing with the rich or the powerful, the government has become the disadvantaged group. Over four years of “eviction” of the mansions, not a single property owner’s identity has been disclosed. This situation is very abnormal. Shenzhen very much needs a victory over this eviction mission. [Full Text in Chinese]

© Michael Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: forced evictions, nailhouse, Shenzhen
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And now, a similar situation has appeared in the Fengtai district of Beijing. A group of residents who did not agree to conditions offered them by land developers for compensation and resettlement are making a last stand in their homes. As you can see from these pictures (the report is in Chinese), deep ‘trenches’, in some places three meters deep, have been dug around the homes, making it nearly impossible for a person to enter or leave without a ladder or professional pole-vaulting skills. The electricity and water have also been cut off. [Full text]

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Post tags: Beijing, forced evictions, nailhouse
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It appears the woman, Zhang Xinghua, is just one of dozens of residents resisting demolition of their building, which online commentators have likened to the celebrated ‘nailhouse’ recently demolished in Chongqing. According to an account published earlier this week on the Paowang BBS forum by a poster calling himself Uncle Everpower, and translated by Kennedy, the residents’ fight with developers started roughly a year ago:

Since June 2, 2006 when the forced eviction from the house began, the twenty-odd home owners have been forced up onto the roof to live; despite the cruel heat, the water has been cut off for over eighty days; many houses’ installations have been destroyed. Further, receiving frequent inexplicable threats and intentional provocation has disrupted their daily lives. [Full Text]

Kennedy reports that several BBS posts on the clashes have been erased from other forums. The story has prompted a lively discussion on Paowang (also translated), with most commentators outraged. One anonymous poster says he witnessed the beating death of an innocent bystander, but others dispute that claim. Global Voices has put up several pictures of the ‘Awesome Building’ (ÁâõÊ•º) with Granny Zhang on top and crowds gathered below.

© Zhaohua Li for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: forced evictions, nailhouse, Zhejiang
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