From the Los Angeles Times (free registration required):
The eviction notice gave them one week to get out. Residents, many of them retirement age with nowhere else to go, stayed put and tried in vain to stop the demolition crew…
Housing relocations have become a major source of social tension in China. Ordinary Chinese are familiar with the futility of resisting the wrecking ball, be it at historic courtyards in Beijing or riverside villages near the massive Three Gorges Dam.
The Shihezi eviction didn’t involve a cultural landmark or natural wonder. In fact, the homes were no more than rundown brick row houses without indoor plumbing. But they were built by pioneers in China’s wild west ” Communist heroes dispatched 50 years ago to live and work in Xinjiang, a sensitive borderland in the far northwest with a predominantly Muslim population.
