Pan Yong, a Shanghai resident, recently made news after she resorted to throwing Molotov cocktails at the demolition team who had come to tear down her home. For more on that story, see a translated CCTV report via Roland Soong at EastSouthWestNorth:
The woman on the top floor is named Pan Yong. She lives in a four-story building with a living area of 480 square meters in the Minheng district of Shanghai. Both Pan Yong and her husband Zhang Qilong were born in this district. In the 1990’s, the couple went to study in New Zealand and obtained citizenship there. In 2004, the two returned to China. Zhang renovated the rural house of his father and moved in there. In 2008, Pan Yong received a notice of demolition from the Hongqiao Airport Traffic Centre. This disrupted the tranquil lives of this family.
According to the notice, their house lied within a construction zone and therefore they must move out because their house will be demolished. It was calculated that Pan Yong will receive 761 yuan per square meter for relocating the house and 1,480 yuan for land acquisition. In total, Pan Yong was going to receive a total of 673,000 yuan in compensation.
Pan Yong said: “I told them that I will give them 700,000 yuan and they are supposed to buy a house that is more or less like mine. I told them to buy one for me. They said that it was impossible.”
Pan Yong lives in the Minheng district near the Hongqiao airport. The current housing prices in this area is as much as 15,000 yuan per square meet. Pan Yong’s house should also be able to fetch 4,000 yuan per month if rented out. Therefore, she thought that the compensation did not meet market level. The family decided that they will not sign the agreement because they won’t accept the assessment.
Pan Yong said: “You can’t take away my lamb and hand me back a chicken. You can’t just say that the chicken looks handsome and it can lay eggs, and expect me to take it. I don’t want it. This is unacceptable.”
At ChinaHush, Key translates a blog entry from Han Han on the case, entitled “These dogs are so annoying”:
Minhang district Shanghai Construction Committee director of transportation, the headquarters of relocation top leader Wu Zhongqiuan had a fresh view. He thinks that Minhang Hongqiao hub of the land‘s value increased after and because of the government reconstruction and extension, so the added value of the land should not be obtained by the people.
Do you think Minhang District is very hateful? Did you wonder why these officials still have such stable positions? If you think this way, you are too tender (naïve) because they are the effective go-getters of the Shanghai Municipal Government. This is like you are a company manager, you want to buy a printer which has a market price of 1,000, so you give your employee 1,000 yuan. In the end your employee only spends 300 and forcefully buys this printer and gives you a receipt for 1,000. He also gives your 400, keeps 300 for himself. Not only that, you do not even have to be responsible for his meals, because when he is hungry he will go fishing on his own. The only problem is that the employee crushes a few dogs to death when driving in a hurry, resulting in your office often have a group of dogs outside barking at you. Say, would you fire that employee? Of course not, you can only think, these dogs are really annoying.
Yes, the unfortunate ones are those dogs, but we are that group of dogs.
