“Zero-COVID nail houses” (防疫钉子户, fángyì dīngzihù) are people who still adhere to strict virus prevention measures despite the end of the national zero-COVID policy. It is often used self-deprecatingly by “nail houses” themselves...
At the Guardian, Sue Anne Tay outlines the situation of many aging Shanghai residents who, after...
In nearly 9,000 words at The Globe and Mail, Mark MacKinnon recounts his recent 22-day train journey around China, loosely following the course of Mao’s Long March. He met officials and protesters, nailhouse residents and...
NPR’s Louisa Lim profiles singer Zuoxiao Zuzhou, who has been described as “China’s Leonard Cohen” by Michael Timmins of Cowboy Junkies, and as the most important musician in China by Ai Weiwei. On These...
Europe correspondent for Window on the South (南风窗) Xiong Peiyun shared his thoughts on land...
Caixin has posted a slideshow of a husband and wife who refused to relocate from their apartment to make way for a demolition crew in Guangzhou. See the photos here: In Guangzhou’s Yuexiu district lie the remains of what...
An interactive, participatory map project aims to show each and every violent land grab incident in China. The Wall Street Journal blog reports: Called “the Blood-Stained Housing Map,” the project uses Google Maps to plot...
A new videogame pits feisty “nailhouse” owners, or property owners who refuse to be forcibly evicted, against property developers. From the Wall Street Journal blog: Nail Household vs. Demolition Team, released by...
The following story was reported by the Southern Weekend this March, translated by CDT: According to the Qianlong network, an elementary school teacher in Ninghe county, Tianjin, had her classes suspended after refusing to...
Another nail house has been pounded to the ground, this time in Beijing. From the BBC: Bedecked with posters, slogans and flags, the city-centre shack had been attracting attention from neighbours and passers-by. The Yu family...
From BBC News: 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...
From the Time-blog: 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...
A commentary translated by CDT from Southern Metropolis Daily: 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...
The recent “Shengzhou nailbuilding,” in which up to 20,000 people protested over the forced eviction of a 90-year-old woman and others in Zhejiang, was clearly not an isolated case, as we know from the abundant coverage of the Chongqing nailhouse saga earlier this year. Now Shanghaiist draws our attention to another case, in Beijing: And […]
John Kennedy at Global Voices provides extensive background on reports earlier today that a 90-year-old woman in the Zhejiang town of Shengzhou threatened police with a homemade gasoline bomb as violent protests erupted over her eviction. It appears the woman, Zhang Xinghua, is just one of dozens of residents resisting demolition of their building, which […]
From the South China Morning Post, via Asia Media: As mainstream media were forced to abandon coverage of the “nail house“, Mr Zhou’s site became a popular alternative source of updates. At its peak, it attracted more than 37,000 visitors a day. Others hoping to negotiate better deals with developers or to highlight violations of […]
From the Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief: That the tightly controlled Chinese media even covered such a story came as much of a surprise, but Wu Ping’s nail house emerged just as the National People’s Congress was passing a new property rights law that purports to protect individual homeowners. This may have been more of an […]
From Southern Weekend, translated by EastSouthWestNorth: Our newspaper had exclusive interviews with Chongqing Jiulongpo district party secretary Zheng Hong, Jiulongpo district court director Zhang Li and the “nail house” owner Wu Ping who “vanished” after the settlement was reached. This report describes in detail how the public crisis was resolved through mediation and what is […]
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