{"id":123923,"date":"2011-09-11T22:18:45","date_gmt":"2011-09-12T05:18:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=123923"},"modified":"2011-09-11T22:18:45","modified_gmt":"2011-09-12T05:18:45","slug":"blue-dragon-mountain-the-chinese-village-that-doesnt-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2011\/09\/blue-dragon-mountain-the-chinese-village-that-doesnt-exist\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Dragon Mountain: the Chinese Village 'That Doesn't Exist'"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thirteen years ago, villagers were relocated from their hometown in Heilongjiang to make way for a reservoir needed to supply drinking water for Harbin. Dissatisfied with the compensation offered them, they moved back in and have been in a stand-off with authorities for the past decade. They now live in legal limbo, as the village was erased from maps in 1998 and no longer officially exists<\/strong><\/a>. The Telegraph reports:<\/p>\n

\n“I talked to those government people, and they said, ‘there’s nothing here, look on the map, you don’t exist’,” said a 76-year-old village elder, Xiao Yongting, “So I replied, ‘well, if we don’t exist, what are we? An independent nation state?”<\/p>\n

This story of bravado in the face of officialdom, delivered by the old man as he cracked sunflower seeds expertly between his two remaining teeth, raises a round of appreciative snorts from the fellow villagers.<\/p>\n

But the seditious cackles disguises the limits of the villagers’ victory: for all their defiance, the government officials are factually correct; in the eyes of the all-powerful Chinese bureaucracy the inhabitants of Blue Dragon Mountain don’t exist as they have no ID cards and no resident’s papers.<\/p>\n

Without these documents they must live in limbo, unable even to buy a train ticket, or check into a hotel (ID card required), which makes long-distance travel all but impossible; they also cannot open a bank account, apply for rural medical insurance, take a job with a registered company or enrol in a university. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thirteen years ago, villagers were relocated from their hometown in Heilongjiang to make way for a reservoir needed to supply drinking water for Harbin. Dissatisfied with the compensation offered them, they moved back in and have been in a stand-off with authorities for the past decade. They now live in legal limbo, as the village […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10,100,5,38],"tags":[15386,1163,526,1189],"class_list":["post-123923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-politics","category-society","category-the-great-divide","tag-forced-demolitions","tag-land-disputes","tag-property-rights","tag-relocation","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\nBlue Dragon Mountain: the Chinese Village 'That Doesn't Exist'<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2011\/09\/blue-dragon-mountain-the-chinese-village-that-doesnt-exist\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Blue Dragon Mountain: the Chinese Village 'That Doesn't Exist'\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Thirteen years ago, villagers were relocated from their hometown in Heilongjiang to make way for a reservoir needed to supply drinking water for Harbin. Dissatisfied with the compensation offered them, they moved back in and have been in a stand-off with authorities for the past decade. 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