when the owners of “nail houses” resist developers

Planted in the middle of a parking lot of a huge shopping center, a small house with its chimney. In China, they are called “nail houses”. Their owners resisted the bulldozers. To demolish a house in China, financial compensation is necessary, as well as the agreement of the owner. Before a car park, ten years ago there were about ten buildings. Why two irreducible decided to stay? “I have lived here for almost 40 years. I have never asked an exorbitant price to leave. If they give me a reasonable sum, I will move”confides one of the inhabitants.

The other resident says she is very attached to her home. “I am about sixty years old, I have always lived here”, she explains. An expression of Chinese developers says: “If you can’t build on it, build around it”. In Canton, in southeastern China, a house finds itself in the middle of a road bridge, and a building completely surrounded by a highway. Symbol of resistance to real estate pressure and local authorities who build roads, the “nail houses” exist by the hundreds in China.