Developers build road around holdout home in China
BEIJING >> In an eastern Chinese city, a five-story row house with ragged edges rises incongruously from a huge circle in the middle of a new main road, with freshly laid black pavement swerving around it.
This is the home of the duck farmer who said “no.”
Luo Baogen and his wife are the lone holdouts from a neighborhood of once-connected homes that was demolished to make way for the main thoroughfare heading to a newly built railway station on the outskirts of the city of Wenling in Zhejiang province.
Dramatic images of Luo’s home have circulated widely online in China this week, becoming the latest symbol of resistance in the frequent, countrywide standoffs between homeowners and local officials accused of offering too little compensation to vacate neighborhoods for major redevelopment projects.