Man refuses to leave his house so an entire motorway was built around it
A grandfather who stubbornly refused to leave his house has ended up living in the middle of a motorway.
Huang Ping admits he has some regrets about staying put instead of accepting the government’s compensation package.
Because he wouldn’t move, workers built the motorway around his two-storey house in Jinxi, south west of Shanghai in China.
He and his 11-year-old grandson, who lives with him, have been spending a lot of time in the town centre to the avoid noise and dirt from the construction, returning each evening when work has stopped for the day.
But Mr Ping fears the noise will be constant once the road opens in the spring.
He said: ‘If I could turn back time, I would agree to the demolition conditions they offered.
‘Now it feels like I lost a big bet.’
The homeowner added: ‘I regret it a bit.’
While Mr Ping laments his decision, it seems locals are finding the whole thing rather fascinating and have flocked to the property to take pictures.
The have dubbed Mr Ping the ‘strongest nail house owner’ in China.
Nail houses are properties in China where a road or development has been built around them as the owner refused to move. The ‘nail’ part comes from their likeness to a single nail sticking out from the land.
Often the owners are holding out for a better compensation fee.
Mr said he had been offered £178,245 (CNY 1.6 million) and two other properties, which was later increased to three.
The secretary of the Jinxi County Party Committee previously said that Huang refused to relocate because he was dissatisfied with the government’s offer.
After a long period of fruitless negotiations, the authorities designed a bypass on both sides of Huang’s house.
In 2015, the Metro reported on a nail house in Channing, that had sat in amongst a massive housing development for ten years because the owner wouldn’t allow it to be demolished.
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