Nail house

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This “nail house” in Chongqing attracted international attention.

Nail house (Chinese: 钉子 户, pinyin: dīngzihù) is a Chinese neologism for a building whose owners refuse to sell their home for a new construction, mostly larger commercial buildings.

The term is a play on words used by the Chinese construction industry. The house is likened to a nail stuck in a hard piece of wood that cannot be driven in with a hammer. The owners are sometimes referred to colloquially as "stubborn nails".

Historical background

During the communist era, the right to private property was abolished. All the land belonged to the central government, and it appointed administrators on the basis of political considerations. Private individuals could be forced to leave their property by an administrative act. After the reforms of the economic framework since the late 1990s and the resulting economic boom, private construction companies began to build department stores, hotels and other commercial buildings in China's urban centers. The previous residents of buildings in the new building land have to move. The construction companies usually offer the owners low compensation payments because the building fabric of the houses is hardly valuable or alternative housing options in other regions cost very little. If residents refuse or try to get higher compensation payments, powerful construction companies can convene the local government or courts to expropriate and evict the owners. In some cases, residents have been jailed on false charges or intimidated by thugs.

More recently, China has accepted private land ownership and the owner's need to make money through appreciation if a building is to give way to a new build. It is also recognized that property owners do not have to sell property. The discontent in the population is growing; Construction companies are accused of illegally appropriating land with the help of corrupt government officials.

Due to the widespread positive evaluation of private property in public opinion, the government passed the first modern law on the subject in March 2007. It prohibits the expropriation of land unless it is done because of a great public interest. The law strengthens the position of nail house owners, but does not answer the question of when a new private building is in the public interest.

Media attention

The history of some nail houses became well known through the Chinese press. In a case in Chongqing that even attracted international attention, a family refused to sell their land to build a mall for two years. The building had been the family home for three generations and stood on a street that used to be where many small restaurants and takeaways were. To break the resistance, the construction companies cut the power and water connections and dug a ten meter deep pit around the nail house. In response, the owners broke into the site and recaptured the building by hoisting a Chinese flag on the roof. Yang Wu, a local martial arts champion, built a staircase to her home out of nunchucks and threatened to hit anyone who got in the way. His wife Wu Ping, a restaurant owner, was planning to open a restaurant on the ground floor of the house. This project met with great interest and many interviews followed in various newspapers. The owners of the nail house turned down an offer of 3.5 million yuan , but reached an agreement with the construction company in 2007.

Another well-known nail house is in Changsha . A shopping center was built around the nail house, the house itself is now in its courtyard. A couple of homeowners in Shenzhen were paid ten to twenty million yuan to sell their house, a seven-story brick apartment building. The homeowner said he had paid a million yuan in construction costs for the building that had been built ten years earlier. Initially, he had only been offered an unsatisfactory compensation payment. According to the developers, the Shenzhen Kingkey Group, the building should give way to a financial center with a 439 meter high skyscraper, the now completed Kingkey 100 . The elderly couple held out for several months in the midst of an approx. 50 hectare building desert before finally reaching an agreement with the developers on the high severance payment after a year.

Many nail houses received unusually high attention in the Chinese press. The Chongqing incident was first publicized by a blogger who described it as "Coolest Nail House In History." After that, it hit the main media including state newspapers in China and it became a national sensation. 85% of the participants in a vote on the largest infotainment web portal in China, sina.com, sympathized with the owner couple and only 15% with the construction company. The Chinese government finally stepped in and forbade reporting on the incident. The well-known blogger Zhou Shuguang , who is critical of the government , traveled by train from his home in Hunan to Chongqing to report exclusively on the incident. The travel expenses were covered by readers of his blog. He wrote under the pseudonym "zola" and interviewed those affected and onlookers. Some newspapers cleverly circumvented the ban on reporting. The Chinese edition of Sports Illustrated, for example, provoked with a cover depicting a well-known snooker player at demolished nail houses.

Similar incidents in other countries

International

State media in China pointed out that the nail house phenomenon is not limited to China. There are similar cases in the USA, Great Britain, Germany and Japan. Tokyo Narita Airport in Japan was often used as an example . Some families still refuse to leave the airport, even though runways have already been built around their homes.

Germany

Similar cases have become known in Germany, for example, with regard to the Leipzig / Halle airport from Kursdorf (Schkeuditz) and the expansion of the Bremen bridge .

Switzerland

The residents of an apartment building built in 1893 in the Zurich-West quarter of the city ​​of Zurich resisted the canton of Zurich's plan to demolish the house for a new access road. The Federal Administrative Court in St. Gallen ruled in favor of the residents, who defended themselves against the canton for eight years, and obliged the cantonal administration to re-plan the neighborhood connection.

The event was also discussed by representatives of the art and culture scene and triggered discussions and gatherings on the subject of gentrification in the city of Zurich. In the direction of the cantonal Pfingstweidstrasse, the house bore the inscription "Resistance" as an allusion to the "Renaissance Tower" behind it. The mural “Network” by Pierre Haubensak was also part of the nail house. The temporary work of art was created in 2011 as part of the KiöR (art in public space) of the city of Zurich. In 2012 the firewall was integrated into the "Art and the City" project.

  • View from the Prime Tower Zurich to the Nagelhaus at Turbinenstrasse 12-14, with the network of the artist Pierre Haubensak.

  • Network of the artist Pierre Haubensak at the Brandmauer Turbinenstrasse 12-14 in Zurich-West (KiöR 2011).

  • Play on words "Resistance" (at the nail house) vs. "Renaissance" (newly built hotel)

In September 2014, the Federal Supreme Court ruled that the nail house had to be demolished. The demolition took place at the beginning of August 2016. After a further ruling by the Federal Supreme Court, another nail house had to give way in September 2016, as it impaired Zurich's traffic flow.

Nail houses and counterparts in art and culture

  • The American children's book The Little House from 1942 is about the story of a woman whose house is to give way to a new building. The children's book Serafin and his wonder machine by the French comic artist and illustrator Philippe Fix from 1967 is about a very similar story .
  • In the film Louis and his extraterrestrial cabbages (1981), Louis de Funès refuses to sell and demolish his farm so that a shopping center will not be built. At the end, the courtyard is surrounded by a huge excavation pit. The entire property is brought to their home planet by aliens.
  • The Disney film Herbie Big in Drive (1972) is about the resistance of the owner of a former fire station in San Francisco , which is to give way to a new building.
  • The Pixar film Above (2009) is about a nail house counterpart.
  • A replica of the nail house in Chongqing was planned for the redesign of Escher-Wyss-Platz in Zurich . It should give the impression of having already stood there in front of the Hardbrücke and not having given way to the bridge. The project was rejected on September 26, 2010 by the electorate with 51.3% no votes.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Kent Ewing: The coolest nail house in history. Asia Times, March 31, 2007, accessed November 13, 2007 .
  2. ↑ a b Clifford Coonan: A Chinese man's home is his castle: kung fu master keeps bailiffs at bay in the siege of Chongqing. (No longer available online.) The Independent, March 31, 2007, archived from the original on October 16, 2007 ; Retrieved November 13, 2007 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / news.independent.co.uk
  3. ↑ a b c In China, Fight Over Development Creates a Star. New York Times, March 26, 2007, accessed November 13, 2007 .
  4. ↑ Woman defies Chinese developers. BBC, March 23, 2007, accessed February 12, 2014 .
  5. ^ Wu Zhong: China's rough ideological transition. Asia Times, May 14, 2007, accessed November 12, 2007 .
  6. ↑ a b c d Demolished Nail house in Chongqing. China Daily, April 3, 2007, accessed November 13, 2007 .
  7. ^ Zhang Rui: First Test Case for Newly Approved Property Law? China.org, March 23, 2007, accessed November 13, 2007 .
  8. ↑ a b Jeremy Goldkorn: Property rights: the coolest nail house in history. Danwei, March 22, 2007, accessed November 12, 2007 .
  9. ↑ Day In Pictures. San Francisco Chronicle, November 13, 2007, accessed November 13, 2007 .
  10. ↑ Nail house owner receives millions of yuan in compensation. China Daily, September 30, 2007, accessed November 13, 2007 .
  11. ↑ Xiao Qiang: Chinese Government Forbids Media Reporting of The "Nailhouse" Story. (No longer available online.) China Digital Times, March 24, 2007, archived from the original on February 3, 2008 ; Retrieved November 13, 2007 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / chinadigitaltimes.net
  12. ^ Geoffrey York: Nail house tests China's new property rights law. (No longer available online.) Scripps News, March 26, 2007, archived from the original on September 6, 2008 ; Retrieved November 13, 2007 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.scrippsnews.com
  13. ↑ Interview with "citizen reporter" Zhou Shuguang, aka Zola. Interfax, June 22, 2007, accessed November 13, 2007 .
  14. ↑ Jonathan Ansfield: Sports Illustrated Nods At The Nailhouse. June 12, 2009, accessed November 13, 2007 .
  15. ^ Translation of a report on Narita Airport. CCTV, April 4, 2007, accessed September 4, 2019 .
  16. ^ No demolition: The nail house from Zurich-West , tagesanzeiger.ch, May 15, 2013, accessed on June 30, 2016.
  17. ↑ Netz ( Memento of the original dated November 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , westnetz.ch, accessed on June 30, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / westnetz.ch
  18. ↑ The world-famous “nail house” in Zurich is being demolished - because of an access road , watson.ch, September 25, 2014, accessed on June 30, 2016.
  19. ↑ Contemporary witness cleared out of the way. In: nzz.ch. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, August 5, 2016, accessed on August 17, 2020 (Swiss Standard German).
  20. ↑ Another nail house has to give way. In: tagesanzeiger.ch. Tamedia Publications Deutschschweiz AG, November 6, 2014, accessed on August 17, 2020 (Swiss Standard German).
  21. ^ Adi Kälin: An expensive traffic obstacle. In: nzz.ch. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, September 9, 2016, accessed on August 17, 2020 (Swiss Standard German).
  22. ↑ http://www.kinderbuch-couch.de/fix-philippe-serafin-und-seine-wundermaschine.html kinderbuch-couch.de
  23. ↑ 6 Stubborn Nail Houses. USA Today, June 11, 2009; accessed November 13, 2007 .

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