Global Eye
Vacant Land
By Ted Varani
The vacant land sits right outside our tenth floor window. In a strange way, it's ominous and looming. It just doesn't belong
smack in the middle of Shanghai, surrounded by a forest of high-rise residences and the old low rise apartment blocks that
serve as a kind of thick undergrowth. Imagine an entire city block in the middle of Manhattan sitting idle. That's what it is.
At sidewalk level the land is enclosed by a hastily built eight foot high wall to keep people out. The wall itself is covered in
posters with public service messages, and patriotic reflections on China. From the vantage point of our living room window, we
see the vegetation slowly taking over the foundations of what used to sit there before.
!
In China's rapid development rush, much has been said in the news about land developers colluding with local government
officials to expropriate land where ordinary people live. There are plenty of stories of defiant residents who refuse to give up
their homes — the nail households as they are called — as well as the extreme measures the developers have been known to
take to dislodge them. To be fair, things have changed radically in China and it is rarer to hear about this kind of forced
removal without due process.
This particular tract of land outside our window has its own sad story, or so it seems. All the neighbors in our complex, which
sits across the street, know a thing or two about what happened more than ten years ago. I've heard a lot of stories. Stories
about how most former residents agreed to leave their antiquated and cramped dwellings in exchange for compensation and
the offer of modern housing. But also stories about the nails that refused to budge. Stories of intimidating thugs showing up in
the middle of the night. Stories of families' homes set on fire with the families still inside.
I am sure these are stories founded on real events, but I am not a journalist and have not sought to verify what really happened
when the old homes were razed. What I can say is that when we moved in — this would be in 2012 — there were about five
dilapidated structures still standing in the land. The rest was rubble. The old house just below our tenth floor vantage point
had lights on in the windows. The house was on its last legs. And from time to time we would see an old man walking around
in the deserted foundations of his former neighbors' homes. We could even see stray cats scurry away as he wandered through
the remains of a vanished community.
Then the old man died. It was about one year ago. And then it got bizarre: old people came to pay their respects by placing
flowers outside the old man's empty house. Other men came to throw the flowers back at the old people. Or stomp on them.
The old people flung the flowers back towards the house again. It was a flower fight.
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THE CONE - ISSUE #3 - AUTUMN 2014