Incredible images of China’s remarkable ‘nail houses’, left standing after owners refuse to let developers demolish them
- Homes such as these in China are known as ‘nail houses’ because they are difficult to remove, like a stubborn nail
- One house in Wenling, Zhejiang province, had a main road built around it when the owner refused to move
- Another image shows a house sitting alone in a crater at the centre of a construction site in Chongqing Municipality
We’re used to reading about construction projects springing up in China at lightning speed – but things don’t always go according to plan.
Sometimes stubborn house owners get in the way, as these incredible images show.
These are the ‘nail’ houses in China left standing after their owners refused to give in to property developers vying for their demolition.
Homes such as these in China are known as ‘dingzihu’ or ‘nail houses’ because they stick out and are difficult to remove, like a stubborn nail.
Last house standing: A car stops beside a house in the middle of a newly built road in Wenling, Zhejiang provinc
A nail housestands in the centre of a construction site which will be developed as a new apartment zone in Chongqing Municipality
A nail house is seen surrounded by a ditch at a construction site for a new residential compound in Xiangyang, Hubei province
A woman walks past a nail house, the last house in this area, on the outskirts of Nanjing, Jiangsu province
Cut off: A six-floor villa on the construction site in the central business district of Shenzhen
Here comes rubble: A partially demolished nail house at a construction site in Hefei, Anhui province
One of a kind: A nail house is pictured at a construction site which will be developed into a new apartment zone in Hefei, Anhui province. The banner reads ‘(We) strongly request the government punishes the criminals. They demolish my house by force. They must return my land’
It remained in the middle of the road for four years.
Another image shows a house sitting alone in a crater at the centre of a construction site in Chongqing Municipality, its overgrown garden still intact.
Cao Wenxia (left), the owner of a nail house, lights firecrackers to celebrate Chinese New Year near an excavator used for demolishing buildings near his house in Hefei, Anhui province
Zheng Meiju walks towards her partially demolished nail house (back) in Rui’an, Zhejiang province
The demolition of a nail house at a construction site in Guangzhou, Guangdong province
A similarly bizarre sight resulted when a home owner in in Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, refused to give in to developers.
There’s now a single-storey ramshackle house there sitting at a skewed angle in the middle of a road in an otherwise modern and symmetrical housing development.
According to local media, the owner of the house didn’t reach an agreement with the local authority about compensation for the demolition.
Defiant to the last, nail house owners will often carry on living in their homes even when water and electricity supplies have been cut off.
A woman stands at the balcony of her house which will be demolished to build new apartments in downtown Shanghai
Xu Aiguo, the owner of a nail house in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, sets up a Chinese national flag outside his balcony
A nail house stands on the square in front of a shopping mall in Changsha, central China’s Hunan province
Cao Mingyun, daughter of 75-year-old Cao Wenxia, the owner of a nail house, talks to journalist in front of their house in Hefei, Anhui province