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Mrs Wu owns a little house in booming Chongquing in Central China.

3 years ago, Real estate developers tried to oust Mrs Wu from her little house. But Mrs Wu doesn’t hear it this way. She has a property right.

She claims an equivalent part in the to be built estate, the size of her little house. She didn’t want the ridiculous sum of money the developers offer for the expropriation.

Now, like in an old Chinese stratagem, the developers decided to isolate the couple. They started digging around the house.

They even tried to intimidate Mrs Wu, sending them some mob at night. but Mrs Wu’s husband is a Kung Fu master, and nothing could make them move.

Even the court tried to evict them; But Mr and Mrs Wu kept resisting beyond the deadline ordered by law. Their only weapon : a Chinese flag, to defend the newly voted property right.

So the story broke over the internet, in the local newspaper first, and rapidly on Chinese forums. The authorities tried to block the sites, but it soon broke over all major newspapers, like the China Daily and the Shanghai Daily creating debates among the Chinese : should we resist the oppression of the building mafia or should we comply to the law and get evicted one by one ?

This post from Xu Zhiqiang shows the interest of the population :

To climb up his house to show his not-moving resolution on March 23, Yang (Mrs Wu’s Husband) said he gave up the chance to compete against the Russian champion in a nearby martial arts competition.

To make Yang relax, some warmhearted reporters provided him with water and food with the aid of a sling and a basket. What is more, many dwellers that face the same situation in Chongqing are going there to learn lessons from Yang and expect to grasp the media’s attention. At the same time, new similar hardest nail house pictures in Shanghai, Guangxi and other provinces are emerging in the BBS and Internet forums.

Today, the story is everywhere :Financial Times, AFP and Time.
So who’s gonna win? Is the Kung Fu Family strong enough to make the real estate Goliath yield?

So the developers have tried to “Entice the tiger to leave its mountain lair”. What will be the good strategy for the Wu family : “Tossing out a brick to get a jade” ? or is the last stratagem the only option : “Of the Thirty-Six Strategies, fleeing is best” ?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 11:11 pm and is filed under Things you find on the web, Blogging, Unusual, Real Questions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.