Now THIS is a story worth reading!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... canon.html
"Chinese farmer declares war on property developers with homemade wheelbarrow canon.
A Chinese farmer is fighting off property developers who want his land, firing rockets from a homemade canon made out of a wheelbarrow and pipes, state media said on Tuesday."

Photos from the Daily Telegraph:




What a GEEZER!!!!!

The 13000 ponds their offering are probably more money than he's earned in his entire life! But yeah, the eland is worth a tad more than that

If one takes the line 9 metro, between sijing and dongjing, there's a helluvalot of new apartment buildings going up in what were farmers fields only a few months ago. In some of the fields, the drilling rigs were brought in and makeshift roads were built on top of crops not yet harvested. Something tells me that those farmers didn't plant a crop they didn't plan to harvest. Maybe they need a wheelbarrow cannon too!

This is a con. The "Chinese farmer" is a model. This technology is being developed by Jiaotong University's Faculty of Distributed Service Denial. They are looking to get a contract from Halliburton, and this is part of their viral campaign.

Sheesh, and you fell for it.

Apologies to the OP for posting the article too.

Where we bought (and still own) our house in Minhang in 2000 it was still just farmland and small houses. Our developer actually had to build houses for the people he wanted to move. So there was some social responsibility.

That did not apply to the building of Xin Tian Di. My wifes parents lived in a room in a shikumen on land that would be just south of that big lake. They and their neighbours were routinely harrassed by so called local govt people and the developers goons. Eventually there were just a few houses standing, one of which was theirs. It was pulled down one weekend while they went off to what was left of the local wet market to buy food.

The compensation offered was miniscule compared with what the developers then charged the designer shops for the buildings they threw up.

does the local govt only need to pay the price of the land to evict residents from their homes? geez, they don't need to pay for lost income or burden? if any govt did that to me just to put up department stores, i'd let them finish building and then burn it down.

KalanStar wrote:
If one takes the line 9 metro, between sijing and dongjing, there's a helluvalot of new apartment buildings going up in what were farmers fields only a few months ago. In some of the fields, the drilling rigs were brought in and makeshift roads were built on top of crops not yet harvested. Something tells me that those farmers didn't plant a crop they didn't plan to harvest. Maybe they need a wheelbarrow cannon too!

I was around there once and I saw what now seems to be former land owners and they were having pretty heated argument with the construction workers. Rocks and all.

I wonder how those buildings manage to stay up though, I mean the place is one big marshland. It's gonna be pretty expensive to keep those buildings free of infiltration.

bleepingbleeper wrote:does the local govt only need to pay the price of the land to evict residents from their homes? geez, they don't need to pay for lost income or burden? if any govt did that to me just to put up department stores, i'd let them finish building and then burn it down.

No.

Used to offer so many RMB per hu kou per m2, but even that got too much for the cheating bastards so they just offered per m2.

Many people in those shikummen are living in a 15-20m2 room with public bogs and cooking. My wife had both parents, her brother and a senile grandmother all sharing one room.

Not sure about the States, but in many countries, including the UK and Australia, we have compulsory purchase orders where the govt can actually force people to give up land subject to compensation which is pretty decent. It's commonly used for Olympic development where the "greater good" must prevail. The only issue in China is that the term "greater good" takes on a whole new meaning here. It's fine to develop like this if it does indeed benefit the wider country, however, too often here, it just benefits the few.

I visited my in-laws with my wife just before they had their place torn down. A group of local worthies turned up and just started screaming and shouting at them..usual crap..'not helping with Shanghai's development..'

They did not like me being there so one of them must have called the police who turned up and asked what I was doing there. Mrs SC explained and I produced a copy of my passport. They told the local worthies there was nothing they could do, I was visiting family. That sent the bastards into a rage and things got very nasty, even though the police were there, more screaming and shouting, personal insults, trying to provoke me to do something. In the end through the police we told them that if anything happened it would be reported to the British Consulate, not that those buggers would have done anything, but the worthies backed down and buggered off. Next afternoon the house was pulled down.