Wujiang District, Suzhou, in 2020, this small place has a GDP of up to 200 billion yuan, ranking tenth among China's top 100 districts. Along with the rolling wealth comes the ubiquity of buildings and demolitions.
At the intersection of Lianyang Road, South Zhongshan Road, Wujiang District, Suzhou, there is a high-end townhouse community built by demolition, a new urbanist community - also known as Ruijing International Community.
Around 2018, when the villa owners in the southeast corner looked out the window, they suddenly found that something seemed to have changed: in the old houses surrounded by small villas, it seemed that they had never seen the elderly couple who had to wade out of the water every day.
In the unattended vegetable patch, corn, greens, and weeds grew wildly, but the people who took care of them disappeared.
It seems that the developer of the residential area has adopted a blockade strategy for several years against this so-called "most miserable" nail household in Suzhou, and finally helped them achieve the final victory.
But where did the stubborn and poor old couple who had lived in the house for decades go?
The greedy son Lion opened his mouth widely, and the million compensation was tripled
Before the development of Ruijing International Community, it belonged to Beijiajiao, Pangyang Village, Songling Town, Wujiang City.
In 2004, Wujiang City and the developer reached an intention to develop commercial housing on this land, and the demolition work was immediately put on the agenda in an intensive and door-to-door manner.
There are about 50 or 60 households in Peijiajiao, and according to the plan, they need to relocate to the Chengnan Flower Garden across the road, while the old homestead is used to develop into a high-end villa community.
The demolition standard is "one demolition and one return", in addition to the resettlement land and new houses in the south of the city, each family can also get about one million compensation.
In 2006, the demolition office, the village committee and the developer came to the home of the 10 groups of villagers in Pangyang Village, where most of her neighbors had already demolished or agreed to the demolition, waiting to move across the road to start a new life.
In 2006, the per capita disposable income of rural residents in Wujiang City had just reached the 10,000 yuan mark, and the figure of one million was a huge amount of money. The two elderly people did want to agree to this fairly generous condition like other neighbors when they first received the demolition notice in the village.
Just when all the people in charge of the demolition work thought that everything was going well, just when the two old men signed their consent, an unexpected change occurred one night later: the old man finally rejected the plan.
It turned out that although Mrs. Zhuang and her wife were the residents of this house, the head of the household in the household registration book was her second son, Zhuang Longdi.
Speaking of Zhuang Longdi, nearby villagers were somewhat dismissive of him. Such a mature villager, but without a proper job and stable income, he and his nephews and parents have been crammed into such a dilapidated hut for many years.
Old Uncle Zhuang is old and sick and unable to work, and the biggest source of income in Zhuang Longdi's family is the farmhouse vegetables that the old mother planted around the house.
Comparing other villagers, the developer gave a compensation plan considering that Zhuang Longdi and his parents could become independent households: two replacement plots of land, two new houses and one million yuan in compensation.
With two new houses, Mr. Zhuang and Mrs. Zhuang no longer have to squeeze into a broken house with their sons, or they can live in one set and rent out another set, and have a stable income.
However, his son Zhuang Longdi had a different mind, in his opinion, not only the land that built his old house had to be counted as money, but also the places around the house where vegetables were grown, even including the vacant land, all of which had to be counted as money.
So he made a dozen calculations in his head, and gave a price tag that was somewhat unacceptable to the developer: three million, which was a full three times higher than the compensation paid by other neighbors.
If the developer agrees to this condition, then the villagers in Peijiajiao, who have agreed to sign the agreement, are bound to cause a big storm.
Because of his son's staff, Zhuang Longdi also delayed signing his name on the demolition consent form. Because of the son's insatiable greed, in the end he gained more than he lost.
When the developers negotiated with all the villagers in Peijiajiao, they found that there was such a "nail household" left, but at this time, time did not allow them to slowly delay, so they had to carry out the construction project of the villa group on the land that had been delivered as soon as possible.
The developer's trick
Booming commercial development has brought a lot of money to Wujiang City, in 2006 the local GPS was about 50 billion yuan, and after only 6 years, it soared to more than 130 billion yuan twice, and the administrative level of Wujiang City was changed to a district below Suzhou City.
Thanks to the rapidly expanding affluent middle class in Wujiang, the villas that Ruijing International has built have sold smoothly, and developers have counted the money to the point of weakness.
But another problem is also becoming more and more of a headache for them: the old mrs. Zhuang's home, the earthen vegetable garden and two-story old-style houses in the villa group, are so incompatible with the advertising slogans advertised by the community such as "villas, superimposed villas, elevator garden houses" and so on.
The villa built in the early stage is fine because the distance is a little farther, but when the villa in the later stage is gradually approaching the old house, the sales lady not only has a great discount when selling the real estate, but also has more and more complaints from the owners: no one is willing to step out of the cement floor in front of their own home for a few steps, and step on a foot of rotten vegetable mud.
Up to now, in order not to affect the sale of the house, the developer can only grit his teeth and propose a compensation of 10 million yuan to Zhuang Longdi in order to agree to the relocation as soon as possible.
Who knew that in front of the branch secretary of Pang Yang Village, Zhuang Longdi once again refused this huge compensation.
He may be a little complacent, fortunately he did not give up the demand of three million yuan, and now he has done nothing in 6 years, and he has earned an average of more than one million yuan per year.
The construction of the residential area will not be completed until 2016, and Zhuang Longdi knows that he can at least threaten the developer for four full years, and in these four years, the value of the huge land around his house will increase, and I am afraid that it will not be able to count tens of millions.
The Pang Yang Village Committee, the developer, and Zhuang Longdi held round after round of negotiations, but they were never able to negotiate.
But what Zhuang Longdi did not expect was that only by getting the compensation in his hands was a real income, otherwise the price code would be high, but it would be just a mirror flower and water moon, painting cakes and filling the hunger.
Since 2013, Zhuang Longdi suddenly found that the village committee and developers no longer came to the door as frequently as before, and persuaded him to accept the demolition compensation plan.
Instead, the houses surrounding his family began to erect cement walls and colored steel plates on the land that the developer had already photographed, and the Zhuang Longdi family had to go out again and had to go around the wall to take a long way.
Who knows before long, construction began in front of their house, this time, the developer directly dug out a small river, and along the edge of Zhuang Longdi's house, a neat circle of river banks was built with stones.
The reason given by the developer is that "for the needs of community construction, the legitimate rights and interests of the owners of the community are safeguarded." "Don't do this, the community is not safe, the landscape is not good, the quality of the community will be affected, and the owners in the community will certainly not agree."
When the river was opened in June, Zhuang Longdi's family could no longer go out by land.
The helplessness of the most tragic nail households
Because of his son's good calculations, it is difficult for him to walk in a broken house, and the neighbors around him are all magnificent high-rise villas, and it is false to say that Old Mrs. Zhuang can still do nothing in his heart.
Zhuang Longdi himself is helpless about the current situation, because the construction land around his home is all auctioned by developers through legal channels.
Of course, the owners of the community are on the side of the developer: "As long as these buildings comply with the policy, the developer has the right to dispose of them legally." ”
Mrs. Zhuang had to go out every day to sell vegetables to earn an income, but now that she could only walk a few meters out of the house with three small wheels every day, she had to stop and carefully cross the river.
The bottom of the river was poured with cement, somewhat slippery, and if the old lady rode straight over, she could easily fall, so she could only push the car step by step, and then carry the car to the grass of the villa area with difficulty.
If it rains heavily, the river rises to knee-deep, mrs. Zhuang can't even ride a car, so she can only touch the stones with both hands and climb to the riverbank step by step.
Counting one after another, the old lady of Zhuang had to experience such a painful journey at least twice a day. Because the so-called "Landscape River" was so muddy, she returned home to rinse her feet well with well water.
But that's not the worst of the situations — the truly painful winter has yet to come. Thinking of the feeling of the cold and piercing river water going deep into the bone marrow, Mrs. Zhuang was really overwhelmed.
In the face of the reporters who came to interview, Zhuang Longdi said that he did not object to the demolition, "as long as they give me a reasonable plan, I can move away." ”
Having rejected the price of ten million, no one can say how much "reasonable" is needed in Zhuang Longdi's mouth. The old mother next to her couldn't help but pour bitter water, "Now it's good, we don't even have a way out." ”
Old Uncle Zhuang, who was already suffering from the disease, simply could not go out without going out, and lay in bed all day.
Dreams shattered, no victorious wars
In fact, whether according to the views of ordinary people or the law, the developer's approach is undoubtedly excessive.
According to the relevant laws and regulations of the mainland, citizens have the right to travel freely, and the current travel channel of Zhuang Longdi is equivalent to being "deprived" by the developer.
Therefore, even if the construction of walls, colored steel plates, and landscape rivers has been approved by the relevant departments, Zhuang Longdi can ask the planning department to revoke these unreasonable planning approvals and leave or build a travel channel for him.
It's just that his son Zhuang Longdi knows that he has offended too many people, has missed the best time to bargain, and the village committee is too lazy to take care of things.
Yang Yuanlin, the secretary of the village party committee, once negotiated for Zhuang Longdi to solve the problem of a water and electricity cut, but now for a family that is "difficult to travel", he just made an official statement that Zhuang Longdi has not yet reflected it to them.
"If there is indeed such a problem, as long as he raises it, we will try to help him negotiate with relevant parties through relevant channels and strive to solve it."
In fact, everyone knows that behind the travel problem, it is just a contest between Zhuang Longdi and the developer for demolition funds, but this fundamental problem has no time left for Zhuang Longdi to mention now.
With the rapid rise in house prices in Wujiang, the value of Zhuang Longdi's homestead has exceeded the range that the developer can afford, and on January 1, 2016, the Ruijing International Community was completed and all the villas were sold - that is, the developer completely abandoned the development plan of the ground of Zhuang Longdi's former residence and withdrew the right to use the homestead.
Zhuang Longdi did not wait for the developer to solve the travel problem for himself, and he lost the negotiator and the "reasonable plan" he had always wanted but could not get.
Seeing that the trillions of billions of wealth in the dream had vanished overnight, Zhuang Longdi no longer had the patience to stick to it, and quickly moved out of the old house with his daughter-in-law.
Only poor Mrs. Zhuang still has to take care of her wife on the sickbed, wading out of the dirty river every day, returning to wash her feet with well water, and continuing the life of growing vegetables and selling vegetables that has not changed for decades.
As he grew older, Old Uncle Zhuang's illness worsened, and it was obviously not a long-term solution to go on. In the end, Mrs. Zhuang and Mr. Zhuang also had to choose to move out of the old house to join their sons, and the last house in PangYang Village did not escape the fate of being demolished.
After Ruijing International withdrew from the development plan, Wujiang Development Zone also could not find a development plan for such a homestead of several hundred square meters, and now only the vegetables and weeds left by Mrs. Zhuang grow freely, which is a rare wild interest in the villa area.
Gold paves the way of heaven, and it is good to be content with others
Since ancient times, Suzhou has been the economic powerhouse of the Jiangnan region, and its economic status in Jiangsu Province has even surpassed that of the provincial capital Nanjing.
In 2000, Suzhou's GPD was only 0.15 trillion yuan, and by 2021, as a prefecture-level city, Suzhou's GDP exceeded 2.2 trillion yuan, ranking sixth in the country, second only to the four super-first-tier cities in the north, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen and Chongqing, the largest municipality directly under the central government. The urbanization rate also increased from 57.1% to 81.7%.
The rapid urbanization in the past 20 years has changed from the old jiangnan water town full of houses and farmland to today's buildings and factories, which are naturally accompanied by countless demolition construction and land disputes.
Zhuang Longdi is not alone, also in the CBD center of Kunshan Huaqiao Town in Suzhou, there is also a "most cattle nail household", it is said that he once categorically refused 5 million demolition funds to guard the old house.
Nowadays, this family's old house, surrounded by modern office buildings, office buildings, supermarkets, and markets, is so lonely surrounded by color steel plates on a large lawn, enjoying a green scenery, and the land under the feet is said to need to be calculated with hundreds of millions.
However, from the perspective of not paying off the loss, the Zhuang Longdi family is probably indeed called the "most miserable nail household".
The old neighbors of Beijiajiao who moved into the south garden of the city, relying on compensatory houses and payments, the rental storefronts on the street and the rental houses in the community have long lived a life of sitting on the ground and collecting money all year round.
Although the nail households in Huaqiao Town did not get the sky-high demolition money, they did not leave the old house where their ancestors had lived for decades, and the family could not only enjoy the flowers and trees behind the front house, but also go out on a flat and wide lawn road, and there was nothing inconvenient about life.
Only the insatiable Zhuang Longdi not only caused his parents to endure years of bad quality of life, but finally missed the economic opportunities brought about by the rapid development of his hometown, and was forced to abandon his ancestral home and end up with a bamboo basket to draw water.
"Suhu Lake is ripe, the world is enough", hard work and prosperity have always been the beliefs and secrets of economic take-off pursued by the people in Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions.