Chinese city builds motorway around a tiny house after owner refuses to move
A major Chinese city built an entire motorway bridge around a tiny house after the owner refused to move. You can watch a clip of the development below:
This building, located in Guangzhou, is known as a 'nail house' as the owner rejected compensation from a developer to demolish it.
Unfortunately for the owner, the view is now two wings of the Haizhuyong Bridge, which opened in 2020.
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According to Guangdong TV station, the one-storey house contains a 40-square-metre (430-square-foot) flat and is situated in a pit in the middle of the four-lane traffic link.
Dark and noisy - just what everyone wants.
The owner, known only by her surname Liang, said she didn't agree to move because the government had failed to offer her a replacement property in an ideal location.
She also said that she was more than happy to deal with the consequences and did not mind what other people thought of her.
Liang told the MailOnline: "You think this environment is poor, but I feel it's quiet, liberating, pleasant and comfortable."
Well, maybe before the bridge was built.
Government officials said that they earmarked the plot for demolition in 2010 to build the Haizhuyong Bridge.
A decade later, they got it set up, albeit not entirely how they thought it would be.
Authorities described how Ms Liang was offered many flats as well as cash compensation schemes - but she would not budge.
They added that they will continue communicating with Ms Liang and said engineers studied the relevant safety issues before constructing the bridge to make sure it was fine for her to continue living there.
This is China's version of the UK's house in the middle of the M62 motorway - only in this case, the owner wasn't too stubborn to move.
The real reason Stott Hall Farm is slap-bang in the middle of the motorway is because a geological fault beneath it would have been a massive inconvenience to sort out.
You see, the land on which the house was built contains a 'geological anomaly', which made it 'impossibly steep' for six lanes to be built upon it.
The granddaughter of former owner Ken Wild, Kimberley Pollard, spoke to The Huddersfield Daily Examiner some years ago about the unusual development.
"The story is my granddad was a stubborn old Yorkshireman who refused to move - but he's actually from Lancashire," she said.
"He was far too subdued for that - and he wouldn't have had a choice in the matter because the farm was rented from Yorkshire Water."
Daisy Phillipson