A single house stood alone like an isolated island of Old China amid a flowing sea of rubble. The surrounding community of traditional style, single story brick houses had already been demolished, effectively erased from the slate of modern China. Now there was but one reminder that this historic neighbourhood ever existed at all, and that was the house I was standing in.

Red banners with bright yellow slogans saying “We are common people, we are not officials” and “A violation of the law” were draped over the tiled walls of the three story, rural-style villa. “Where is the justice?” was spray-painted in bright red on the outside of the century old courtyard’s grey brick wall.

This house, which sat just across the street from a new Wanda Plaza shopping mall in the small city of Taizhou, in China’s Jiangsu province, was on the chopping block of progress, and was set to be demolished – just as soon as the people living inside could be rooted out. 

As the final “nail house” refusing eviction, the Zhang family went about their days in the middle of a construction zone. Backhoes and bulldozers were already at work, moving fluidly around the house as if it were a three-storey tall boulder lying in a river of dirt.