A woman in China refused to sell her house to a shopping mall developer. So they dug a 30 foot pit around her. Every neighbor sold. She stayed. Her house sat alone on a pillar of earth in the middle of a construction site for three years while the entire world watched.
Her name was Wu Ping. The house was in Chongqing, a city of 30 million people. In 2004, developers announced a massive commercial project on her block. 280 families sold. Wu Ping and her husband Yang Wu were the only ones who said no. They didn't think the compensation was fair. They said the house had been in the family for generations and nobody was going to take it for less than it was worth.
The developer's response was medieval. They excavated the entire site around the house. Dug it down 30 feet. Wu Ping's home was left standing on a tower of dirt in the center of a crater, with no road, no water, no electricity. They cut the utilities. They surrounded it with construction fencing. They waited for her to give up.
Her husband climbed the dirt pillar with a Chinese flag, a gas stove, and a banner that read: A citizen's legal property is not to be violated. He camped inside the house. Photos spread across every newspaper in China and then the world. The house became known as the most stubborn nail house in history. Nail house is the Chinese term for a holdout, a nail that won't be hammered down.
Wu Ping gave press conferences from the edge of the pit. She wore red. She quoted the Chinese constitution, which had been amended only months earlier to protect private property. She became a national symbol of the individual versus the machine.
After three years, the developer caved. She received a new apartment and compensation of roughly 1 million yuan. The house was demolished in April 2007. The mall was built.
But the photograph of the house on the pillar had already been seen by hundreds of millions of people. Wu Ping lost the house. She won something bigger. A nation of 1.4 billion people learned that you can say no.
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