Anyone who’s ever tried to something as simple as put up a shed or a deck knows the pain of trying to deal with local planning authorities. Local government could give Kafka lessons in bureaucratic obstinacy.
By contrast, even in communist China, legends like Chen Tianming are able to give the middle-finger to planning bureaucracy.
Authorities razed most of Chen’s village in Guizhou province in 2018 to build a lucrative tourist resort in a region known for its spectacular rice paddies and otherworldly mountain landscapes.
Chen, 42, refused to leave, and after the project faltered, defied a flurry of demolition notices to build his family’s humble stone bungalow higher and higher.
He now presides over a bewildering 10-storey, pyramid-shaped warren of rickety staircases, balconies and other add-ons, drawing comparisons in Chinese media to the fantastical creations of legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki.
Chen “started building out of practicality”, he says. His first impulse was to renovate and expand the family home. “But then it became more of an interest and hobby that I enjoyed.” In China, as across most of the world, enjoying yourself is an activity heavily frowned upon by local government authorities. Chen couldn’t care less.
The higher floors where he sleeps sway in the wind, and dozens of ropes and cables tether the house to the ground as if the whole thing might one day float away.
“When I’m up here... I get the sense of being a nomad,” Chen said, gazing out at apartment blocks, an airport and distant mountains.
“People often say it’s unsafe and should be demolished... but I’ll definitely never let anyone tear it down.”
Chen’s architectural masterpiece is also a monument to sticking it to developers and their grandiose plans that invariably involve trampling on the little guy. Chen is having the last laugh.
Local authorities once had big plans to build an 800-acre tourist resort – including a theatre and artificial lake – on Chen’s native soil.
They promised to compensate villagers, but Chen’s parents refused, and he vowed to help them protect the home his grandfather had built in the 1980s.
Even as neighbours moved out and their houses were bulldozed, Chen stayed put, even sleeping alone in the house for two months “in case (developers) came to knock it down in the night”.
Six months later, like many ill-considered development projects in highly indebted Guizhou, the resort was cancelled.
Chen’s house is another brave example of what the Chinese call ‘nail houses’: those whose owners dig in and refuse to relocate despite official compensation offers.
A quirk of China’s rampant development and partial private property laws, nail houses sometimes make headlines for delaying money-spinning construction projects or forcing developers to divert roads or build around shabby older homes.
Despite repeated demolition orders, Chen has persisted, building a fifth floor in 2019, a sixth in 2022 and a seventh in 2023. He has also, he says, spent tens of thousands of yuan fighting the notices in court, despite losing several preliminary hearings. Stubbornly, he continues to appeal, fighting the bureaucrats at their own game: lawfare. The next hearing has been delayed.
In the meantime, where the planned tourist resort became yet another failed ghost of Chinese government planning, Chen’s ‘nail house’ has become a tourist attraction in its own right.
On Chinese social media, users describe it as China’s strangest nail house, likening it to the madcap buildings in Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli masterpieces “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “Spirited Away”.
As dusk falls, Chen illuminates his home with decorative lanterns, and people gather on the nearby dirt road to admire the scene.
“It’s beautiful,” local resident He Diezhen told AFP as she snapped photos.
Chen himself displays an endearing child-like spirit: the kid who built his own cubby house and never stopped.
Chen said the house makes many visitors remember their whimsical childhood fantasies.
“(People) dream of building a house for themselves with their own hands... but most can’t make it happen,” he told AFP.
“I not only thought of it, I made it a reality.”
More power to him.
