Chinese Farmer Refuses to Move Old Barn; Highway Gets Built Around It
Stand-alone farm on a highway.
Chinese Farmer Refuses to Move Old Barn; Highway Gets Built Around It
Stand-alone farm on a highway.
Farming requires resilience — even if that means, say, defying both your government and a large construction company and forcing them to build an enormous highway around your property.
Ye Tan, 72, and wife Shen, 71, owners of a small barnyard plot in Dongying, China, refused to sell when developers came knocking. The city’s ruling body didn’t want to see the project sidetracked, however, and so came up with an easy-not-easy solution: build around the land. Cut to today, and the farm stands alone like cheese, smack in the middle of a large multi-lane highway.
The farm stands alone like cheese, smack in the middle of a large multi-lane highway.
We’ve seen this before. Back in 2012, Chinese duck farmer Luo Baogen and his wife similarly refused compensation for the demolition of their home. So around went another highway, and soon images went viral of a half-demolished, multi-story brick building sitting smack in the middle of a blacktop. There’s even a term for such social resistance: Dingzihu, or “nail house,” a home that stands out like an errant spike amidst the county’s unrelenting urbanization. (Because land in China is state-owned, residents have relatively little recourse in such cases and usually receive a pittance for their property.)
Here’s the big difference between the two cases, though. Whereas drivers could scoot around Baogen’s home with relative ease, no such luck exists for those attempting to traverse Tan’s property. There’s but a single dirt pathway that wraps around the grassy knoll where ducks and chickens roam; smaller cars have so far managed the detour, but all larger vehicles are forced to backpedal. Exacerbating woes: the new highway shows up on GPS navigation systems but the road-blocking farm does not, thwarting many a shortcut.
Eminent domain battles are often the stuff of legend. For pure humor value, nothing beats Atlantic City resident Vera Coking, who famously fought and prevailed against Donald Trump when he sought to tear down her boarding house, calling him “a maggot, a cockroach, and a crumb” in the process. (A crumb!) Alas, as any Trekkie knows, resistance is (sometimes) futile. Soon after his story went viral, Baogen gave in and sold the property, which was quickly demolished; speculation is that Tan will do the same when the price is right.
Until then, that highway will remain a road less traveled.
Follow us
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].by Meaghan Agnew, Modern Farmer
October 8, 2014
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreExplore other topics
Share With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
SubmitNecessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and are used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies.