September 24th, 2013. The Day Our Neighbors Lost their Homes

Originally, I wrote up an entirely different blog post for today, but I'll need to save that until tomorrow because quite a bit has changed in our very own backyard. 

When we first moved here, I wrote about "the price of expansion" and explained about how we learned that families were stilling living in what we thought were abandoned / burnt out homes in our own backyard and the struggles they went through to stay in their homes.

Unfortunately, today those struggles are over.  When I woke up and headed to Spin class I thought something seemed different about the lot behind our home. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it seemed like there was more debris somehow? On my way home and to grab some groceries I noticed a few policemen on the corner of Anfu Lu & Wulumuqi Lu with about 6 men taking sledge hammers to the wall. To myself, and potentially out loud, I thought "that's interesting, I'll take some pics on my way home." But on my way home I encountered an entirely different scene. 

When I returned to the same corner just 10min later there was a a huge gap in the corner made larger by the bull dozer that was squeezing through it. Plus a whole line of men up against the wall wearing red circle stickers on their shirt pockets. Still not fully comprehending what was happening, I snapped a couple pics and headed upstairs to our apartment to get the full view.

It was astounding. There was a huge rope with flags outlining the sidewalks and guards stationed under beach umbrellas (?) every 20 feet or so. 

Through the hole in the wall men started coming in carrying folded cardboard boxes and delivering to what I believe are the 4 houses that still have inhabitants. Once the bulldozer broke through, 4 moving trucks followed down the inner "road" and pulled up to each of the four homes. All those empty boxes were loaded up into the trucks including their refrigerator. (Although I didn't realize that they had electricity?)

After the trucks left, the larger bulldozer came in. A team would water down each building with a fire hose before the bulldozer would attack and destroy. This is how you could tell where the bulldozer would strike next. 

(here's hoping the video works this time)

By 1pm all of the homes had been torn down leaving a cloud of dust in its wake with the smaller  bulldozer and garbage trucks rolling in to pick up the significant piles of debris. 

All-in-all the scene was incredibly calm. The only yells came from people on the street when one of the buildings collapsed over the wall and another from a cat in hiding that ran as fast as I've ever seen once it's hide-out was under siege.

As far as I could tell, no one was harmed this time, thank goodness. But these homes and neighborhood are demolished.

I don't really know exactly how to end this post, because while the buildings are down, there are still so many unanswered questions:

- why now?
- did these people know what was happening?
- where will they live now?
- have they been provided for?
- what happens to this lot?
- did the real estate company finally win? was it the government?