In the land of “communism,” property rights hold sway—at least for a time. “Nail houses” are a libertarian dream.You live on Wenling Highway? Yes indeed. I live on Wenling Highway.



Dig your damn pit. We aren’t budging! (They finally did.)



House with garden. Some landscaping required.

There may indeed be a humorous side from the exterior looking in. But try to imagine the lonely struggles waged by the homeowners, battling for better compensation, versus the bureaucrats and developers who simply build and dig around the hold-outs until time for the latter runs out.

Paving a highway around a house? Nowhere are the sharp social faultlines of a post-communist country, it seems to me, better drawn: the dreams of the newly-empowered individual on the one hand, the blind “progress” of development on the other, a flood finding its manifold paths around stubbornly immovable objects until they are finally, inevitably, worn away. Because, in the world of property rights, the folks with the biggest properties always win.