Shanghai's blue-blooded nail house

Number 3 Baoqing Rd, at the corner of Huaihai Rd near the Changshu Rd metro station, is an old colonial-style house with almost 4000 square meters of attached private gardens. For 55 years, award-winning and state-honored Shanghai painter Xu Yuanzhang and his family have lived in this house, upkeeping the house and gardens that his grandfather Zhou Zongliang purchased from a German owner seven years after it was built in Shanghai's booming 1930's.

But now, with Shanghai's real estate market being red-hot -- the residence including gardens has been appraised at over 26 million US dollars -- and 13 heirs spread across several countries and generations claiming rights to the property, the situation turned contentious. After a court order to liquidate the property and distribute the gains to the heirs, the two grandchildren entrusted with the sale, Zhou Guangren and Zhou Ping, shadily sold the property to a developer for nearly a third of its appraised market value. Meanwhile, Xu Yuanzhang has been served by the Xuhui District courts with an order to move off of the property he now unlawfully inhabits, a court order which will come due on September 15th and which he promises to fight.

The property development company that acquired 3 Baoqing Rd from the Zhou grandchildren has offered Xu and his relatives a fifty-square meter apartment in Minhang, which if interpreted in the most obvious way is a pretty nasty kick-while-he's-down. It's hard to feel sorry for Xu, though, who for all his sentimental pleas to the public would, according to the article linked above, settle for a 150 m² luxury apartment in the city center, RMB 300k to cover the apartment's renovation and an cozy RMB 4 million in extra cash.

Will the property be bulldozed and turned into an All Days? Will Xu get to stay in his childhood home or move on to enjoy a life of debauchery in a Huaihai Rd penthouse? Or perhaps stew in his own bile in a Minhang stinkhole? Stay tuned.

Photo by ♥luckjiujiuling.