The nailhouse in Dongjiadu

A couple days ago, we mentioned Dongjiadu, an old middle-class neighborhood just south of the Bund that's being razed over for... I'm not sure what to call it in Shanghai - urban renewal? Now a reader has written in to inform us that there's a nail house there.

In case you need a reminder, nail houses (钉子户) refer to residents who refuse to move out of an area that's being cleared for new real estate development. Allegedly, coined by developers, they refer to nails that are stuck in the wood and almost impossible to remove. Most of the time, nail house residents are there because they've found compensation unfair or they have yet to be compensated.

Says Shanghaiist reader Jamie:

...I thought you might want to know there's a nail house opposite the cathedral whose several residents are refusing to move.

As the attached shows they were on the roof all afternoon and still there in the evening (dark as it is it's possible to make out that the lady on the roof in the daylight pic is in the same position in the evening pic)... Photos aren't technically great. I'm not Chinese and there were lots of cops around, (though their vans had gone early evening) so I had to be quick.

Thanks for the tip and the pictures, Jamie! Lets hope these folks don't meet the same fate as that nail house grandmother in Wenzhou who was buried alive by excavators trying to raze her home.