The long goodbye

Shanghai Star. 2003-01-23

THE Spring Festival is drawing near, but at Changbai Yicun Residential Quarter, no festive air could be felt among the old shabby houses.

Two red banners were pasted on the brick walls at the entrance to the residential quarter, which read: "The earlier you move out, the earlier you profit," and: "The earlier you move out, the earlier you will be resettled."

Such banners are frequent sights these years, accompanying the city's vigorous reconstruction work - demolishing the old quarters clustered with shaky sheds, and replacing them with modern buildings.

Changbai Yicun, as a part of the city's key project known as the "20,000 families," is top of the list in the new round of reconstruction work.

Not long ago the city's main media all devoted a large amount of space to reporting on the project in an excited tone and commenting on it as a jubilant event for the workers - the city is finally wielding its axe against this old residential quarter, and the 20,000 families who have suffered for so long in this slum area are now receiving the chance to move out.

Remote move

Yet what kind of places will they actually be moving to?

The choices the real estate developers give to the residents of Changbai Yicun are Mingtong Lu in the Chuansha District, not far from Pudong Airport, or Shidongkou in the Baoshan District, close to Chongming Island.

Both are on the edge of the city, with no schools or hospitals in the neighbourhood. At least two hours is needed to travel between the urban downtown and the new houses. To make matters worse, the public transportation linking them to the centre stops working after 7:00pm everyday.

"It makes for great inconvenience," said Chen Liquan, a 70-year-old resident, whose 17 square-metre house is inhabited by five people, of three generations.

Chen has long dreamed of moving out of this shabby quarter. But he had not expected that when the chance finally came it would be like this.

"My son works near here, and the children go to school in the neighbourhood. If we move to those places, how can they get to work and how can the children go to school?" Chen asked. His worry is shared by many of the residents there.

"It is not right that the city just builds some houses and then asks us to move in regardless of the inconvenience."

Although Shanghai is developing quickly, it may still need at least five years before everything becomes convenient in such remote areas.

Take Jing'an New Town for example. To make way for urban reconstruction, many of the residents who used to live in the downtown Jing'an District moved to the suburb of Qibao in Minhang District.

The first batch of people came in 1997. More than four years have passed and the number of buses going there have increased from just one to five.

However, difficulties still exist. The most worrying concerns children's education.

Although recently some good schools from the Jing'an District have opened branches here, many of the residents still send their children to the downtown for education.

"The good teachers are reluctant to travel so far," said a resident named Yu Changfeng.

Many of the children have to leave home at 6:00am every morning to ensure that they get to school on time after at least an hour's bus drive. When the weekends come, they still need to travel a long way to take different make-up courses in the downtown.

The same problem also troubles the adults who have to rush to work everyday. For those working overtime getting home can become a big problem, because the bus has stopped long before and hiring a taxi is too expensive.

However, the difficulties facing Chen and his neighbours could be even greater than those of Qibao, since the places they are expected to move to are much remoter.

Humble compensation

Yet an even bigger blow is that Chen was recently informed even if he agrees to take the apartment, he still has to pay at least an extra 20,000 yuan (US$2,409), as according to the new compensation standard, the level of compensation is now based on the value of the old houses instead of the number of family members. The market appraisal has replaced the former one in which welfare consideration is more prominent.

Appraised on the basis of size, location and years of use, Chen's house, 50 years old, is only worth 90,000 yuan (US$10,843) or 2,715 yuan (US$327) per square metre. This even fails to match the second-hand houses in the neighbourhood, which are worth at least 4,000 yuan (US$482) per square metre, a figure that is still rising quickly.

To poor families like Chen's, which are not rare among those who remain in the city's old quarters, buying apartments in the downtown area nearby their old location is almost impossible, unless they take huge amount of mortgage from bank. In that case, however, high interest payments might ultimately cause them to become even poorer, a potential problem some experts have already begun worrying about.

Nevertheless the real estate developer has announced the deadline. All residents should be moved out before March 8.

It is estimated that the land the old quarter takes can build 70,000 square metres of commodity houses. If priced at 4,000 yuan per square metre, that will be worth 280 million yuan (US$33.7 million). But the average compensation received by each of these 500 families is around 150,000 yuan (US$18,000), totalling 75 million yuan (US$9 million).

Painful sacrifice

"If the real estate developers don't earn money, how can the city develop?" said He Yaozu, director of the Relocation Department of the Shanghai Housing, Land and Resources Administration Bureau.

Moving out these people can still help to sell more of the city's commodity residential houses, some of which have been long left unoccupied.

But sacrifices have to be made to propel the rapid economic growth.

"I know there are a lot of complaints," He said.

Yet he sees the relocation process as an indispensable step on the way to the city's modernization.

"What we can do is try to fairly estimate the amount of compensation, to give the house holders what their houses are worth. Of course, to those families with special problems, the government will lend a hand," he added.

That is to say, most families just have to accept all the difficulties.

The latest statistics show that in face of the soaring house prices these years, an increasing number of people are taking up the offer of houses in the suburbs instead of the compensation money the real estate developers provide.



Copyright by Shanghai Star.