Zhao Jingxin wants to go on living in the 400-year-old courtyard home that his father bought 48 years ago in the heart of Beijing. A developer wants to turn it and the area round it into a shopping mall.
The six-month stand-off is a metaphor for the struggle going on for the ancient heart of Beijing, for 800 years China's capital and a city with a unique architecture: palaces and gardens in imperial red and yellow surrounded by single-storey courtyard homes in grey, the colour of commoners.
Eighty-year-old Mr Zhao's house is every traditional Beijinger's dream - rooms overlooking a small courtyard filled with trees and shrubs, five minutes from Wangfujing, the city's main shopping street. The family has added a modern kitchen, bathroom and central heating.
As you sip green tea and marvel at the intricate wood carving in his sitting room, you can no longer hear the sound of the earthmovers building an eight-line highway just 100 metres away.
It is this highway, to become one of the city's two main east-west thoroughfares, which may be the death of Mr Zhao's home. The city government cannot afford the building cost of two billion yuan (HK$1.87 billion) and so relies on developers who pay to develop land near the road.
The Wangfujing Real Estate Development Company won the right to land south of the highway where Mr Zhao's home and dozens like it stand.