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SCMP Reporter

Hua Xinmin stands wide-eyed as her childhood home is transformed into  rubble and dust. Seven workers drill  and scrape away at the  single-storey house while three men from the demolition company shadow her.

'Don't touch my house!' Ms Hua yells. 'Who gave you the right to destroy my house?'

Her outburst makes little impact. 'Your house? Who says it is? Show me the evidence,' a black-suited man says.

'Of course it is my home!' says Ms Hua. 'My father grew up here and my aunt was born here. This is the house my grandfather designed himself.'

The 50-year-old woman is incensed and the crew responds by hustling her out of the yard.

The daughter of a Chinese-Polish father and a French mother, Ms Hua was born in Beijing and grew up in what is now known as the Red Star Hutong before fleeing with her family to France during the Cultural Revolution.

The house was taken over by the central government and rented to several other families. With only a photocopy of a land ownership certificate, she has been unable to convince authorities that her family owns the property.

The destruction of her one-time home comes after seven years of writing articles and lobbying officials to rescue Beijing's hutongs. 'I never imagined, after years of struggling against the tragic fate of the hutongs, that it would be my turn to see my house forcibly demolished.'

Wang Chun's  family had been living in their Dongtangzi hutong home for 70 years, but that  was not enough to spare his home a similar fate.

He was decorating his home for his wedding when told the property's land-use rights had been transferred to a developer.

Mr Wang's grandfather bought the courtyard home in 1935 and, although the house still belongs to the family, the land on which it sits belongs to the state. That is because the state assumed ownership of all urban land in a 1982 constitutional amendment and only allowed residents to claim land-use rights.

The Beijing Municipal Administration of State Land awarded the land-use rights of the area to Fu Wah Jin Bao Comprehensive Real Estate Development, a subsidiary of the Hong Kong-registered Fu Wah Group.  It is building high-end apartment blocks, shopping malls and courtyard-style accommodation on the 350,000-square-metre site in the capital's heart.

'I was so furious and appalled. It's just like one day you wake up and find somebody has stolen your property,' Mr Wang said. 'It's like the old Chinese saying, 'What does the fur hold on to when the hide does not exist?'

'Without my consent, the wreckers have painted a large character for 'demolition' on my wall.'

Mr Wang and his neighbours were unaware that their land-use rights had already been mortgaged by the property company to the Dongcheng District Agricultural Bank - first  in March, 2003, and again in September last year, according to the land administration.

There are no estimates for the value of the first loan but, in July last year the  disputed sections of the Jinbao Street property were valued at 256 million yuan.  Bank staff refused to reveal the exact amount of the loans but one employee from the mortgage office admitted 'it usually is not permitted to mortgage the land-use rights without property-ownership rights if there are buildings on the land'.

Sun Maohang , Mr Wang's family's lawyer, said it was illegal for the government to have allocated the plot without their consent. According to a State Council regulation released last June: 'It is forbidden to withdraw the rights of land use and provide them to others until residents have been resettled and compensated.'

'The current law stipulates that when the land-use rights are mortgaged, the houses and buildings on the land should be mortgaged automatically, which means once the property company fails to repay the loan, the bank has the right to take over the houses,' Mr Sun said.

'This is like mortgaging the assets of others, not to mention the fact that the land-use rights were acquired illegally.'

Zhang Zhibin, an official from the Dongcheng District Bureau of Land Resources and Property Management, said he knew the land-use rights were transferred while there were still houses on the land, but refused to further comment.

Early last month,  Mr Wang's five cousins filed petitions in the Dongcheng District People's Court against the bank, the developer and the government but the submissions were not accepted.

Mr Sun said the court failed to fulfil  obligations requiring it to give reasons for the rejection. He then filed the original petitions as well as a complaint about the district court's lack of explanation with the Beijing No2 Intermediate Court but has yet to receive a response.

'The [intermediate court] judge initially refused to take the case as well. But I argued and he compromised. He said he would have to ask his supervisor for instructions because he could not take responsibility.'

Mr Sun also said the judge told him there were confidential guidelines preventing city courts from accepting lawsuits about property demolitions.

He plans to take the case to the Beijing Municipal People's Congress but is not optimistic. Fu Wah Jin Bao Comprehensive Real Estate Development was quoted last month by China Business News as saying its investment and development were all legal and in compliance with government regulations.

Ms Hua says the real value of the Dongtangzi and Red Star hutongs is in their connections with the past. She says some sites in the hutongs are about 800 years old. 'What the developers and the authorities do not understand is these houses have an indivisible integrity and carry the priceless weight of the ancient city's past. They are not interchangeable with any other buildings, no matter how profitable.'



After 800 years, Beijing's hutongs are history