A filial man in Shaoxing city, Zhejiang province, spent at least 6 million yuan (HK$7.6 million) buying his neighbours’ flats in order to keep an elevator that he had installed for his mother who had had leg surgery, Qianjiang Evening News reports. The man paid his neighbours 10,000 yuan per square kilometre of their four apartments – much more than the market price of 7,000 yuan, the report said. Six million yuan is enough to buy a villa in the city. The man lives on the fifth floor of the building, which was built in 1998 without a lift. His parents live on the fourth floor. His mother, in her 80s, underwent leg surgery some time ago and had difficulty taking the stairs, so the man obtained his neighbours’ consent to build the lift in September. The elevator cost hundreds of thousands of yuan, the report said. The neighbours said they agreed only because the man had promised that the lift would be five metres away from the building’s main entrance. But they later complained to the city’s planning authority because this was not the case. One neighbour reportedly told the man that he could either demolish the lift or buy all the flats downstairs. The man said he took up the neighbour’s suggestion to buy the apartments because his mother would not move.