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<h3 style="margin-top:0;"><a style="font-weight: 500; font-size: 21px;line-height: 30px; margin-top:25px; margin-bottom: 10px;" href="http://u.osu.edu/mclc/2018/07/28/historic-town-resists-eviction-for-theme-park/" target="_blank">Historic town resists eviction for theme park</a></h3>
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<p>Source: The Jakarta Post (7/26/18)<br />
<a href="http://www.thejakartapost.com/travel/2018/07/25/historic-chinese-town-resists-eviction-for-theme-park.html">Historic Chinese town resists eviction for theme park</a><br />
By JOANNA CHIU, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE</p>
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<p>A year ago, customers queued round the block for Wu Ying's red bean and coconut ice puddings, but now the 60-year-old has to vault a barricade to reach her dessert shop.</p>
<p>Wu is one of several dozen inhabitants of a historic section of the town of Chikan in southern China who are stubbornly holding out against government pressure to sell their properties to make way for a "heritage" theme park.</p>
<p>Chikan was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in June 2007 due to its 19th- and early 20th-century houses, which feature a unique mix of European and Chinese architecture, clock towers and intricate stone wall carvings.</p>
<p>But locals say the international attention has been a curse.</p>
<p>Last year, municipal authorities announced a $900-million deal with investment firm Citic Private Equity Funds to convert Chikan into a tourist attraction.</p>
<p>Its historic buildings will become hotels, bars, restaurants, trinket shops and cafes for visitors who pay an entrance fee.</p>
<p>Chen Jiewan, deputy mayor of Kaiping city where Chikan is located, said the project aims to "protect Chikan's cultural relics" and draw tourist spending, urging everyone to "work overtime" toward a targeted trial opening next year.</p>
<p>Nearly 4,000 households received government notices urging them to move out immediately, with most of them accepting compensation offers.</p>
<p>But at least 58 households have refused and received "final notice" letters in late May.</p>
<p>"People were too scared to push back. It is totally absurd that they are kicking out all the people in the name of preservation," complained Wu.</p>
<p>Authorities have barricaded some streets, and red banners on padlocked storefronts exhort villagers not to "stand in the way of progress".</p>
<p>Such situations are not uncommon in historic parts of China, with deals cut between local governments and developers.</p>
<p>In 1999, all residents were evicted from the ancient "water town" of Wuzhen near Shanghai, which now charges visitors 200 yuan ($30) for tickets to take canal boat tours of the town.</p>
<p>With vague laws offering property owners little protection, increasing forced evictions have become a major source of public discontent, according to Amnesty International.</p>
<p>Local officials are often under pressure to preserve heritage sites, but the resulting projects "often become so commercialized that they don't always take grassroots perspectives into account," said Leksa Lee, a specialist in the business of cultural heritage in China at New York University Shanghai.</p>
<p>Holdouts in Chikan, which is in Guangdong province, say the offered compensation of between 3,200-3,900 yuan ($472–$575) per square meter is nowhere near enough to purchase a small apartment in the area.</p>
<p>The average cost of new homes in the nearby provincial capital Guangzhou in 2017 was 20,000 yuan per square meter.</p>
<p>Wu said she and some neighbors who staged a protest last autumn were arrested and jailed for several days.</p>
<p>Around the same time, 60-year-old local resident Lou Kong Ho said, unidentified people broke into his family's recently renovated ancestral home, looting valuable antiques.</p>
<p>"To get rid of the house would mean breaking the bonds to our family," said Lou, as he placed small teacups and chopsticks at a family altar at his home to pay respect to the clan's ancestors.</p>
<p>Referring to relatives overseas who helped fund the renovation, he added: "What reason would they have to come back? None of it will be ours anymore."</p>
<p>If residents reject the deal, the issue will "enter the judicial process" and property owners will forfeit compensation, a statement on the Kaiping city government's website said. Local officials did not respond to AFP's questions.</p>
<p>Paulinda Poon, an American flight attendant who grew up in Chikan, is among the overseas former residents who return frequently.</p>
<p>In 2016, she traveled to Beijing to deliver a letter to the Foreign Ministry about the "unfair" Chikan situation. Officials there told her it was a local matter.</p>
<p>Poon visited Chikan again recently and was struck by how it resembled a "ghost town" compared to a visit last year.</p>
<p>Coming across a small group of residents on the riverfront, she asked if they had consulted a lawyer, and one man replied: "Who would help us?"</p>
<p>Poon later visited an elderly cousin at a temporary shelter for displaced residents. Inside the intense heat of the metal structure, her cousin broke down and cried.</p>
<p>Her family members had scattered and she hadn't had a visitor in half a year.</p>
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by <a href="mailto:denton.2@osu.edu">denton.2@osu.edu</a> on July 28, 2018 </div>
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