It has often been said that the internet is one of China's most dynamic avenues for expression. This is perhaps why Hu Jintao and the digital SS keep such a tight vigil on its activities. However, officials have yet to strangle the recent phenomenon that is Nail House Versus Demolition Team.Gluttonous landowners and developers have been the target of humanity's grievances for millenia. But in Post-reform China, this crew of moneygrabbers has become especially aggressive and disliked. The disillusionment of the people of China with their new unchecked capitalism, especially the poor and socially immobile, has been stoked into a flame that is played out violently on screen and on the ground. The Gaurdian's (UK) Tania Branigan explains how the goofy fiction of the Nail House game is reflective of real resistance on the ground to violent developers: "In the game, Mrs Ding, still in her curlers, hurls slippers as the men approach, while Grandpa Ding prefers to fire his shotgun. It might sound improbable, but a real life farmer in Hubei province fought off workers with a homemade cannon" (9/16/10).
Tania is referring to 65-yr old Yang Youde. In June 2010, he routed a demolition team a number of times with a home-made arsenal of bamboo artillery canons. 
In a land where free-wheeling capitalists buy off people and property with little resistance and impunity, folks like Youde are a surprisingly annoying obstacle to the making of small fortunes. Youde is resisting his forced removal on legal grounds, however, showing the clash between the landed and landless not as blind, sentimental protest, but as an issue of legality that plagues China all the way around. He who has the gold, makes the rules, the perverted English saying goes. Youde is fighting for a more just and enforceable system of law that will help to stabilize social relations in China and render its legal and business practices more equitable.
While the courageous continue to fight to protect their land and legal rights, however, you can help them air their grievances in a pithy protest world.
Try out Nail House Versus Demolition Team for free at http://www.4399.com/flash/36869_2.htm. Go get them ruthless developers.
Links:
*ChinaHush article on Yang Youde
*The Guardian article on the Nail House game
