China is probably the fastest-growing country in the world right now. In the wake of the summer Olympics there, the entire country is in the process of remaking itself from rural, crowded and agrarian to urban, crowded, and modern. However, not all Chinese are willing to go quietly into the future, and are willing to fight to hang onto what’s theirs. Such is the case of Yang Youde, a Chinese farmer on the outskirts of Wuhan in the Hubei Province. Developers want his land, but he’s not willing to sell it at the price they’ve named and built a homemade cannon to defend himself and his home.
The local government, who wants to build some kind of government building on the land, has offered the farmer about $19,000 for his land; he wants five times that, because that’s what the land is worth. All around him, other farmers have sold out, but Yang is fighting the good fight. In February he held off an eviction team with the help of local police. In May, he used his fireworks-firing DIY cannon from atop a homemade tower to hold off another 100-strong team.
If this guy can build his own cannon, just imagine how much trouble an extraction team would be in if he’d wanted to actually hurt someone, rather than just scare them off. Can you imagine the kind of booby traps this rural Chinese MacGyver could rig up?
Tags: Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, farmer defends land with homemade cannon, homemade cannon, DIY artillery, do it yourself cannon, unusual people, home defense, Yang Youde, farmer builds weapons to defend his home, fireworks cannon
