I used to visit my aunt and cousins at their home opposite the venue of the first Party Congress, now part of the posh Xintiandi bar/restaurant area, but when my cousin - relocated to Sanlintang in Pudong four years ago - tried to have a look at her old home the other day, she was driven out by the current owner.

What if she had insisted on not moving out in the first place? That is absolutely impossible in today's China when you are given a notice to go because some property developers become obsessed with taking over the place where you live.

The recently exposed corruption case, allegedly involving Shanghai tycoon Zhou Zhengyi's collusion with some officials and illegal property market speculation, shows the helplessness of the families who are being relocated.

I am not criticizing the city's old town transformation programme, which has helped improve the living conditions of millions of local residents, though I believe that more old houses should be preserved.

Neither am I going to elaborate on how many people have become upstarts and how many officials have become corrupt from property deals.

What I am saying is that in order to relocate the families, the government or the property developers should treat those families as equals, just like doing an open and fair business deal. Those people should have the right to bargain and to be compensated properly so as be able to afford at least new apartments. They shouldn't feel that they are being forced to leave.

No matter how materialistic our society has become today, the compensation should in fact be more than the value of the old house itself.

Why do these people have to change a way of living that they may have been used to for generations? How about their emotional attachment to the old houses and to their neighbours?

People who understand Chinese culture, or other cultures, should know the human aspect of the issue. You cannot just go there and say: "I will give you a new apartment or 200,000 yuan, but you must move tomorrow."

Unfortunately that has been the case of many families who have been relocated in the past decade. Some were not living in really dilapidated houses that needed urgent demolition; they simply were occupying a lucrative plot of land, such as the ones along Nanjing or Huaihai roads.

Years ago when I visited the Big Dig project in Boston (the largest project in US history to move freeways and infrastructural facilities underground), what impressed me was how much consideration had to be paid to relocate even a very small number of families.

Of course, the Big Dig also involved some scandals and has taken more than a decade - it is still not completed.

The Big Dig is certainly less efficient by Chinese standards, especially by ultrasonic Shanghai speed, but it certainly shows more respect towards residents.

weihua_chen@yahoo.com