New Weekly | 34-year-old single mother, 76 days of moving into an unfinished building with her daughter

The house, built with hard work, was unfinished, and the delivery date was far off. Seeing no hope in waiting, some young people chose to move into the unfinished building directly, no longer wanting to bear the double pressure of rent and mortgage.

Lin Xi, a 34-year-old single mother, raises two young daughters on her own. After the house was unfinished, she decided to move with her children into their home on the 22nd floor, which had no doors, windows, or utilities.

Author | Hua Piaobai

Editor | Xiao Feng

Title Image | Provided by the Interviewee

Lin Xi is a 34-year-old single mother, raising two daughters on her own, one 7 years old and the other 9 years old.

In March 2021, she took out a loan to buy a house in Linyi, Shandong. The contract stipulated delivery on January 30, 2024, but the developer later verbally postponed it, promising a delivery date countless times, only to delay it countless times. For a long time, the construction site was silent and desolate, with only one or two workers occasionally “performing construction.”

With no other choice, on August 31, 2024, Lin Xi moved with her two daughters into their home, which had no doors, windows, or utilities. To date, the house has been delayed for 10 months, but Lin Xi has never received a notice of delay.

Lin Xi’s community stopped construction when the decoration progress reached 80%. (Photo/Provided by the interviewee)

In the beginning, the three of them climbed 22 floors every day, slept in a tent at home, washed their hair and clothes with the water from the green belt’s faucet, and cooked meals with an electric rice cooker at the charging pile. The house had no formal utilities and gas, the surroundings were a mess of construction, there were no security measures, and they had to deal with the developer’s harassment at any time. Inside and outside the house, it was like two different worlds on different planets.

For two and a half months, the hardships were hard to express, but she was determined to build a home for herself and her daughters in the ruins. The following is her self-description.

01 22 floors, climbing 8 times a day

I will never forget the first day I moved into the unfinished building; it was unforgettable. That day was August 31st. When I moved in with the children, it was raining, and I was the only household in the entire building. There was originally an elevator in the building, and I piled all my belongings in the hallway at the bottom of the unfinished building, but when I was busy moving, the elevator was suddenly stopped by someone.

It was already past seven o’clock in the evening. I took the children and climbed the stairs in the dark. When we reached the 22nd floor, it was almost eight o’clock, and there was already a storm outside. Because there were no doors or windows, the house was filled with drafts, and the scattered things were blowing and rattling. I set up a tent for my two daughters, and then went downstairs to get takeout for the children to eat.

Because the noise was too loud, I didn’t sleep a wink all night. Before moving in, I knew that there were no doors in the house, so I picked up a square wooden board about 1 meter long at the construction site and dragged it to the 22nd floor. I used it as a “door”, but it didn’t quite fit, and it would still fall over in the wind, so I also blocked the door with a construction ladder and a plastic shelf.

The combined height of the three was only about 1.2 meters, so it was still drafty at the top. It was the end of August, and the weather was neither cold nor hot, so I thought I could make do for now. But I promised the children that I would find a way to get a door, even a second-hand one.

Lin Xi is cleaning the hallway of her building. (Photo/Provided by the interviewee)

I didn’t have much furniture to begin with, and the only washing machine was placed downstairs. In fact, there was no water or electricity at home at the time, so the washing machine was useless. Later, some neighbors in the community saw it and spontaneously went to the construction company, asking them to immediately open the elevator for me to move and install doors, windows, and temporary electricity, because it was too dangerous for the children to live on the 22nd floor.

But after a few short days, the elevator and temporary electricity were stopped again. In the 69 days I lived there, the elevator was out of service for at least 55 days, and it occasionally ran for 10 days or half a month, depending on the workers’ mood.

After moving in, the most important thing every day was to find a water source. It makes me furious when I bring it up. Our community is delivered in batches. The first phase that has been delivered has green belt water and a pool for watering flowers and plants. I carried a bucket to get water there, but after a few days, someone came out to drive me away and turned off the main switch of the green belt water, only opening it when they used it.

Lin Xi washes her hair in the green belt. (Photo/Provided by the interviewee)

I couldn’t find the main switch, so I had to go to a park about 500 meters away to wash clothes and wash my hair. But when I went the second time, two more staff members said that this was public water and I couldn’t get water. The next day I went to another park, and as soon as I entered, someone came out and said, “Get out quickly.”

Some enthusiastic friends nearby knew about this and asked me to get water at their homes, but I didn’t want to bother everyone. Later, the owner of a car repair shop told me that there was a faucet at the door of his shop that was open 24 hours a day, and I could go there anytime. He also sent me the specific location. After that, I sometimes went there during the day to get water and rode an electric bike for a few kilometers to bring it back.

Because water is scarce, we have to save up a week’s worth of water before we can take a good bath on the weekend. I have a large plastic bathtub that can hold more than ten buckets of water. I get six buckets of water from outside every day and save two buckets. From Monday to Friday, I give the children a simple wash, and on the weekend, I boil the saved water in a pot, boiling it six times, and combine it into a large bucket of bath water, letting the children soak in it.

Lin Xi usually has to fetch water twice a day. (Photo/Provided by the interviewee)

Finding a power source was also difficult. In the beginning, I carried an electric rice cooker to the charging pile downstairs to cook rice every day. I only made one dinner a day, and the children ate at school at noon, and had porridge or noodles for breakfast. Later, the fact that I was cooking there was discovered, and the socket didn’t work anymore, so I could only go to the neighboring community to cook.

For this 22-story building, I had to climb up and down eight times a day at most: I got up at 5 a.m. to fetch water, then made breakfast for the children, and sent them to school. After returning, I started to clean the dusty house, because the outside was a construction site, and all the dust blew in. At that time, there was no furniture in the house, and all the clothes of the three of us were piled up two meters high. I had to clean the house and do the housework every day.

In the afternoon, I had to go shopping for groceries. If I wanted to buy meat, I had to go at two or three o’clock in the afternoon. It wouldn’t work if I bought it earlier, because it would spoil easily in the heat. The rice couldn’t be cooked too early either, it would get cold, so I went down to cook rice again at about three-thirty. After I was done, the sisters should go home, but their school dismissal times were different. I had to pick up the younger sister first, and then go down to pick up the older sister.

The children’s way to school. (Photo/Provided by the interviewee)

When I had free time, I also had to go fetch water twice. The younger daughter especially liked to help me fetch water. The 65-pound little girl ran around with a 30-pound bucket of water on flat ground. I got used to climbing the stairs more often. Because I knew the house was unfinished a year ago, I couldn’t sleep every day. To cure my insomnia, I went mountain climbing every day, and the muscles in my legs may have formed a memory. Now I feel very relaxed climbing 22 floors, it only takes about 5 minutes, and the children climb faster than me.

02 “I really want to have my own home”

From the decision to move into the unfinished building to actually living there, it only took me 5 days. The reason I made this decision was because I really couldn’t afford to rent a house anymore. I rented a rental house for two years before, which was actually very cheap, only 740 yuan a month. In Linyi City, an ordinary house with some simple furniture costs about 1,200 yuan a month, but I rented a resettlement house, with a five-story walk-up, and there were only a few very old beds and an air conditioner in the bedroom, and the environment was also very poor.

But one night, the landlord suddenly sent me a message saying “I’m not renting it anymore”, and he wanted to take the house back to live in himself. I was very upset when I saw it, thinking that I had to move again, and my own house was a mess, and I didn’t know when it would be delivered—every two or three months, there seemed to be some hope, but then it was postponed.

At first, I still tried to look for houses on online platforms, looking for houses that were posted by individuals and didn’t require an agent. But it was hard to find such cheap rental houses, and 700 yuan was also a burden for me, a single mother with two children. I found one for 500 yuan, thinking that I might be able to grit my teeth and hold on for a few months. But when I went there, I found that it was a seventh-floor attic, with only a bed, and no air conditioning or heating.

I thought, if I were to rent such a house, it would be better to go to my 22-story unfinished building, at least it was a finished house, it was just unfinished when the progress reached 80%. There were white walls in the room, and the living room, kitchen, and bathroom were all tiled, except that there were no doors and windows. I cried at home for several days, and finally decided to move in.

Daily entry and exit, you have to go through a barrier. (Photo/Provided by the interviewee)

I really want to have my own home. When I was 9 years old, my father passed away, and my mother remarried when I was 11 years old, and took me to a strange village. But in the second year, my mother gave birth to another child in the new family, and the whole family moved to Suzhou, leaving me alone in the original place, letting me live in a dilapidated small courtyard in the mountains, going to school myself, and cooking myself.

My mother only gave me ten yuan a week. The village had a market every 5 days, and I went to the market to buy groceries with the ten yuan. I was too young at the time, and I didn’t know how to use the money reasonably, so I didn’t eat breakfast from the age of 12, because I didn’t have enough money. I envied orphans very much at the time, because they could eat three meals a day in the orphanage, and I thought that was a good life.

The children in the village all laughed at me, because I had no relatives to look after me. In fact, I have three sisters, but the eldest sister had already been entrusted to my grandparents, and the second sister had already been entrusted to my aunt, and I had nowhere to entrust myself. The children in the village also called me a child from out of town, and then I chased them to fight. So my personality has been relatively strong since I was a child, and I am fearless.

I survived like this from the age of 12 to 14. My mother was unwilling to pay my tuition every year, so I thought I would go out and earn money myself, support myself, and dropped out of school after the fifth grade of elementary school.

After entering society, I worked desperately. When my father was alive, he wanted to rebuild the old house of dozens of years into five large tile-roofed houses, so I worked hard to earn money, thinking of going back to my hometown to build a house, so that I would have a home myself.

Lin Xi’s hometown. (Photo/Provided by the interviewee)

At that time, I worked in an electronics factory, making the outer shell of laptops. The factory was piece-rate, for example, it was estimated that 100 pieces could be made in an hour, which was one working hour. I went to work at 4:30 in the morning every day, and I went early and worked fast, and I rested very little. Others would spend an hour eating, and I would finish eating in 5 minutes and go back to work. I only ate three steamed buns a day, and I didn’t even eat pickles.

Later, the boss was surprised when he paid my salary, saying, “There are only 24 hours a day, how come your working hours are 33 hours a day?” The old employees who had been working for several years could only get a salary of 1,800 yuan a month, while I could already get about 3,400 yuan. That was in 2006, and I was only 16 years old.

But when I saved enough money to go back to my hometown, I found that the house had been written in my grandmother’s name. I went to find my grandmother, and my grandmother agreed to let me rebuild the house, but my uncle didn’t agree. My grandmother only had two sons, and my father had passed away, so she couldn’t go against her only son. I went to find the person in charge of the village, but they said it was a family matter and they couldn’t interfere.

The backyard of my hometown. (Photo/Provided by the interviewee)

I was completely disappointed with my hometown, and I felt that it couldn’t accommodate me, so my first thought at that time was to leave my hometown and go to a very far place, so I came to Linyi.

In the following years, I settled down in Linyi, had children, and saved some money, and decided to settle down here. But I never expected that this house, which I had worked so hard for to leave my hometown and eat steamed buns every day, would be unfinished.

In this process, the children’s father also disappeared. I was alone with two daughters, and I fell into despair and was also very afraid. Sometimes I think, what is the meaning of my life? Does a person live in this world just to eat three meals a day? No, I want to live well. I just want to give myself a home, and those that others have from birth, I may have to rely on my own efforts.

03 “The world shouldn’t be like this”

Living in the unfinished building, people would occasionally come to urge us to move out, saying that the house had not been delivered, and even people from my hometown county would come to advise me to leave this place under the guise of caring for me.

The promised delivery date of the house was repeatedly delayed. The people at the construction site even surrounded the entire community with a circle of iron sheets, and the main road that the daughters used to go to school was blocked, so they could only cross the construction site and walk on a muddy path, and their shoes were all muddy when it rained.

This barrier was opened many times by people, and it was repeatedly locked in time, until a storm blew it to pieces, and it could no longer be locked.

Lin Xi’s daughter’s night road after school. (Photo/Provided by the interviewee)

In fact, I can understand a little bit that the unfinished building was not built. But for people like me who are really in difficulty, can I live in my own home? I can fetch water, and I can tolerate the inconvenience of electricity, at least you have to let me live there.

The developer may have seen my determination. After I persisted in the unfinished building for more than sixty days, the construction site of the community finally resumed construction. Now, some people are doing road hardening, and some people are planting trees.

The remaining 20% of my home has also started to be renovated again. At present, the stove and hanging cabinets have been installed, and water and temporary electricity have finally been connected. I no longer have to squat to stir-fry and cook. Life suddenly got better. Looking back at those roads, I didn’t think it was difficult, and I was full of energy every day, but now I really want to cry, and I feel very sad. All this is hard-won.

Although the environment in my home has improved, there is no one upstairs or downstairs, and the environment downstairs in the community is still very inconvenient. The eldest daughter is already dark when she gets out of school, and the road is difficult to walk. There are no emergency lights in the community, and there is no security guard on duty.

Lin Xi’s home is the first household to have electricity. (Photo/Provided by the interviewee)

I can’t work with peace of mind either, and I pick up some cardboard at the construction site every day to subsidize the family. I have some anxiety. I have to cook for the children, tutor them with their homework, and earn money, but what kind of job is suitable for me now?

Winter is also coming soon. Nowadays, the temperature difference between morning and evening in Shandong is large. Sometimes I shiver at night, and the children are unwilling to get out of bed in the morning. The coldest time in winter in Shandong is minus eighteen or nineteen degrees Celsius. It may be difficult to get through without heating at home, and I haven’t thought of any way to keep warm. But I have to persevere, because this is my own home after all, and there is nowhere else to go.

On the 63rd day of living in the unfinished building, the eldest daughter celebrated her ninth birthday at home without water or electricity. She was very disappointed. I had promised her to go to an amusement park on her birthday, which had several floors and a castle, but the ticket was 180 yuan, and it would cost 360 yuan for both sisters. I thought it was a bit expensive, and finally gave up.

We usually go to the supermarket on weekends, or go out to play badminton and basketball, and ride bicycles around the small river nearby. We can’t go too far either, because we are worried that things at home will be gone after we go out for a day, and we are afraid that others will break in on the grounds of “not being delivered.”

Lin Xi usually sorts out cardboard and takes it downstairs to sell. (Photo/Provided by the interviewee)

So far, there is only my household in this building. Anyone who has a good choice will not want to live this kind of life. In the beginning, other owners also wanted to move in early, and came to ask me how to get electricity, how to get water, and how to wash clothes with the washing machine. I said that if you want to live in an unfinished building, you should forget about the washing machine. If you have this idea, you can’t bear this hardship. I just advised him not to come and live there.

But many neighbors and owners came to give us warmth. When we first came to live there, everyone sent us rice, noodles, and oil for the children to eat. Some netizens, after seeing our situation, also sent the children solar-powered small lamps and desks, so that they didn’t have to sit on the ground to do their homework after they got home.

I don’t think the unfinished building will leave any shadow on the daughters. They are very brave, and they have experienced all kinds of difficulties with me, without any complaints. I also told them that we are indeed living in an unfinished building, but this should not be a reason for us to be inferior or to be laughed at by others. The world shouldn’t be like this. We will soon have a warm home, and they will fix our home sooner or later.